The Joint European Torus fusion reactor: we need its successors to work if we’re going to beat climate change. CC-licensed photo by aglet on Flickr.

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A selection of 10 links for you. Too hot to handle. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Most YouTube climate change videos ‘oppose the consensus view’ • The Guardian

Gregory Robinson:

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[Dr Joachim] Allgaier [of RWTH Aachen University, in Germany] noted, however, that although chemtrails videos received a lot of views, it does not mean the people watching them believed what they were told.

He said it was important to examine the algorithms that decide which videos to show people, but did not suggest YouTube should remove climate denial material.

“Effectively, this would be censorship, and YouTube says they are against censorship,” Allgaier said. “Perhaps they could change their algorithms to prioritise factual information, especially for health and medicine.”

A YouTube spokesperson said: “YouTube is a platform for free speech where anyone can choose to post videos, as long as they follow our community guidelines.

“Over the last year we’ve worked to better surface credible news sources across our site for people searching for news-related topics, begun reducing recommendations of borderline content and videos that could misinform users in harmful ways, and introduced information panels to help give users more sources where they can fact-check information for themselves.”

Allgaier suggested more scientists should start taking YouTube seriously as a platform for sharing information. “YouTube has an enormous reach as an information channel, and some of the popular science YouTubers are doing an excellent job at communicating complex subjects and reaching new audiences,” he said.

“Scientists could form alliances with science communicators, politicians and those in popular culture in order to reach out to the widest possible audience. They should speak out publicly about their research and be transparent in order to keep established trustful relationships with citizens and society.”

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YouTube could prioritise the truth. Haha, just joking.
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The only chart we should be looking at • Chartable

Gregor Aisch:

»

it is important to mention a well-known flaw in this dataset: Rich countries have notoriously managed to “outsource” their emissions to China. A lot of the increase we see is being caused by goods like smartphones and cheap clothes, which are being manufactured in East Asia but are consumed in Western countries.

Finally, there is another important thing missing in the emission curve, and that’s where we need to be heading. The October 2018 special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that in order to limit global warming to below 1.5 degree Celsius we need to reach net-zero emissions between 2045 and 2055.

Without showing this goal in the emission charts, even a slight reduction in emissions may look like a big achievement, while the truth is that it’s not. Or, as Greta has put it in her speech:

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“The fact that we are speaking of “lowering” instead of “stopping” emissions is perhaps the greatest force behind the continuing business as usual.”

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That’s a truly scary graph. Unless we invent fusion reactors or give everyone a fission reactor and solar panels in the next decade, we’re cooked.

Maybe that’s the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
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Do you really need another computer monitor? • OneZero

Angela Lashbrook:

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Yes, [you] do. Multiple monitors actually make a positive difference when it comes to productivity.

I started to suspect this was true over the course of the past year, when I switched from working at various media companies and transitioned to freelance writing at home. It turns out there’s research to support my newfound discovery: For most office labor, employees benefit from multiple monitors, so if you — or even better, your employer — have a little extra cash and want to beef up productivity in a painless way, opening your wallet for an extra monitor or two is well worth it.

“If you have a lot of papers you’re working with on a project, would you rather work on a big conference table or an airline tray table?” says John Stasko, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology who has researched the effects of using multiple monitors. “I don’t know many people who’d trade their multi-mon setup and go back to a single monitor.”

…These experiences are echoed in the scientific literature on the topic, which while scant, uniformly backs up the anecdotes presented here as far as I could find. A 2004 study looked at how performance compared when a worker used one monitor as opposed to two. It found that workers got started on work 6% more quickly, worked 16% faster, and had 33% fewer errors when using more than one screen.

Users also vastly preferred the use of multiple monitors — those with multiple monitors rated their experience 28% easier to focus and 24% more comfortable.

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Apple’s next CEO to replace Tim Cook: Jeff Williams • Bloomberg

Mark Gurman:

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While Williams can be direct and demanding in meetings with other executives, current and former colleagues say he sometimes relies heavily on a circle of lieutenants to play bad cop in larger engineering-team meetings. With the designers, his sensibility doesn’t always translate. “He comes from the operations side, and the metrics being applied there often have very little meaning in design,” says a longtime member of the design team.

The Watch has been Williams’s biggest test. Months before the first model’s release in 2015, some employees testing the device began having allergic reactions to the type of nickel used in its casing, a not-uncommon issue with wristwear. Williams made the call to scrap thousands of Watches the company had already produced and ramp up a separate manufacturing line with a different kind of nickel. Employees also noticed that the “taptic engine,” a Williams priority that allows the Watch to vibrate more quietly than a typical phone part when it receives notifications, was prone to long-term failure from corrosion. Again, Williams decided not to send out a few thousand Watches that were affected. Employees got them instead.

These choices spared many early adopters from getting defective early models of the Apple Watch. They also helped make the watch tough to find in stores for months after its official release, and some online shipments were delayed, too. When customers could find some, they might be the Watch models shipped with 18-karat gold cases, which cost as much as $17,000—conceivable for wealthy Rolex fans, but a poor investment given that Apple’s model would be obsolete in a few years…

…One former senior Apple executive says he’s less worried about Williams’s ability to implement ideas from the design team than he is about the managers reporting to Williams. The new team leaders, longtime Apple hardware and software design managers Evans Hankey and Alan Dye, are a “step down” from Ive in terms of design prowess, the former senior executive says, but acknowledges that workflow may be simpler with Hankey and Dye running things. Before, “those people were pseudo in charge, but not really in charge, because Jony could overrule them.”

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Sounds like a pretty solid choice. Particularly his willingness to scrap things that don’t work.
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Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours • The Register

Gareth Corfield:

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Some models of Airbus A350 airliners still need to be hard rebooted after exactly 149 hours, despite warnings from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first issued two years ago.

In a mandatory airworthiness directive (AD) reissued earlier this week, EASA urged operators to turn their A350s off and on again to prevent “partial or total loss of some avionics systems or functions”.

The revised AD, effective from tomorrow (26 July), exempts only those new A350-941s which have had modified software pre-loaded on the production line. For all other A350-941s, operators need to completely power the airliner down before it reaches 149 hours of continuous power-on time.

Concerningly, the original 2017 AD was brought about by “in-service events where a loss of communication occurred between some avionics systems and avionics network” (sic). The impact of the failures ranged from “redundancy loss” to “complete loss on a specific function hosted on common remote data concentrator and core processing input/output modules”.

In layman’s English, this means that prior to 2017, at least some A350s flying passengers were suffering unexplained failures of potentially flight-critical digital systems.

Airbus’ rival Boeing very publicly suffered from a similar time-related problem with its 787 Dreamliner: back in 2015 a memory overflow bug was discovered that caused the 787’s generators to shut themselves down after 248 days of continual power-on operation. A software counter in the generators’ firmware, it was found, would overflow after that precise length of time. The Register is aware that this is not the only software-related problem to have plagued the 787 during its earlier years.

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149 hours is a strange number to cause a buffer overflow; it’s not a critical number in octal or hexadecimal.

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“We wargamed the last days of Brexit: here’s what we found out” • openDemocracy

Luke Cooper:

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As Brexit has radically disrupted the existing British party system, the factional roles assumed by players did not tend to align with a particular party leadership. Instead different Tory and Labour factions were represented within the game. Each player had a series of votes allocated in the British Parliament. Larger factions had two different vote allocations: ‘waverers’ and diehards. They could potentially cast these votes in different directions. Another element of the game design lay in a consciously British-centric approach. An assumption underpinning the game was that the EU side would act as, in gaming-terms, a ‘dummy-player’. This refers to when an actor is present within a scenario, who does not face choices that affect the overall arc of the decision pathway. With modifications to the Withdrawal Agreement persistently ruled out by the EU, had players assumed this vantage point they would not have faced any choices. As a dummy-player, the umpire thus articulated the position of the EU-27 states at key decision-making points across the game.

Following the playful spirit of Debord’s legacy, this really was a game. Players accumulated points in relation to different votes passing and goals being reached. Some had hidden objectives that were revealed at the end of the game, identifying a potential conflict between the public statements of factions and their underlying motivations. The ‘winner’ had the most points at the end of the game.

The outcome of the game eventually resolved itself in a new referendum. By this stage the game had moved into the near future of early autumn 2019. The cross-party negotiations had failed to reach a breakthrough acceptable to both leaderships. Softer members of the Tory Brexit Delivery Group then split away from the party leadership, crossing the floor to support a new referendum. Interestingly, this came as a surprise to the game designer, Barbrook, who had anticipated a stalemate and a further extension of Article 50 at the end of October 2019.

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This would be remarkable, to say the least, but the current Westminster situation is flattered by being called “febrile”.
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Apple to acquire majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business • Intel Newsroom

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Intel and Apple have signed an agreement for Apple to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. Approximately 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, along with intellectual property, equipment and leases. The transaction, valued at $1bn, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions, including works council and other relevant consultations in certain jurisdictions.

Combining the acquired patents for current and future wireless technology with Apple’s existing portfolio, Apple will hold over 17,000 wireless technology patents, ranging from protocols for cellular standards to modem architecture and modem operation. Intel will retain the option to develop modems for non-smartphone applications, such as PCs, internet of things devices and autonomous vehicles.

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Been noises about this in the media for a week or so. Seemed worth just waiting for the official confirmation. The list of exceptions Intel gets is fun. But you can’t make half a modem. Apple will have to set this group to work to make 5G modems, probably for 2022.
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How to talk to boomers and other older people in your life about fake news • Buzzfeed

Craig Silverman:

»

Caulfield said it’s common for older people to unwittingly share things that have extremist messages or iconography. “It’s very hard to see people posting stuff that may come from a kind of a dark place that they don’t realize is dark,” Caulfield said. “What do you do when your parents go from posting Minions [memes] to posting hard-right memes about cement milkshakes?”

He says it’s important to intervene privately and help the person understand the larger — and more concerning — context.

“There’s a good chance your family member doesn’t understand that and might be horrified at what they’re sharing. And so there’s a point to intervene and let people know, ‘Hey, I know, this was probably not what you meant, but…’”

Experts agree that being non-confrontational is key. Daniel Kent founded Net Literacy, a nonprofit, in 2003 when he was in middle school in Indiana. One of its first programs was Senior Connects, which helps older people get online and gain basic internet skills.

“I think it’s fundamentally about treating [older people] with concern and respect. Recognizing that … perhaps they had the best of intentions, but the execution on their part perhaps wasn’t the most, the most thoughtful and mindful,” he said.

If you do want to say something, Kent and Caulfield suggest engaging in person — or by direct message or phone if that’s not possible. If you call someone out publicly on Facebook or elsewhere, they’re likely to feel attacked or shamed, and you won’t have a chance to hear why they wanted to share a particular piece of content. Understanding where someone is coming from and why they shared or posted what they did is essential, Kent and Caulfield say.

“With our volunteers [we] preach as much empathy as possible,” Kent said.

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OK, use this method on Trump then.
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Young people in UK abandon TV news ‘almost entirely’ • The Guardian

Jim Waterson:

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While the average person aged 65 and over watches 33 minutes of TV news a day, this falls to just two minutes among people aged 16-24, according the media regulator’s annual news consumption report.

The decline has been driven by audiences moving away from traditional live broadcast channels, where they might watch a popular drama and leave the channel on during the evening news bulletin, towards watching catchup content from streaming services.

The shift could have major implications for British politics, given services such as Netflix do not provide any news. Political parties have traditionally considered the BBC’s 10pm news bulletin to be their most important outlet for getting their message across to large swaths of the public, which in turn can shape policies being proposed and how they are presented.

TV news is still the main way that the British public learn about current affairs, however, in part because older viewers have remained loyal to traditional services.

Ofcom’s research also suggests that people are increasingly willing to wade into online arguments about news. “There is evidence that UK adults are consuming news more actively via social media. For example, those who access news shared by news organisations, trending news or news stories from friends and family or other people they follow via Facebook or Twitter are more likely to make comments on the new posts they see compared to the previous year.”

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Not seeing TV news is arguably a bonus in the US, but in the UK – where news channels are bound by impartiality regulation – it’s probably better than news outlets.
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What is Microsoft doing with Cortana? • The Verge

Tom Warren:

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After some big changes to Microsoft’s Windows division, former Windows chief Terry Myerson departed the company in the summer last year and Cortana boss Javier Soltero followed a few months later. Microsoft is now refocusing Cortana and stripping back its direct integration in Windows 10 and the Xbox One. Microsoft has a new vision for Cortana, involving conversational interactions for workers who are organizing their days.

Andrew Shuman, Microsoft’s new Cortana boss, outlined the new vision earlier this year in an interview with The Verge. “I think one of the challenges we’ve had over the last couple of years is finding those places where Microsoft can really add a lot of value,” explained Shuman. “I think that what we’ve been really working on over the last year is how we can better embed Cortana across Microsoft 365 experiences and really delight users, especially those users who really are on board, so we have to understand their calendar, their tasks, their work documents, their interfacing with their close collaborators.”

This means Cortana is going to be far more conversational when answering queries by voice or text. We’ve seen parts of this through Microsoft’s bot ambitions and Skype integration for Cortana. The company is now repositioning Cortana as a skill that can run anywhere. Microsoft has also moved the Cortana team out of its AI research division and into its Experiences and Devices team. This should hopefully mean we’ll start to see Cortana show up in products that make sense, like Microsoft’s Surface Headphones.

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I think Cortana is going to show up in the back of the car heading up to the mountains for a “long walk”. At least the voice-operated part. Something under the radar for organising calendars etc? Sure, but who cares about the name. It doesn’t even need an interface.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Doordash says it’s going to change its tipping policy so that workers receive them. Radical, huh? CC-licensed photo by Jerzy Durczak 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. A tipping point? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Plex makes piracy just another streaming service • The Verge

Bijan Stephen:

»

Because of the convoluted nature of licensing agreements and the vagaries of corporate competition, what’s on Netflix is substantively different than what’s available on Hulu or Amazon Prime. Different still are the network-specific streamers, like the up-and-comers HBO Max and Disney+, and the more niche offerings, like Shudder, Kanopy, Mubi, and Criterion. All of them have the same aim, which is to lock up intellectual property to keep people streaming. It’s a lot!

Plex, a company that sells media server software, has found itself in the strange position of being the answer to that problem. It has two components: the piece of software that organizes media on your computer’s hard drive and the client-side program that lets you and your friends and family stream that content from wherever you are on just about any device. It’s clean. It’s beautiful. It is extraordinarily simple to use. It looks a little like Netflix. Except, all of the content is custom, tailored by the person running the server. In the company’s words, both pieces of its software are “the key to personal media bliss.”

What Plex doesn’t say, however, is how that bliss is achieved. Because what’s on Plex servers is populated by people, most of the commercial content you’d find there is probably pirated. And this is the main tension of using Plex: while the software itself is explicitly legal, the media that populates its customer-run servers is not — at least the stuff protected by copyright law. The company, of course, doesn’t condone this particular use of its software.

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Everything old is new again: piracy used to be a huge problem, then it went away (more or less). The fragmentation of content to multiple services is creating the opportunity for piracy.
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FTC hits Facebook with $5bn fine and new privacy checks • The Verge

Makena Kelly:

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In the agreement filed today, the FTC alleges that Facebook violated the law by failing to protect data from third parties, serving ads through the use of phone numbers provided for security, and lying to users that its facial recognition software was turned off by default. In order to settle those charges, Facebook will pay $5 billion — the second-largest fine ever levied by the FTC — and agree to a series of new restrictions on its business.

Aside from the multibillion-dollar fine, Facebook will be required to conduct a privacy review of every new product or service that it develops, and these reviews must be submitted to the CEO and a third-party assessor every quarter. As it directly relates to Cambridge Analytica, Facebook will now be required to obtain purpose and use certifications from apps and third-party developers that want to use Facebook user data. However, there are no limits on what data access the company can authorize to those groups once the disclosure is made.

“The Order imposes a privacy regime that includes a new corporate governance structure, with corporate and individual accountability and more rigorous compliance monitoring,” the three supporting FTC commissioners wrote in a statement. “This approach dramatically increases the likelihood that Facebook will be compliant with the Order; if there are any deviations, they likely will be detected and remedied quickly.”

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Apparently the 3-2 vote was on party lines – Republicans 3, Democrats 2. It’s absurdly weak. The FTC writing of it naturally suggests that it is going to tamp down everything that Facebook wants to do. It won’t. Rohit Chopra, one of the FTC commissioners (who voted against) has a Twitter thread explaining why he thinks it’s a bad settlement.
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AI is supercharging the creation of maps around the world • Facebook

Xiaoming Gao, Christopher Klaiber, Drishtie Patel and Jeff Underwood:

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For more than 10 years, volunteers with the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project have worked to address that gap by meticulously adding data on the ground and reviewing public satellite images by hand and annotating features like roads, highways, and bridges. It’s a painstaking manual task. But, thanks to AI, there is now an easier way to cover more areas in less time.

With assistance from Map With AI (a new service that Facebook AI researchers and engineers created) a team of Facebook mappers has recently cataloged all the missing roads in Thailand and more than 90% of missing roads in Indonesia. Map With AI enabled them to map more than 300,000 miles of roads in Thailand in only 18 months, going from a road network that covered 280,000 miles before they began to 600,000 miles after. Doing it the traditional way — without AI — would have taken another three to five years, estimates Xiaoming Gao, a Facebook research scientist who helped lead the project.

“We were really excited about this achievement because it has proven Map With AI works at a large scale,” Gao says.

Starting today, anyone will be able to use the Map With AI service, which includes access to AI-generated road mappings in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda, with more countries rolling out over time. As part of Map With AI, Facebook is releasing our AI-powered mapping tool, called RapiD, to the OSM community.

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This, at least, is good. Though it’s a repetition of what undoubtedly already exists at Google and other mapping companies. The benefit is that this is open data.
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Border Patrol admits being member of controversial Facebook group • CNNPolitics

Geneva Sands and Kate Sullivan:

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US Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said on Wednesday that she was a member of a secret Facebook group that reportedly contains vulgar and offensive posts, adding that she told internal investigators once she realized her involvement.

“Not only did I self-report, I turned my entire Facebook account over,” she said before a House Appropriations subcommittee. “I gave them my log-in and my password.”

Provost denied knowing of the “highly offensive and absolutely unacceptable posts” ahead of the ProPublica investigative report that first exposed the Facebook group dubbed “I’m 10-15.” The name refers to Border Patrol code 10-15 for “aliens in custody.” Earlier this month, The Intercept reported Provost was a member of the Facebook group.

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You’re in a group but you don’t realise you’re in the group? Then again, you can be coopted into a group without your knowledge, or can join one when it’s relatively peaceful (Provost says she was invited to join it in 2017, when it may have been very different in character) and then find it change under you. The problem, fundamentally, is Facebook.
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Facebook’s Libra currency spawns a wave of fakes, including on Facebook itself • The Washington Post

Drew Harwell, Tony Romm and Cat Zakrzewski:

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A wave of fakes purporting to sell or represent Facebook’s not-yet-available Libra currency have swept onto the social-media giant’s platforms, highlighting how the tech firm is struggling to rebuild trust and fight the fraud likely to surround the new financial system.

Roughly a dozen fake accounts, pages and groups scattered across Facebook and its photo-sharing app Instagram present themselves as official hubs for the digital currency, in some cases offering to sell Libra at a discount if viewers visit potentially fraudulent, third-party websites.

A number of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts were removed Monday after The Washington Post alerted Facebook to their spread.

The spread of fakes — and Facebook’s inability to detect them on its own — could undermine Facebook-backed efforts to inspire confidence and satisfy the regulators now scrutinizing the newly proposed global currency. Many of the fakes included Facebook’s logo, photos of Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg or Libra’s official marketing imagery.

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Totally predictable, and depressing. Everything can be copied.
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How Russian antitrust enforcers defeated Google’s monopoly • Matt Stoller’s Substack

Matt Stoller:

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In Russia, the anti-monopoly case played out quite differently [from that in Europe on the tying of Android to mobile default search for Google]. The Russians were not intimidated by American technology companies, not only because of residual bitterness over the end of the Cold War and a hostile geopolitical relationship with America, but because they had Yandex. Russian engineers and scientists were just as innovative as those in Silicon Valley, and they had their own search giant to prove it.

The FAS [Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service] was also hostile to Google because of a very basic problem that the company brought upon itself. Google did not take the FAS as seriously as it should have, under the assumption the FAS would rule for Yandex for protectionist reasons. It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, to believe a Russian government agency would find for a Russian company. But Google never acknowledged Yandex had a serious argument, even though a respected economic consulting firm, the European arm of Charles River Associates, had done the economic analysis underpinning Yandex’s complaint.

The Russians ruled in 2015, and again in late 2016, roughly a year and a half after the start of the case and far faster than that of the EU. In 2017, Google settled, agreeing to present a “choice screen” to all Android phone users letting the user pick in a neutral manner which search engine to use. Immediately upon implementing the choice screen, Yandex recaptured a chunk of market share from Google. And its market share then stabilized.

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New York Times to fight fake news using IBM’s blockchain tech • The Block

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The New York Times Company has announced a new project, aiming to fight fake news using IBM’s blockchain technology.

Initiated by the publisher’s research and development team, “The News Provenance Project,” will first focus on photojournalism as photos can be “easily manipulated” and can have “serious” effects, according to a blog post published Tuesday.

The first phase of the project will run through late 2019 to design a proof-of-concept (PoC) using Hyperledger Fabric, a permissioned and private blockchain network, in collaboration with IBM Garage. The PoC aims to provide readers with a way to determine the source of a photo or whether it had been edited after it was published, per the blog post.

After its learnings from the first phase, The New York Times said it will later explore the technology for journalism as a whole. The publisher has also invited other news organizations to join its initiative.

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This is mildly bonkers. And unnecessary.
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After outcry, DoorDash promises workers will get 100% of tips • Ars Technica

Timothy Lee:

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A recent New York Times story explained how the DoorDash’s current system works:

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For my first order, the guarantee was $6.85 and the customer, a woman in Boerum Hill who answered the door in a colorful bathrobe, tipped $3 via the app. But I still received only $6.85. If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero, DoorDash would have paid me the whole $6.85. Because she tipped $3, DoorDash kicked in only $3.85. She was saving DoorDash $3, not tipping me.

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Now Xu says DoorDash is going to revamp its pay system to ensure that every dollar of tip goes to drivers. “We’ll have specific details in the coming days,” he tweeted.

There’s no guarantee that the new formula will be better for workers. After Instacart changed its formula earlier this year, some shoppers complained that their average compensation per job fell as a result. Ultimately, the specific compensation formula probably matters less than how much DoorDash chooses to pay its workers, on average.

DoorDash isn’t the only company to face a backlash over this issue. Instacart was featured alongside DoorDash in a February piece by NBC’s Olivia Solon. Instacart changed its policy days later, while it took months of additional criticism from The New York Times and others before DoorDash changed its approach.

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The idea that these companies and particularly their bosses are Really Nice People is a myth. They’re rapacious and they’ll screw anyone, including their own workers, in the pursuit of getting rich. And they won’t listen to anyone, or their ideas about fairness or equality. They’re utterly amoral.
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The Internet that wasn’t – Net.Wars by Wendy Grossman • Cybersalon

:

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This week on Twitter, writer and Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost asked this: “There’s a belief that the internet was once great but then we ruined it, but I’m struggling to remember the era of incontrovertible greatness. Lots of arguing from the start. Software piracy. Barnfuls of pornography. Why is the fall from grace story so persistent and credible?”

My reply: “Mostly because most of the people who are all nostalgic either weren’t there, have bad memories, or were comfortable with it. Flaming has existed in every online medium that’s ever been invented. The big difference: GAFA [Google Amazon Facebook Apple] weren’t profiting from it.”

Let’s expand on that here. Not only was there never a period of peace and tranquility on the Internet, there was never a period of peace and tranquility on the older, smaller, more contained systems that proliferated in the period when you had to dial up and wait through the modems’ mating calls. I only got online in 1991, but those 1980s systems – primarily CIX (still going), the WELL (still going), and CompuServe (bought by AOL) – hosted myriad “flame wars”. The small CompuServe UK journalism forum I co-managed had to repeatedly eject a highly abusive real-life Fleet Street photographer who obsessively returned with new name, same behavior. CompuServe finally blocked his credit card, an option unavailable to pay-with-data TWIFYS (Twitter-WhatsApp-Instagram-Facebook-YouTube-Snapchat). The only real answer to containing abuse and abusers was and is human moderators.

The quick-trigger abuse endemic on Twitter has persisted since the beginning, as Sara Kiesler and Lee Sproull documented in their 1992 book, Connections, based on years of studies of mailing lists within large organizations.

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This is a wonderful piece, and so true. “Anyone under 35 probably wasn’t there.”
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Rumor: Samsung may drop initial Galaxy Fold launch for smaller markets • SamMobile

“Adnan F”:

»

Rumour has it that Samsung has decided to drop the initial Galaxy Fold launch for smaller markets. The company was previously testing the latest firmware for all markets where the Galaxy Fold was going to be released. It suggested that Samsung would make the device available in quite a few markets at the same time. That would have certainly made sense.

Fans have already been made to wait for a long time. They were really looking forward to the company’s foldable smartphone but have been unable to even get their hands on a demo unit. However, it’s possible that Samsung may only launch the Galaxy Fold in a limited number of markets at first.

Some of the markets where firmware testing has been scaled back include countries like Italy and the Netherlands. The latest firmware is currently being tested for major markets like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and India (where we recently spotted the Galaxy Fold being tested out in the wild). This is different to how Samsung normally tests firmware for new flagship devices. For example, the latest Galaxy Note 10 firmware is being tested across all markets. This suggests that there won’t be any unnecessary launch delays in some markets.

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“Fans have already been made to wait for a long time”?? It’s been three months, tops. I think the Note will come out first.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Three pieces of information are enough to uniquely identify 81% of Americans from an “anonymised” database. CC-licensed photo by Corey Seeman on Flickr.

You can send this link to your friends if they want to get each day’s Start Up post by email. They’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.

A selection of 10 links for you. Mad dogs and Englishmen. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Ponzi scheme • Aaron Greenspan

»

Zuckerberg’s version [of a Ponzi scheme] is slightly different, but only slightly: old users leave after getting bored, disgusted and distrustful, and new users come in to replace them. Except that as Sam Lessin told us, the “new users” part of the equation was already getting to be a problem in 2012. To balance it out and keep “growth” on the rise, all Facebook had to do was turn a blind eye. And did it ever.

In Singer v. Facebook, Inc.—a lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California alleging that Facebook has been telling advertisers that it can “reach” more people than actually exist in basically every major metropolitan area—the plaintiffs quote former Facebook employees, understandably identified only as Confidential Witnesses, as stating that Facebook’s “Potential Reach” statistic was a “made-up PR number” and “fluff.” Also, that “those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy ‘did not give a shit.'” Another individual, “a former Operations Contractor with Facebook, stated that Facebook was not concerned with stopping duplicate or fake accounts.”

That’s probably because according to its last investor slide deck and basic subtraction, Facebook is not growing anymore in the United States, with zero million new accounts in Q1 2019, and only four million new accounts since Q1 2017. That leaves the rest of the world, where Facebook is growing fastest “in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines,” according to Facebook CFO David Wehner. Wehner didn’t mention the fine print on page 18 of the slide deck, which highlights the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam as countries where there are “meaningfully higher” percentages of, and “episodic spikes” in, fake accounts. In other words, Facebook is growing the fastest in the locations worldwide where one finds the most fraud. In other other words, Facebook isn’t growing anymore at all—it’s shrinking. Even India, Indonesia and the Philippines don’t register as many searches for Facebook as they used to. Many of the “new” users on Instagram are actually old users from the core platform looking to escape the deluge of fakery.

«

Before you say “who is this Greenspan guy anyway?” – he’s the person on whose computer Zuckerberg wrote the original code for thefacebook.com. So he’s known Zuck a little while.
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Facebook deceived users about the way it used phone numbers, facial recognition, FTC to allege in complaint • The Washington Post

Tony Romm:

»

The Federal Trade Commission plans to allege that Facebook misled users’ about its handling of their phone numbers as part of a wide-ranging complaint that accompanies a settlement ending the government’s privacy probe, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In the complaint, which has not yet been released, federal regulators take issue with Facebook’s earlier implementation of a security feature called two-factor authentication. It allows users to request one-time password, sent by text message, each time they log onto the social-networking site.

But some advertisers managed to target Facebook users who uploaded those contact details, perhaps without the full knowledge of those who provided them, the two sources said. The misuse of the phone numbers was first identified in media reports and by academics this year.

The FTC also plans to allege that Facebook had provided insufficient information to users — roughly 30 million — about their ability to turn off a tool that would identify and offer tag suggestions for photos, the sources added.

«

The switcheroo of getting people to supply their phone number, and then using that for advertising – that’s doubly crap: it discourages people who hear about it from securing their account (and perhaps securing it on other platforms because they fear the same), and it gives advertisers access to people that the people haven’t consented to.

I wonder if there’s a GDPR version of that – though it’s not clear whether Facebook did this in Europe.
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Apple dominates App Store search results, thwarting competitors • WSJ

Tripp Mickle:

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Audiobooks.com, an RBmedia company, largely held the No. 1 ranking in “audiobooks” searches in the App Store for nearly two years. Then last September it was unseated by Apple Books. The Apple app had only recently begun marketing audiobooks directly for the first time.

“It was literally overnight,” said Ian Small, Audiobooks.com’s general manager. He said the change triggered a 25% decline in Audiobooks.com’s daily app downloads. The app at the time had 35,000 customer reviews and a 4.8 on the App Store’s 5-star ranking. The preinstalled Apple Books app, with no reviews or ratings, has since ranked No. 1 in searches for “audiobooks.” It also ranks first in searches for “books” and “reader.”

Apple says the No. 1 position for Books in a “books” search is reasonable, since it is an exact name match. The app was also first for “audiobooks” because of “user behavior data” and the inclusion of “audiobooks” as a keyword associated with the app, a spokesman said.

Apple’s role as both the creator of the App Store’s search engine and the beneficiary of its results has rankled developers. They contend Apple is essentially pinning its apps No. 1, compelling anyone seeking alternatives to consider Apple apps first. Such a tactic would help preserve loyalty to Apple’s mobile operating system—a key to future iPhone sales—and encourage the use of revenue-generating apps such as Apple TV and News, developers say.

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I’d be surprised if Apple’s apps didn’t do well in searches for music or books. The WSJ graphic on this is pretty impenetrable. Quite what the algorithm is, nobody knows.
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Justice Department announces broad antitrust review of Big Tech • The Verge

Makena Kelly:

»

“Without the discipline of meaningful market-based competition, digital platforms may act in ways that are not responsive to consumer demands,” said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Antitrust Division. “The Department’s antitrust review will explore these important issues.”

The investigation will address broad concerns over whether Big Tech is stifling competition, the Wall St Journal said, and will be separate from the department’s probes of Google and Apple that were reported earlier this summer that are intended to take a closer look at individual potential violations. The review reported today will look into search engines, social media platforms, and retail, but not focus on any individual company or practice.

In a press release, the Justice Department said the review “will consider the widespread concerns that consumers, businesses, and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and some retail services online.” The Department declined further comment beyond the release.

At Attorney General Barr’s confirmation hearing this past January, he told senators that he would like to see the Justice Department take a harder look at whether companies like Google and Amazon were abusing their market dominance.

«

The press release is super-vague. If it were any more vague it would be written in white text on a white background.
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You’re very easy to track down, even when your data has been anonymized • MIT Technology Review

Charlotte Jee:

»

Researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Louvain have created a machine-learning model that estimates exactly how easy individuals are to reidentify from an anonymized data set. You can check your own score by entering your zip code, gender, and date of birth.

On average, in the US, using those three records, you could be correctly located in an “anonymized” database 81% of the time. Given 15 demographic attributes of someone living in Massachusetts, there’s a 99.98% chance you could find that person in any anonymized database.

“As the information piles up, the chances it isn’t you decrease very quickly,” says Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, a researcher at Imperial College London and one of the study’s authors.

The tool was created by assembling a database of 210 different data sets from five sources, including the US Census. The researchers fed this data into a machine-learning model, which learned which combinations are more nearly unique and which are less so, and then assigns the probability of correct identification.

This isn’t the first study to show how easy it is to track down individuals from anonymized databases. A paper back in 2007 showed that just a few movie ratings on Netflix can identify a person as easily as a Social Security number, for example. However, it shows just how far current anonymization practices have fallen behind our ability to break them.

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Browsers are pretty good at loading pages, it turns out • Carter Sande

»

MDN is a documentation/tutorial website run by the creators of Firefox. They basically wrote the book on how to make websites. So when they created a beta version of their site that used client-side navigation, I asked them why, and one of their developers responded that it was to load pages more quickly. With the normal hyperlink tag, the browser has to download the HTML code for the whole page, but if you write the behaviour yourself in JavaScript, you can make sure to only download the part of the new page that’s different from the old one. I’m usually lucky enough to have a pretty fast Internet connection, so I never really noticed the difference.

But I got the chance to experience the benefits of client-side navigation on a recent trip to Canada… I fired up both versions of MDN on my phone, and clicked a link on each one to see how much faster the JavaScript version would be:

Hang on a second! The JavaScript version wasn’t faster, it was way slower! What gives?

It turns out that browsers have a lot of tricks up their sleeves that help them put pages on the screen more quickly. A big one we’re seeing here is called progressive rendering: browsers download the top part of the page first, then show it on the screen while the rest of the page finishes downloading. The JavaScript version has to wait for the entire JSON response to come back before it can show anything on the screen, so it feels slower.

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In other words: forget those Javascript people. They’re just complicating things.
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The video game industry can’t go on like this • Kotaku

Joshua Rivera:

»

Ubisoft is an exception, regularly releasing entries in single-player game franchises like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. But it buttresses them with aggressive microtransactions and extensive season pass plans. (And the occasional diversion like Trials Rising and South Park: The Fractured But Whole.) The big-budget single-player experience is now almost entirely the domain of first-party studios making marquee games for console manufacturers, which bankroll games like Spider-Man and God of War. The economics of first-party exclusives are totally different—they’re less about making money by themselves and more about drawing players into the console’s ecosystem.

This is worth considering, because as big publishers prioritize live, service-oriented games, the number of games on their schedules has dropped. If you look at the Wikipedia listings for EA, Ubisoft, and Activision games released by year, you’ll get a stark—if unscientific—picture of how each big publisher’s release slate has thinned out in the last five years, relying on recurring cash cows like sports games and annualized franchises and little else. In 2008, those three publishers released 98 games; in 2018 they released just 28, not including expansions.

In short, the single-player game was not sustainable. So why should we think the current model is?

«

Also: how super-expensive it is to make a big video game. The top end is getting eaten from below by simpler games which do all that people want; a classic “disruptive innovation” change, where the cheap games don’t have all the bells and whistles, but people don’t want bells and whistles.
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Barr revives debate over ‘warrant-proof’ encryption • WSJ

Dustin Volz:

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While [US Attorney General William] Barr offered examples in which he said encryption thwarted criminal investigations, he didn’t provide fresh statistics about the extent of the problem. The FBI suffered a setback last year when it revealed it had accidentally inflated public statistics about the number of encrypted devices investigators were unable to break open, and officials haven’t provided an updated metric since then.

Mr. Barr sought to convince technology companies to work toward a compromise with law-enforcement agencies, lest they are forced to deal with hastily passed laws in the wake of a crisis. “Given the frequency with which these situations are now arising, it is only a matter of time before a sensational case crystallizes the issue for the public,” Mr. Barr said.

The National Security Council convened a deputies meeting from various federal agencies last month to consider options on how to move forward on the encryption issue, but the meeting ended without any clear resolution on how to proceed, according to people briefed on it.

A US official said Mr. Barr’s speech wasn’t aimed at outlining the path forward but reflected consensus within the Trump administration that a solution must be found to address the proliferation of too-tough-to-crack encryption. Critics contend that the FBI and contractors that specialize in bypassing encryption possess the tools to get into many devices they want to unlock.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), a longtime privacy advocate who has vocally opposed government efforts to weaken encryption, called it an “outrageous, wrongheaded and dangerous proposal.”

«

No clue what to do about it, but sure something should be done about it, and picking the wrong thing to do about it: the Trump administration in a nutshell. There’s already been a “sensational case” – the San Bernadino one in 2016 – and the FBI paid an Israeli company about $1m to break into the iPhone in question, to find nothing useful. There was more, and better, data on the terrorists’ Facebook profiles.
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New York City to consider banning sale of cellphone location data • The New York Times

Jeffery Mays:

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Telecommunications firms and mobile-based apps make billions of dollars per year by selling customer location data to marketers and other businesses, offering a vast window into the whereabouts of cellphone and app users, often without their knowledge.

That practice, which has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent years, is now the subject of proposed legislation in New York. If passed, it is believed that the city would become the first to ban the sale of geolocation data to third parties.

The bill, which will be introduced on Tuesday, would make it illegal for cellphone companies and mobile app developers to share location data gathered while a customer’s mobile device is within the five boroughs.

Cellphone companies and mobile apps collect detailed geolocation data of their users and then sell that information to legitimate companies such as digital marketers, roadside emergency assistance services, retail advertisers, hedge funds or — in the case of a class-action lawsuit filed against AT&T — bounty hunters.

“The average person has no idea they are vulnerable to this,” said Councilman Justin L. Brannan, a Brooklyn Democrat who is introducing the bill. “We are concerned by the fact that someone can sign up for cell service and their data can wind up in the hands of five different companies.”

«

Just me, or is it madness that NYC is only the first, and that this is only “proposed” legislation which, the story says, will be strongly opposed by the ad tech industry “which has a strong presence in the city”. Make their execs’ location data public, let’s see how they feel about it then.
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16in MacBook Pro rumored to launch in October • 9to5Mac

Chance Miller:

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Apple’s rumored 16in MacBook Pro could launch in October, according to a new supply chain report from the Economic Daily News. The report also says that Apple will release updated versions of the 13in MacBook Pro and Retina MacBook Air in October.

Today’s report corroborates that the 16in MacBook Pro will launch with a 3072×1920 LCD display, which is up from the 2880×1800 panel in the 15in MacBook Pro.

As for pricing, the report says that the 16in MacBook Pro will bring a “new high price for Apple notebooks.” The supply chain industry reportedly expects the laptop to start at around $3,000, with Apple positioning it between the iMac and iMac Pro as a portable option for users with pro needs.

While Apple did just refresh the MacBook Air, the update only added True Tone display technology and left things like the processor the same. A refresh in the fall could bring improved performance among other changes. For instance, Ming-Chi Kuo has said that Apple will shift to a new scissor switch keyboard in the MacBook Air this year. 

«

Blimey, that really is priced for the iMac Pro brigade. Though the pro laptops always used to be; somehow they seemed to have edged down in price over the years. Now they would be jacking up again. Personally, I’ve used a 15in screen for so long that I don’t think I could live with something smaller, but maybe that’s just habit – which can be broken. Scissor switches, though. Going to love hearing Apple’s execs explaining that one, if it comes to pass.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: misbehaving HTML meant that yesterday’s pictures of the middle seats on airlines didn’t work. (Now fixed – thanks Timothy.) And the post came live an hour earlier than normal – you didn’t oversleep.

Those pesky middle seats! But there turns out to be a simple solution to make them tolerable to everyone. CC-licensed photo by abdallahh on Flickr

»You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email (arriving at about 0700GMT each weekday). 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.

Celebritynetworth’s statement submitted to the US House Subcommittee on Antitrust • Medium

Brian Warner set up a site called CelebrityNetWorth – and then Google noticed it:

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By 2014 we had a staff of 12 writers, developers and designers. We were thriving and even entertaining acquisition offers. At the time, I thought of our site as one of Google’s best partners and that we had limitless potential. I could never have imagined that within three very painful years CelebrityNetWorth would be brought to the brink of insolvency. And the culprit wouldn’t be shifting user tastes or a technological change. The culprit was Google.

On April 23, 2014, I received an email from a Data Researcher at Google. In subsequent calls and emails the Data Researcher explained that net worth queries were one of Google’s most consistently popular categories of search. As such, she was tasked with finding an API or dataset from our site that would help “enhance user experience at Google Search”. If we granted Google access to an API, any user who searched for a celebrity’s net worth would be shown a large box with our answer at the top of the search result page.

I asked the Data Researcher why we would ever allow this. What benefit could giving away our most valuable asset possibly create for CNW? Clearly this would cause a catastrophic drop in traffic since users would no longer need to visit our site and therefore would no longer generate ad revenue. When pressed, the Google team said it would be good exposure for our brand. What they left unsaid was that the implementation of such a scheme would have accelerated our demise. Google’s diminutive (and sometimes non-existent) attribution to original content creators means fewer clicks and eyeballs to the web. The nebulous suggestion that “exposure” would make up for this somehow demonstrates how starkly different Google’s motives are today.

On this same call I asked if we could be paid a flat fee or a royalty for providing an API. I was told they would not pay a fee and if we did not agree to give them an API they would either make one on their own or scrape one together from other sources.
I declined Google’s request to provide an API to our data.

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Things didn’t go well subsequently.
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Air travellers may have to pay carbon charge to offset emissions • The Guardian

Latifa Yedroudji:

»

Passengers could choose to pay more for travel tickets, which would then be used to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Or the scheme could work on an “opt-out” basis and also be applied to trains, buses and ferries.

Ministers hope the plans will raise awareness about the effects of public transport on the environment. The extra funds could be used to spearhead eco-friendly projects such as planting trees to reduce the carbon footprint.

The government said it hoped the initiative would “drive consumer choices towards less polluting journey options”.

However, the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, has launched a call for evidence on offsetting carbon emissions produced by public transport. In addition, the government has expressed concerns consumers may not trust that their payments are supporting worthwhile causes.

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This is an overdue move, but Grayling is (amazingly) correct: people will want to see a link between their payment and amelioration efforts.
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The best algorithms struggle to recognize black faces equally • Wired

Tom Simonite:

»

Idemia’s algorithms don’t always see all faces equally clearly. July test results from the National Institute of Standards and Technology indicated that two of Idemia’s latest algorithms were significantly more likely to mix up black women’s faces than those of white women, or black or white men.

The NIST test challenged algorithms to verify that two photos showed the same face, similar to how a border agent would check passports. At sensitivity settings where Idemia’s algorithms falsely matched different white women’s faces at a rate of one in 10,000, it falsely matched black women’s faces about once in 1,000—10 times more frequently. A one in 10,000 false match rate is often used to evaluate facial recognition systems.

Donnie Scott, who leads the US public security division at Idemia, previously known as Morpho, says the algorithms tested by NIST have not been released commercially, and that the company checks for demographic differences during product development. He says the differing results likely came from engineers pushing their technology to get the best overall accuracy on NIST’s closely watched tests.

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Smart thermostats • AVC

Fred Wilson was sent this graph by one of his colleagues:

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I believe this is more or less a proxy for smart wifi-enabled thermostats in the US.

Those would be Nest, Honeywell Lyric, Hive thermostats and a lot of others too.

Those are pretty big jumps from 6.5% to 8.9% to 11.4% given that people don’t generally swap out thermostats unless they are doing a renovation or building a new home. Maybe there is more thermostat swapping going on outside of those “construction” moments than I would expect.

In a few years, more than 20% of homes will have heating and cooling systems that can be “managed” by software, either on-premises or, more likely, in the cloud.

That is pretty exciting.

I wonder what level of adoption is “critical mass” or “escape velocity” ?

Certainly 50% would be, maybe 25% will be.

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The straight line suggests it’s still in the early adopter phase. Anyone’s guess where the hockey stick number is.
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Samsung Galaxy S10 5G smartphone mocked by WSJ • Korea Times

Baek Byung-yeul:

»

Regarding the report [by Joanna Stern testing the Galaxy S10 and others on 5G], Samsung said that there is no malfunction on the devices and they are designed to switch back to LTE network when they reach a certain temperature.

“With 5G, data is transmitted at higher quantities and speeds, which causes the processor to consume more energy. While Samsung provides a variety of thermal management technologies, the phone will switch back to 4G when the device temperature reaches a certain threshold,” a Samsung official said. “This is not new, and it is by design to minimize energy usage and optimize battery performance so consumers can stay connected.”

The company added its 5G smartphone comes with “its latest vapor chamber cooling technology and AI software that continuously optimized battery, CPU, RAM and even device temperature based on how people use their phones.”

An IT industry official here criticized the article saying it is inequitable only to blame the device.

“At a time when the 5G network coverage is still limited, the issues regarding overheating can happen, but the story is mainly focusing on making a fool of the device,” said the official, who wanted to remain anonymous.

“The overheating issue happens because there is not enough network coverage for the 5G service. We saw the same issue when 4G service was launched. When there is not enough network coverage for the latest network service, these kinds of issues always happen.”

«

There’s an equally offended, and hilarious, article at the Korea IT Times. Notice how neatly they avoid the issue of “these things get damn hot when they’re on 5G.”
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Britain delays decision on Huawei’s role in 5G networks • Reuters

Paul Sandle and Kylie MacLellan:

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Britain’s National Security Council, chaired by outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, discussed the issue in April and decided in principle to block Huawei from critical parts of the 5G network but give it limited access to less sensitive parts.

A final decision was supposed to have been included in a telecoms supply chain review published by Wright on Monday, but May’s resignation has stalled the process. She is due to hand over to her successor on Wednesday.

Wright said Britain could decide to ban Huawei from the 5G network completely, a move telecom operators have said would delay the roll out of services and significantly add to costs.

EE, the BT-owned market leader, launched its 5G network, which relies in part on Huawei’s equipment, in May. Vodafone has also started UK 5G services, which offer speeds around 20 times faster than 4G and a leap in capacity that will allow millions more devices to be connected.

“It is of course a possibility and remains so that the government may decide that an outright ban on Huawei equipment in the 5G network is the appropriate course of action,” Wright said.

“All that I say today is that we are not yet in a position to make a comprehensive decision about that and as soon as we are then we will.”

The opposition Labour Party’s digital spokesman Tom Watson said a ban on Huawei products could “significantly delay the roll out of 5G technology that will underpin tomorrow’s economy”.

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Airlines are finally fixing the middle seat • Fast Company

Mark Wilson:

»

Designed for commuter flights of only a few hours max, the S1 moves the middle seat a few inches lower than, and back from, the aisle and window seat. It also widens the seat by about three inches. This allows your arms, shoulders, thighs, and elbows to spread just a bit more than they otherwise could, without giving the seat more legroom or reducing a plane’s seating capacity (which translates to profit margins for airlines).

“We have discovered that what looks like a small stagger actually makes a huge difference. The trick is to actually sit in the seat. In fact our main sales tool is to ship seats to airlines so they can sit in them,” says Molon Labe founder Hank Scott. “I have watched this several times—airline executives see the seat, nod their head and then say they get it. Then we ask them to actually sit down, next to a big fella like our head sales guy Thomas [6-foot-6, 250 pounds]. Within a few seconds they [really] get it—they stop being an airline executive and switch into passenger modes.”

[Photo: courtesy Molon Labe Seating]

The seat pairs this staggering effect with a two-level armrest design to eliminate the inevitable elbow fights that happen when six arms battle over four armrests. This approach works better in visuals than explained, but basically, the aisle and window passengers end up using the front ledge of the rest, and the middle passenger uses the rear portion.

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Why not for long-haul flights? Seems like it would make it much nicer for the window seat to get in and out too.
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Leaked documents reveal Huawei’s secret operations to build North Korea’s wireless network • Washington Post

Ellen Nakashima, Gerry Shih and John Hudson:

»

Huawei Technologies, the Chinese tech giant embroiled in President Trump’s trade war with China and blacklisted as a national security threat, secretly helped the North Korean government build and maintain the country’s commercial wireless network, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the arrangement.

Huawei partnered with a Chinese state-owned firm, Panda International Information Technology Co., on a variety of projects there spanning at least eight years, according to past work orders, contracts and detailed spreadsheets taken from a database that charts the company’s telecom operations worldwide. The arrangement made it difficult to discern Huawei’s involvement.

The spreadsheets were provided to The Post by a former Huawei employee who considered the information to be of public interest. The former employee spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retribution. Two additional sets of documents were shared by others with a desire to see the material made public. They also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Taken together, the revelations raise questions about whether Huawei, which has used American technology in its components, violated US export controls to furnish equipment to North Korea…

«

Shocking! From… 2008. I’ve no doubt that Huawei did this; it did much the same with Iran more recently. John Hudson, one of the co-authors, has a long Twitter thread about the documents. Still feels like ancient history. More to the point: have the sanctions against North Korea had any effect in the past three years? Are they even in place?
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Equifax to pay up to $700m in data breach settlement • NPR

Avie Schneider and Chris Arnold:

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Equifax will pay up to $700m in fines and monetary relief to consumers over a 2017 data breach at the credit reporting bureau that affected nearly 150m people.

The proposed settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal court, was announced Monday by the company, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The consumer data exposed in the breach included Social Security numbers, birthdates and addresses and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers.

CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger said the settlement includes $425m to cover the “time and money [people affected by the breach] spent to protect themselves from potential threats of identity theft or addressing incidents of identity theft as a result of the breach.”

Equifax also agreed to pay $175m to the states and $100m to the CFPB in civil penalties.

And, starting in January, Equifax “will provide all US consumers with six free credit reports each year for seven years,” the FTC said. That’s in addition to the free annual credit reports that Equifax, and the two other nationwide credit reporting agencies — Experian and TransUnion — currently provide.

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But the problem is that the “free” will turn into “paid for”, and so Equifax wins for being crap.
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£50bn question: do we want faster trains or limitless clean energy? • The Guardian

Andrew Steele:

»

Among a raft of new infrastructure spending announced by the UK government in the wake of last week’s spending review, it was revealed that the cost estimates for the HS2 high-speed train line had been revised significantly upward. According to the new projections, HS2 will be completed in 2033 at a total cost of £42.6bn for construction and £7.5bn for trains – a total of just over £50bn.

What is immediately striking about this figure is that it’s about the same as estimates of how much it will cost to develop nuclear fusion to the point at which it could supply affordable electricity to the grid.

Fusion power has the potential to revolutionise the entire world’s energy production. It could dramatically reduce the world’s carbon emissions (a fusion reactor emits no carbon dioxide), provide energy independence to any nation with access to a coastline (since there is millions of years’ worth of fusion fuel in the world’s oceans), and do all this with no danger of meltdown or long-lived radioactive waste.

Alternatively, we could use our £50bn to shave 35 minutes off the journey time between London and Birmingham.

«

The terrifying thing about this is that Steele wrote this in 2013, when the HS2 budget had just gone up by £10bn. Over the weekend it emerged that it will go up by another £30bn. That’s a lot of foregone fusion – which could, who knows, make us a world leader.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.+++Google-celebrity-networth-crushed-start-up-1116

Tinder doesn’t love paying 30% to Google – so it’s bypassing Google Play. But can it do it to Apple’s App Store? CC-licensed photo by Jeremy Bank 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. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Tinder bypasses Google Play, joining revolt against App Store fee • Bloomberg

Olivia Carville:

»

Tinder joined a growing backlash against app store taxes by bypassing Google Play in a move that could shake up the billion-dollar industry dominated by Google and Apple Inc.

The online dating site launched a new default payment process that skips Google Play and forces users to enter their credit card details straight into Tinder’s app, according to new research by Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter. Once a user has entered their payment information, the app not only remembers it, but also removes the choice to swap back to Google Play for future purchases, he wrote.

“This is a huge difference,” Schachter said in an interview. “It’s an incredibly high-margin business for Google bringing in billions of dollars,” he said.

The shares of Tinder’s parent company, Match Group Inc., spiked 5% when Schachter’s note was published on Thursday. Shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc. were little changed…

…Match declined to answer questions about whether the company was also investigating bypassing Apple’s App Store. Match is expected to discuss the payment flow change with analysts and investors during its next earnings call on Aug. 6.

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Haven’t people always been able to bypass Google’s app store fees? It’s just that getting them to pay in the app is more convenient for them, as it’s all entered there. Bypassing Apple is much harder, and a hassle for the customer.
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404 • FT.com

:

»

Why wasn’t this page found?

We asked some leading economists.

Stagflation: The cost of pages rose drastically, while the page production rate slowed down.

General economics: There was no market for it.

Liquidity traps: We injected some extra money into the technology team but there was little or no interest so they simply kept it, thus failing to stimulate the page economy.

Pareto inefficiency: There exists another page that will make everyone better off without making anyone worse off.

Supply and demand: Demand increased and a shortage occurred.

Classical economics: There is no such page. We are not going to interfere.

Keynesian economics: Aggregate demand for this page did not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the website.

Malthusianism: Unchecked, exponential page growth outstripped the pixel supply. There was a catastrophe, and now the population is at a lower, more sustainable level.

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And there are many more. The FT’s 404 page now rules the internet.
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If this type of dark matter existed, people would be dying of unexplained ‘gunshot’ wounds • Science

Juanita Bawagan:

»

Dark matter makes up about 85% of the mass of the universe, but the substance itself remains a mystery. One theory posits that it consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). These particles would be abundant, but so shy about interacting with ordinary matter that only very sensitive detectors would have a crack at catching them. So far, they’ve evaded detection in large tanks of liquid xenon and argon; kept in underground laboratories, these tanks would be able to sense the signals from WIMPs without interference from sources such as cosmic rays.

A less mainstream dark matter candidate, known as macros, would form heavier particles. While macros would be much rarer than WIMPs, any collisions with ordinary matter would be violent, leaving an obvious trace. The new study explores what those traces might look like if the macros hit people.

Glenn Starkman and Jagjit Singh Sidhu, theoretical physicists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, were originally searching for traces of macros in granite slabs when a colleague made a suggestion. “Why can’t you just use humans as a detector?” they recall Robert Scherrer, a co-author and theoretical physicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville saying. “The energies you’re talking about, these things would probably at best maim a person, at worst kill a person.”

The team forged ahead with the idea and modeled macros that would have a similar effect to a fatal shot from a .22 caliber rifle. Such particles would be minuscule, but very heavy, and thus release the same amount of energy as a bullet as it passes through a person.

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Hoo..ray?
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FaceApp reveals huge holes in today’s privacy laws • The Atlantic

Tiffany C. Li:

»

Regardless of origin, tech companies need to do better to protect the privacy of their consumers. Part of this is simply making users more aware of how data are being used. This is the rationale behind privacy policies. However, many users don’t read those policies. Developers need to go further and build actual privacy protections into their apps. These can include notifications on how data (or photos) are being used, clear internal policies on data retention and deletion, and easy workflows for users to request data correction and deletion. Additionally, app providers and platforms such as Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook should build in more safeguards for third-party apps.

But asking tech companies to make a few fixes will not be enough to solve the larger systemic problem, which is simply that our society hasn’t figured out how to deal with privacy in a way that actually protects individuals. The way we conceptualize privacy—by focusing, for instance, on the point at which a user decides to enter personal data into a website—is inadequate for the realities of today’s technology. Data are being collected all the time, often in ways that are all but impossible for consumers to know about. You cannot expect every traffic camera to include a privacy policy. Meanwhile, data sets are often sold, bought, aggregated, and transformed by third-party data brokers in ways unimaginable to consumers.

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Does Russia want more than your old face? • The New York Times

Kara Swisher:

»

Another interesting idea is the possible emergence of “sovereign clouds,” storage limited to a specific group of users, that would create strong borders of digital participation, not just among and between countries but also among and between companies.

I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of more tech fences, because they feel like a backtracking of the core idea of open global networks, which have transformed the world and created huge wealth and societal transformation.

Of course, despite the focus on Russia’s FaceApp, the real game afoot, as most here at the forum agreed, is the race between the United States and China for global tech dominance. That’s been most clear in the efforts by American officials to throttle back the Chinese tech-giant Huawei from being the one to build next-generation 5G cellphone networks across the world.

That theme was one of the overall points made by Adm. Philip Davidson, head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, in a talk titled “Military Competition with China: Maintaining America’s Edge.” The admiral noted that keeping up is a matter of national security, as China could surpass American capabilities in the region by 2050, especially technologically.

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2050? That’s a pretty pessimistic view of China’s capabilities, unless the admiral was using the 24-hour clock, in which case carry on.
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My frantic life as a cab-dodging, tip-chasing food app deliveryman • The New York Times

Andy Newman:

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The riders, once you’re tuned in to them, are everywhere, gliding by stoically, usually on electric bikes, wearing their precious cargo on their backs: the silent swarm of tens of thousands of workers for apps like Seamless and GrubHub and Uber Eats and Caviar and DoorDash and Postmates, crisscrossing the city to gratify New Yorkers’ insatiable need for burgers and pad thai and chicken tikka masala delivered in minutes.

For a few days this spring, I was one of them. Not a good one, but a deliveryman nevertheless. I learned up close how the high-tech era of on-demand everything is transforming some of the lowest-tech, lowest-status, low-wage occupations — creating both new opportunities and new forms of exploitation.

The riders are the street-level manifestation of an overturned industry, as restaurants are forced to become e-commerce businesses, outsourcing delivery to the apps who outsource it to a fleet of freelancers.

Mindless as the job may seem, it is often like a game of real-life speed chess played across the treacherous grid of the city, as riders juggle orders from competing apps and scramble for elusive bonuses.

And there are risks. Nearly a third of delivery cyclists missed work because of on-the-job injuries last year, one survey found, and at least four delivery riders or bike messengers have been killed in crashes with cars this year. Riders on electric bikes face fines and confiscation, though that may change.

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It’s a good piece, though it isn’t that dissimilar from the people who used to be motorbike couriers in London – and who still are. It’s hardly a secure profession, in any sense.
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Apple: no Macintosh forks. But the iPad… • Monday Note

Jean-Louis Gassée:

»

another question emerges: By letting PC-like features emanate from the bowels of iPadOS, has Apple decided that the more PC-like iPads ought to openly compete with the Mac? Owing to Catalyst, Macs will get more — and more interesting — apps from the iOS world. And iPads present and future will have a dual personality: As “pure” tablets that provide an enriched touch interface, and as laptop-like alternatives, especially if keyboards and pointing devices keep maturing.

After arguing the two sides of the “to Axx or not to Axx” case, I think a simpler Mac evolution — no forks, stay the course with x86 processors — is the likely future.

Speaking of forks, yes, there clearly is one in the iOS world. In contrast to last week’s putative dual hardware and OS Mac transition, the fork I’m speaking of is a software-only divergence: As iPadOS lets iPads gain more use cases, especially in the realm of productivity, iPhones and their immensely larger number of devices will stay in the mainstream of iOS development. Undoubtedly, there will be unanticipated complications in some iPad uses, but the scheme feels more natural than last week’s convoluted formula.

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Gassée’s argument is that Apple won’t introduce ARM processors in its laptop line because that would create a dichotomy in its products – some would be Intel, some would be ARM. (He’d argued the opposing point, that Apple would fork them, last week. Cakeism!) But that overlooks the fact that that’s what happened back in 2005, when Apple made the reverse shift (from RISC chips made by Motorola) to Intel. That wasn’t instantaneous either.

But Apple could leave the desktop (or pro desktops) as Intel, for the software, and power lower-end devices with ARM chips for the battery life. That seems the most likely scenario.
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Apple’s Touch Bar doesn’t have to be so terrible • Gizmodo

Alex Cranz:

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Occasionally you see a good use, like QuickTime’s ability to scrub through a video file to find the exact frame you need. But the useful Touch Bars are just reminders of how pointless others are, like the blank Touch Bar you find in Sonos, Slack, and even Apple’s Voice Memo app.

Even the really good implementations of the Touch Bar, such as the ones used by Photoshop, Ulysses, and AirMail, aren’t sufficiently customizable. You get the options suggested by the app maker, and that’s it.

While I won’t fault an indie app maker, or even Google, for failing to do better with the Touch Bar, I can lay blame at Apple’s feet. The company introduced a cool new feature and then has just let it sit there. It has provided no incentives nor has it led by example with the Touch Bar. Beyond some useful implementations in Apple-built apps right at launch, Apple has done nothing with the Touch Bar.

So yeah, of course, it makes sense my coworkers hate it. Mercifully, you don’t have to be like Apple or all my co-workers. There’s handy software [BetterTouchTool, TouchSwitcher] that lets you better take advantage of the Touch Bar right now.

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As Cranz and others point out, what people want is to be able to call functions from outside the program they’re in to affect the stuff on the screen. But the TouchBar, as currently set up, doesn’t provide for that – so it just repeats what’s on the screen, which is little use. Apple could fix this; the APIs are there, as BetterTouchTool shows.
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Fired Microsoft geek allegedly stole $10m with a bitcoin mixer • CCN

Ryan Smith:

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Ex Microsoft employee Volodymyr Kvashuk was arrested this week amid allegations of digital currency theft to the tune of $10m. U.S. attorneys for the Western District of Washington suspect the Ukrainian-born resident used a Bitcoin mixer to cover up his tracks.

Kvashuk, who was in charge of the companies online sales platform, was entrusted to test customer purchases in a simulated environment. The test environment only blocked physical deliveries, however, and the security team failed to prevent purchases of gift cards.

The talented engineer quickly took advantage of this flaw using company funds to buy Bitcoin-denominated gift cards. He subsequently resold them online to fund an extravagant lifestyle:

The complaint alleges KVASHUK resold the value on the internet, using the proceeds to purchase a $160,000 Tesla vehicle and a $1.6m dollar lakefront home.

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Going to love hearing the explanation for how he got the money by legal means.
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Trump’s EPA just made its final decision not to ban a pesticide that hurts kids’ brains • Mother Jones

Tom Philpott:

»

Under pressure from a looming court-ordered deadline, the EPA reaffirmed its 2017 decision to reject a proposal from the agency’s own scientists to ban an insecticide called chlorpyrifos that farmers use on a wide variety of crops, including corn, soybeans, fruit and nut trees, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, broccoli, and cauliflower. 

Here’s background from my piece in 2017:

»

The pesticide in question, chlorpyrifos, is a nasty piece of work. It’s an organophosphate, a class of bug killers that work by “interrupting the electrochemical processes that nerves use to communicate with muscles and other nerves,” as the Pesticide Encyclopedia puts it. Chlorpyrifos is also an endocrine disrupter, meaning it can cause “adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects,” according to the National Institutes of Health.

Major studies from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the University of California-Davis, and Columbia University have found strong evidence that low doses of chlorpyrifos inhibits kids’ brain development, including when exposure occurs in the womb, with effects ranging from lower IQ to higher rates of autism. Several studies—examples here, here, and here—have found it in the urine of kids who live near treated fields. In 2000, the EPA banned most home uses of the chemical, citing risks to children.

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And here’s the dirt on the relationship between President Donald Trump and the company that markets the chemical:

»

Dow AgroSciences’ parent company, Dow Chemical, has also been buttering up Trump. The company contributed $1m to the president’s inaugural committee, the Center for Public Integrity notes. In December, Dow Chemical Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris attended a post-election Trump rally in the company’s home state of Michigan, and used the occasion to announce plans to create 100 new jobs and bring back another 100 more from foreign subsidiaries.

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For sale: presidential integrity, never used.
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What the Slack security incident meant for me, the Keybase CEO • Keybase

Max Krohn was packing for a holiday in January when he got a Slack notification that he had logged in from the Netherlands:

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My immediate thoughts, in order:

• Thankfully we don’t put sensitive communications (from financials to hiring to shit-talkin’) into Slack. We basically just use a #breaking channel in there in case we have Keybase downtime. Phew. I didn’t have to worry about being extorted or embarrassed. And Keybase as a company would almost certainly emerge unscathed.
• WAIT A SEC. How did this happen? I use strong, secure, distinct, random passwords for all services I log into. Either Slack itself was compromised, my password manager was compromised, or my computers were “rooted” by an attacker.
• Our weekend was hosed.

At risk of getting the car towed, I dashed an email off to Slack’s security team, and after a few back-and-forths, received the standard fare. They did not inform me of the directly related 2015 Security Incident but instead implied that I was messy with my security practices and was to blame.

Though I was more than 90% convinced that Slack had been compromised, as the CEO of a security-focused company, I couldn’t take any risks. I had to assume the worst, that my computers were compromised.

In the subsequent days and weeks, I reset all of my passwords, threw away all my computers, bought new computers, factory-reset my phone, rotated all of my Keybase devices (i.e., rotated my “keys”), and reestablished everything from the ground up.

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Turned out he hadn’t been keylogged, but Slack had really screwed up in 2015. Four years ago.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Properly measuring your quality of sleep takes more than an app and a smartwatch. CC-licensed photo by Woody Thrower 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. No more sleeps till the weekend. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

The sad truth about sleep-tracking devices and apps • The New York Times

Brian Chen:

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I wore an Apple Watch, since it is one of the most popular health-tracking devices. I also downloaded a top-rated app called AutoSleep, which uses the Apple Watch’s sensors to follow my movements and determine when I fell asleep and woke up. (The Apple Watch lacks a built-in sleep tracker.) Here’s what AutoSleep gathered on my sleep habits.

But the excitement ended there. Ultimately, the technology did not help me sleep more. It didn’t reveal anything that I didn’t already know, which is that I average about five and a half hours of slumber a night. And the data did not help me answer what I should do about my particular sleep problems. In fact, I’ve felt grumpier since I started these tests.

That mirrored the conclusions of a recent study from Rush University Medical College and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Researchers there noticed patients complaining about sleep data collected by apps and devices from Nike, Apple, Fitbit and others.

In their study, the researchers warned that sleep-tracking tech could provide inaccurate data and worsen insomnia by making people obsessed with achieving perfect slumber, a condition they called orthosomnia. It was one of the latest pieces of research supporting the idea that health apps don’t necessarily make people healthier.

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I’ve never quite understood what the sleep apps are meant to be tracking, because as he says, what can you do about it? Nobody really knows.
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Facebook is backpedaling from its ambitious vision for Libra • Ars Technica

Timothy Lee:

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Facebook now seems to recognize its original vision was a non-starter with regulators. So this week Marcus sketched out a new vision for Libra—one in which the Libra Association will shoulder significant responsibility for ensuring compliance with laws relating to money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.

Facebook’s new stance addresses some of the questions I raised in last week’s Libra feature. But it also raises new questions that Facebook will need to answer in the coming months. Marcus said Wednesday that the Libra Association will require regulatory compliance by Libra-based service providers, but he didn’t explain how it will do so. However it’s done, there’s likely to be an inherent tension between improving regulatory compliance and Facebook’s other goals to build an open network and make it accessible to marginalized people around the world.

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What a very bad day at work taught me about building Stack Overflow’s community • Stack Overflow Blog

Sara Chipps:

»

About three months in, on a Friday afternoon, we introduced a new company-wide policy that I felt was relatively benign. What happened next was that, from my point of view, the engineering team completely lost it. No one agreed with this policy, and they made it known over seemingly hundreds of Slack pings. After an afternoon of going back and forth, I walked away feeling emotionally drained. What had happened to my amazing coworkers that were so kind and wonderful? I felt attacked and diminished. It seemed people weren’t valuing my work or my judgment.

I went home for the weekend and stewed in my frustration. I replayed everything that happened in my head and each time got more frustrated with the way people reacted. When Sunday rolled around, I decided I wanted to look back at our Slack conversations and see which one of my coworkers was being the rudest and the most unreasonable. I wanted to give them direct feedback that they had hurt my feelings.

As I went back through that Friday afternoon chat log, I was shocked to see that no one had been hurling insults. There was no one saying mean things about me or attacking my efficacy directly. In fact, what I found was that people had some well put together arguments about why they felt this policy was a bad idea. The entire engineering department definitely made their criticisms known, but I didn’t find people questioning my ability as a manager, throwing around insults, or saying anything that that illustrated why I was feeling so targeted.

That was when something became crystal clear: my coworkers hadn’t become monsters, they were still the kind and caring people I thought they were. The monster in this case is not one person, it was created when lots of people, even with great intentions, publicly disagreed with you at the same time. Even kind feedback can come off as caustic and mean when there is a mob of people behind it. No matter how nicely they say it, when a large group of people you really respect publicly challenge something you’ve done it can feel like a personal attack.

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The plan to mine the world’s research papers • Nature

Priyanka Pulla:

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Over the past year, [American technologist Carl] Malamud has — without asking publishers — teamed up with Indian researchers to build a gigantic store of text and images extracted from 73 million journal articles dating from 1847 up to the present day. The cache, which is still being created, will be kept on a 576-terabyte storage facility at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. “This is not every journal article ever written, but it’s a lot,” Malamud says. It’s comparable to the size of the core collection in the Web of Science database, for instance. Malamud and his JNU collaborator, bioinformatician Andrew Lynn, call their facility the JNU data depot.

No one will be allowed to read or download work from the repository, because that would breach publishers’ copyright. Instead, Malamud envisages, researchers could crawl over its text and data with computer software, scanning through the world’s scientific literature to pull out insights without actually reading the text.

The unprecedented project is generating much excitement because it could, for the first time, open up vast swathes of the paywalled literature for easy computerized analysis. Dozens of research groups already mine papers to build databases of genes and chemicals, map associations between proteins and diseases, and generate useful scientific hypotheses. But publishers control — and often limit — the speed and scope of such projects, which typically confine themselves to abstracts, not full text. Researchers in India, the United States and the United Kingdom are already making plans to use the JNU store instead.

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WeWork co-founder has cashed out at least $700m via sales, loans • WSJ

Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell and Anupreeta Das:

»

WeWork Cos. co-founder Adam Neumann has cashed out more than $700 million from the company ahead of its initial public offering through a mix of stock sales and debt, people familiar with the matter said—an unusually large sum given that startup founders typically wait for the IPO to monetize their holdings.

Mr. Neumann, who is chief executive of the shared office-space giant and remains its single largest shareholder, over several years has sold some of his stake in the company and borrowed against some of his holdings, the people said.

The exact size of Mr. Neumann’s current ownership in WeWork couldn’t be learned. He recently set up a family office to invest the proceeds and has begun to hire financial professionals to run it, they said.

Investors in startups have generally frowned upon founders who cash out large chunks of shares ahead of a public-markets debut, because it raises questions about their confidence in the company. On the other hand, people close to Mr. Neumann say, his borrowings against some of his WeWork shares indicate that he is bullish on the company’s long-term prospects.

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It also indicates that the people who lent him the money won’t have any collateral to recall their loan against if WeWork turns to crap.
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We tested 5G across America. It’s crazy fast—and a hot mess • WSJ

Joanna Stern:

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Eager to test out a technology that’s been more hyped than flavored sparkling water, I embarked on a 5G expedition from Denver to Atlanta to Chicago to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I mostly used the new, $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, one of the first 5G phones and the only one available across all the carriers. I also tested the LG V50 ThinQ 5G on Sprint’s network; Verizon has a version but I didn’t test it.

After nearly 120 tests, more than 12 city miles walked and a couple of big blisters, I can report that 5G is fasten-your-seat-belt fast…when you can find it. And you’re standing outdoors. And the temperature is just right.

As my findings show, 5G is absolutely not ready for you. But like any brand new network technology, it provides a glimpse of the future…

…In Atlanta, where it was 90ºF the day I visited, I could run only one or two 5G download tests before the phone would overheat and switch to 4G. When that happened, I’d head back to the car and hold the phone to the air vent. In Chicago, another day in the 90s, I had to wait until the sun went down to finish my Netflix download tests. In New York on an 83-degree day, I went with the ice-cooler trick: a minute or two in the cooler, and 5G switches back on.

At times when the 5G would stop working, my infrared thermometer showed the back surface of the phone was over 100ºF.

“With 5G, data is transmitted at higher quantities and speeds, which causes the processor to consume more energy,” the Samsung spokeswoman said.

It isn’t atypical for a phone’s processors or modems to reduce functionality when they are heavily taxed or overheated. I put the phone through some intensive tests—although nothing I couldn’t imagine any power user doing. I was surprised, though, when in my tests even a simple download on a normal summer day could overheat the phone and sever the 5G connection.

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Grindr wanted to change the queer world. What went wrong? • Buzzfeed News

Ryan Mac:

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Among the most frustrating things about [new Chinese owner Scott] Chen, according to three former employees, was his seeming lack of interest in anything beyond Grindr’s main app. Although the company had made strides since 2017 to develop a media brand and a wider audience than just gay men, he seemed monomaniacally focused on numbers and was hell-bent on attaining 4 million daily active users.

Former Grindr employees told BuzzFeed News that Chen spent a lot of his time working with the company’s Beijing engineers developing small features and changes to the app that he hoped would drive more engagement, and that he often failed to communicate them to the LA team. Two former employees said Chen also seemed to have little desire to fix the toxicity and harassment problems that plagued the app; he didn’t want to touch things that seemed to be working. “His archaic view of things is that sex sells,” said one, noting that anything that detracted from encouraging hookups was seen as a distraction.

“He thought [Grindr’s in-house digital magazine] Into was a social media play and didn’t realize it was an independent news outlet,” one former employee said. Another recalled trying to explain to Chen that media businesses take time to develop audiences and revenue streams and that there would be no quick and easy way to make Into profitable. Chen didn’t seem to listen, they said.

Former Grindr employees said this lack of interest manifested itself in other ways as well, often in decision-making that came off as callous or inappropriate. After a round of layoffs last year, former employees said, Chen removed a cluster of desks in the company’s cavernous office to install his own fitness center. A spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that anyone could use the gym, but two former employees said no one did and it was widely understood to be for his use.

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My browser, the spy: how extensions slurped up browsing histories from 4m users • Ars Technica

Dan Goodin:

»

DataSpii begins with browser extensions—available mostly for Chrome but in more limited cases for Firefox as well—that, by Google’s account, had as many as 4.1 million users. These extensions collected the URLs, webpage titles, and in some cases the embedded hyperlinks of every page that the browser user visited. Most of these collected Web histories were then published by a fee-based service called Nacho Analytics, which markets itself as “God mode for the Internet” and uses the tag line “See Anyone’s Analytics Account.”

Web histories may not sound especially sensitive, but a subset of the published links led to pages that are not protected by passwords—but only by a hard-to-guess sequence of characters (called tokens) included in the URL. Thus, the published links could allow viewers to access the content at these pages. (Security practitioners have long discouraged the publishing of sensitive information on pages that aren’t password protected, but the practice remains widespread.)

According to the researcher who discovered and extensively documented the problem, this non-stop flow of sensitive data over the past seven months has resulted in the publication of links to:

• Home and business surveillance videos hosted on Nest and other security services
• Tax returns, billing invoices, business documents, and presentation slides posted to, or hosted on, Microsoft OneDrive, Intuit.com, and other online services
• Vehicle identification numbers of recently bought automobiles, along with the names and addresses of the buyers
• Patient names, the doctors they visited, and other details listed by DrChrono, a patient care cloud platform that contracts with medical services
• Travel itineraries hosted on Priceline, Booking.com, and airline websites
• Facebook Messenger attachments and Facebook photos, even when the photos were set to be private.

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Nacho Analytics turns out to have been grabbing data from tons of extensions, listed in the story.
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The challenges with single toggle buttons • UX Movement

Anthony Tseng:

»

Many single toggle buttons fail at either showing the current state or making the unselected option visible. They’re challenging to get right because users only have one button to switch states. Should a single toggle button display the state or the second option?

Many designers make the mistake of displaying the state on the toggle button. This practice is terrible because it hides the second option from users. They have no way of knowing that it’s combined with the state.

In the example above, the action to follow someone combines the state and the second option into a single toggle button. When users press “follow,” the button turns into “following,” but the unfollow option isn’t visible. The user has to press the “following” button to unfollow someone, which isn’t clear.

Sometimes users won’t see “following.” Instead, they’ll only see the “unfollow” option. Now the user isn’t sure whether they’re following this person or not. They have to assume that the unfollow state means they’re “following” that person.

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Really good points, which aren’t obvious until you start looking around and noticing them.
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Being a woman online isn’t just surviving the abuse, it’s fielding the reply guys • HuffPost UK

Jess Brammar:

»

Recently, a colleague of mine, Chris, tweeted an innocuous comment about one of those niggly irritants of modern life. “We need to have a national conversation about the lack of plug sockets on trains,” he wrote. He received one reply, four ‘likes’ and no one else was interested.

Chris doesn’t really feel that strongly about plug sockets on trains – or, if he does, he’s never mentioned it to me. But I’d asked him to tweet that pretty inoffensive statement as a form of social experiment, because those were the exact words I had tweeted a few weeks before on a 7am train from London to Salford. But unlike Chris, I received a flood of replies. 

If you’re a woman, you’ll probably get what I’m talking about immediately. If you’re a man, you probably won’t. I’ve tried to explain this phenomenon to male colleagues and friends countless times, but, like so many things, it’s hard to see it, let alone understand it, unless it happens to you…

…alongside the straightforward abuse that is by now publicly acknowledged – and to the majority of the population, wholly unacceptable – there is something more complex, less offensive, but incredibly exhausting nonetheless. Sometimes it’s so subtle you barely notice it but it’s always there, always wearing, and just reserved for us women.

It is, broadly, the general sense that men have the right to weigh in on any statement made by a woman, because their opinion is as welcome, relevant and wanted as the original point, something Mashable has termed “the curse of the reply guy”. A non-stop unsolicited stream of pedantry and condescension.

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And wow, it really is.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Pearson is aiming to phase out printed textbooks for digital ones. Want to guess what’ll happen to prices? CC-licensed photo by zaveqna 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. Smithereens! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Why Jeff Bezos spends billions on space technology • CNBC

Catherine Clifford:

»

developing space technologies is critical for human beings to have a long future, Bezos says.

“We humans have to go to space if we are going to continue to have a thriving civilization,” Bezos says. “We have become big as a population, as a species, and this planet is relatively small. We see it in things like climate change and pollution and heavy industry. We are in the process of destroying this planet. And we have sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system — this is the good one. So, we have to preserve this planet.”

To do that will require being able to live and work in space, says Bezos.

“We send things up into space, but they are all made on Earth. Eventually it will be much cheaper and simpler to make really complicated things, like microprocessors and everything, in space and then send those highly complex manufactured objects back down to earth, so that we don’t have the big factories and pollution generating industries that make those things now on Earth,” Bezos says. “And Earth can be zoned residential.”

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Oh but ‘It will be “multiple generations” and “hundreds of years” before this is a reality, Bezos said’. Not sure we have that much time.
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EU opens Amazon antitrust investigation • The Verge

Jon Porter:

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The EU’s Competition Commission has opened a formal antitrust investigation into Amazon to investigate whether the company is using sales data to gain an unfair advantage over smaller sellers on the Marketplace platform. The Commission says it will look into Amazon’s agreements with marketplace sellers, as well as how Amazon uses data to choose which retailer to link to using the “Buy Box” on its site. The announcement comes on the same day that Amazon announced changes to its third-party seller service agreement in response to a separate antitrust investigation by German regulators.

“E-commerce has boosted retail competition and brought more choice and better prices,” said the EU’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager. “We need to ensure that large online platforms don’t eliminate these benefits through anti-competitive behavior. I have therefore decided to take a very close look at Amazon’s business practices and its dual role as marketplace and retailer, to assess its compliance with EU competition rules.”

Responding to the news, Amazon told The Verge that it “will cooperate fully with the European Commission and continue working hard to support businesses of all sizes and help them grow.”

«

Hmm. Tesco, Sainsbury and other supermarkets sell their own-brand products in their supermarkets while selling third party products at the same time. What’s the difference, exactly? That Amazon can reorganise its store on the fly, where a supermarket can’t?
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Firefox to warn when saved logins are found in data breaches • Bleeping Computer

Lawrence Abrams:

»

Starting in Firefox 70, Mozilla aims to have the browser report when any of your saved logins were found in data breaches. This will be done through their partnership with the Have I Been Pwned data breach site.

Mozilla is slowly integrating their independent Firefox Monitor service and the new Firefox Lockwise password manager directly into Firefox.  Mozilla is also considering premium services based around these features in the future.

As part of this integration, Firefox will scan the saved login names and passwords and see if they were exposed in a data breach listed on Have I been Pwned. If one is found, Firefox will alert the user and prompt them to change their password.

«

Neat. Wonder how long it will take for the other major browsers to incorporate this.
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Inside Apple factory thefts: secret tunnels, hidden crawl spaces • The Information

Wayne Ma:

»

Some factory workers have hidden sensitive parts in crawl spaces and later returned to retrieve them when security guards aren’t looking. Employees have hidden parts in used mop water, tissue boxes, shoes and under discarded metal shavings. A factory worker was once caught hiding parts inside his belt buckle, hoping security guards wouldn’t pat down that area. 

A woman at Jabil once hid dozens of glass screens in her bra but was caught by security guards after they noticed her unusual style of walking. Apple once caught factory workers digging a small tunnel in a corner of a room behind a large piece of machinery, hoping to use it to ferry stolen parts to the outside world. “People were chipping away little by little at the wall ‘Shawshank Redemption’ style,” the person said. 

“Scrapping” companies, which help Apple suppliers destroy prototypes and defective parts, have also been a source of leaks. Apple once traced leaked enclosures to a major scrapping vendor, Singapore’s Tes-Amm. Apple removed the company from its approved list of vendors for a year but was forced to restore it because its options were limited, a person familiar with the matter said. Tes-Amm didn’t reply to a request for comment. Apple’s supplier security policies require an Apple employee or an Apple-approved contractor to be physically present when scrap is destroyed. 

Leaks also can come from Apple’s packaging and printing contractors. One worker snuck a smartphone into a printing factory in 2017 and was able to take photos of an instruction manual for the iPhone X before its release.

«

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Education publisher Pearson to phase out print textbooks • BBC News

»

The world’s largest education publisher has taken the first step towards phasing out print books by making all its learning resources “digital first”.

Pearson said students would only be able to rent physical textbooks from now on, and they would be updated much less frequently.

The British firm hopes the move will make more students buy its e-textbooks which are updated continually.

“We are now over the digital tipping point,” boss John Fallon told the BBC.

“Over half our annual revenues come from digital sales, so we’ve decided a little bit like in other industries like newspapers or music or in broadcast that it is time to flick the switch in how we primarily make and create our products.”

The firm currently makes 20% of its revenues from US courseware, but has been struggling as students increasingly opt to rent second-hand print textbooks to save money.

To counter this Mr Fallon said Pearson would stop revising print books every three years, a model that has dominated the industry for 40 years.

«

Despite Pearson’s protests, it’s obvious that it’s looking to move to a subscription model, and that it will jack up prices. Perhaps they could use themselves in an economics textbook as an example of “rent-seeking“.

Corollary: prices of secondhand textbooks are going to rocket in the next year or two. If you’ve got university-age kids, get their textbooks purchased soon.
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How to end Asia’s plastic waste war • Nikkei Asian Review

James Crabtree:

»

The world churned out around 300 million tons of plastic waste in 2015, a figure academic estimates suggest has roughly doubled in the last two decades. Environmental groups fear it could double again by 2030, clogging up oceans and toxic landfills alike…

…Governments in countries including Canada and Australia have traditionally taken little care over the waste they send abroad. Recycled materials are traded via complex chains of middlemen, and often mislabeled and poorly regulated. Southeast Asian governments say they have little control over what they receive. Rather than clean recyclable material, Indonesia said the shipments it sent back to Australia in mid-July were actually filled with electronic waste and other toxic kinds of junk.

These clashes over plastics might soon get worse. Other countries want to join China in banning imports, including Thailand and Vietnam, both of whom plan to phase the trade out. Even those who do not go for outright prohibition are likely to reduce their intake. New global rules on plastics were recently agreed under the United Nation’s Basel Convention, a treaty governing the world’s waste system ratified by close to 200 countries, although not the United States. Coming into force in 2021, these will give recipient nations more control over the waste they receive.

Environmental campaigners back further import bans in the hope of forcing governments in richer countries to act and pushing companies in plastic-heavy sectors like food and consumer goods to find alternatives. Such shock treatment might be needed, but it is far from clear that more bans alone, and with them a further deglobalization of the world’s recycling system, would in fact be the best outcome.

«

And yet when a member of Extinction Rebellion was on the BBC’s Today show, he was interrogated on why he “wanted a recession”.
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FaceApp responds to privacy concerns • TechCrunch

Natasha Lomas:

»

The tl;dr here is that concerns had been raised that FaceApp, a Russian startup, uploads users’ photos to the cloud — without making it clear to them that processing is not going on locally on their device.

Another issue raised by FaceApp users was that the iOS app appears to be overriding settings if a user had denied access to their camera roll, after people reported they could still select and upload a photo — i.e. despite the app not having permission to access their photos.

As we reported earlier, the latter is actually allowed behavior in iOS — which gives users the power to choose to block an app from full camera roll access but select individual photos to upload if they so wish.

This isn’t a conspiracy, though Apple could probably come up with a better way of describing the permission, as we suggested earlier.

On the wider matter of cloud processing of what is, after all, facial data, FaceApp confirms that most of the processing needed to power its app’s beautifying/gender-bending/age-accerating/-defying effects are done in the cloud.

Though it claims it only uploads photos users have specifically selected for editing. Security tests have also not found evidence the app uploads a user’s entire camera roll.

«

The app first surfaced two years ago, so that’s a pretty tenacious startup.
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Tech journalism’s ‘on background’ scourge • Columbia Journalism Review

Brian Merchant:

»

I’ve been a tech journalist for a decade. I was a senior editor at Motherboard for about four years, and have written and edited stories for outlets including Wired, The Atlantic, and Gizmodo. “On background” has been a scourge throughout my career. Every single conversation I have had with a big-five tech company representative this year has been on background. It has become the default method by which Silicon Valley disseminates information to reporters. 

This is a toxic arrangement. The tactic shields tech companies from accountability. It allows giants like Amazon and Tesla an opportunity to transmit their preferred message, free of risk, in the voice of a given publication. It leaves no trace of policy that might later be criticized—that could form part of the public record to be scrutinized by regulators, lawyers, or investors. If the company later reverses course or modifies its position, the egg is on the reporter’s face, not the company’s. 

Corporations such as Apple, Google, and Uber have become infamous for their secrecy and unwillingness to comment on most matters on the record. And tech reporters, myself very much included, have not done enough to push them to do otherwise.

«

Definition: ‘According to the Associated Press, an on background arrangement with a reporter means that “information can be published but only under conditions negotiated with the source. Generally, the sources do not want their names published but will agree to a description of their position.”’

I agree with Merchant; like him I’ve had to take “on background” briefings from many companies, and wondered why they didn’t have the courage just to say it. As Merchant says, Nilay Patel at The Verge decided not to take it from YouTube in a recent controversy. More could do the same: just refuse to take “on background”. It’s either no quote, or attributed-to-company quote.
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iOS and iPadOS 13 beta 4 signals death of 3D Touch, rise of Context Menu • VentureBeat

Jeremy Horwitz:

»

If you aren’t already familiar with 3D Touch, the concept was simple: slight, medium, and heavy pressure on an iPhone’s screen could be recognized differently, such that a light press would open an app while a firm press in the same spot would instead conjure up a contextual menu. Apple sometimes nested additional “peek and pop” features within iPhone apps using the same pressure sensitivity, giving users extra options if they pressed down more on the screen.

Over the last few beta releases of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple has been rolling out a replacement called Context Menus — a change it set the stage for last year, by releasing the iPhone XR without 3D Touch hardware. Back then, Apple said it was giving the XR an alternative called “Haptic Touch” that pulled up the same sort of contextual menus as earlier iPhones, but did so using two tricks: instead of pressure, it sensed button press time, counting an extra split-second as a stronger button press, confirming the different intent with a “thump” from the phone’s vibration feature.

Now iPad users will get a version of Haptic Touch minus the haptics. The “hold slightly longer” feature works the exact same way as on the iPhone XR, but there’s no confirming thump because iPads don’t have vibration actuators inside. (Presumably, the feature will work the same way on the seventh-generation iPod touch, the only iPod that supports iOS 13, while similarly lacking vibration hardware.)

The key change in iOS/iPadOS 13 beta 4 is that the timing for the Context Menus and a related UI feature — Home screen icon rearrangement — has been tightened to perfection. Hold down on an app icon for just under two seconds, or long enough to be “holding down” rather than tapping for selection, and a Context Menu pops up, as shown above. Hold an additional second or so and icons begin to shake to indicate they can be arranged.

«

It had a good run, but was mostly used only by Apple; hardly any third-party apps did. It’s got to be expensive to implement, and the challenge of “force touch” v “just press it” could be tricky. Unusual for Apple to dump a feature from its phones, though.
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I wish Google’s Smart Displays were the kitchen companions they promised to be • Android Police

David Ruddock:

»

The first fundamental flaw of using a smart display as a recipe canvas is that the display can only access a limited subset of recipes available online. These recipes must either have schema formatting that Google recognizes in its search platform and then displays in a cookie cutter style on the display, or algorithmically be flagged as a recipe and render as a desktop web page (often in barely readable, tiny font). For now, only the largest recipe repositories online use the dedicated markup formatting, and mostly because they received early access to this tool from Google. Ordinary sites are able to do it as well, but many simply haven’t – and some websites have such heavily customized recipe formatting that Google’s one-size-fits-all approach simply wouldn’t make sense for them.

This means that when you search for a recipe, you’re only getting a curated selection of the total search results for that recipe on the web. And oftentimes, I dig through a half dozen or more recipes before deciding on the one that sounds best or provides the most information on the processes and techniques involved. Searching “red pepper soup” on a smart display will yield results, but it won’t yield the one I settled on after doing a search on my phone last week, because apparently Google doesn’t think that page contains a recipe.

When I do find a recipe I want, I should be able to just push that recipe from my laptop, phone, or tablet to the smart display – at the very least it could give me a web browser view. But it can’t. There is no way to push web content to the smart display, it can only show you pages in the results of a voice search query. This, frankly, makes no sense: the screen is clearly capable of and does display web pages, it just won’t let you display any page you want.

«

So he says it ends up being what most people use these devices for – a music player, and a timer.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Yes, how did people manage before Visicalc, the first “killer app”? CC-licensed photo by Betsy Weber 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. Timing OK, Jason? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

How tech firms make us feel like we own their apps – and how that benefits them • The Conversation

Melody Zou:

»

People who become heavy users of the apps they download can develop deep relationships with these services, so deep that they take on what we call “psychological ownership” of them. This means they perceive each app as something that belongs just to them and has effectively become an extension of themselves. After using it frequently and adjusting the settings to their liking, it becomes “my app”, even though their rights to use the service and transfer their data are actually restricted and their accounts can be terminated at any time.

Psychological ownership can benefit the companies because it leads users to take on valuable extra roles. In the real world, companies have long pushed for shoppers to give feedback, recommend their products and help other shoppers. App “owners” are willingly doing all of this in the digital sphere and often with more expertise and commitment than traditional consumers.

My colleagues and I studied this phenomenon for users of music streaming apps such as Spotify and QQ Music and found that they went the extra mile in four ways. They provided services such as answering the queries of other users on internet forums or offering other information that would enrich the experience of users. They improved the app by giving the company feedback or taking part in the app’s governance. They advocated for the app by championing it in public or defending it against critics. And they financed the service by paying a premium fee or even donating money.

«

(Zou is assistant professor of Information Systems and Management at Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick.)
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40 years later, lessons from the rise and quick decline of the first ‘killer app’ • WSJ

Christopher Mims:

»

VisiCalc was the first piece of software that was so popular that it drove people to buy computers just to run it. A 1984 article for PC Magazine noted: “People entered computer stores to purchase VisiCalc and something to run it on.” At the time, VisiCalc cost $100, but the Apple II to run it could set you back $2,000 or more—much more. The revenue of VisiCalc’s publisher, which was almost entirely attributable to VisiCalc itself, mushroomed from virtually nothing in 1979 to more than $40 million in 1983, says Edward Esber, who was VP of marketing at the company.

This was the first lesson of VisiCalc—that the dawn of a new platform is when empires are built. In this case, the shift was from the paper ledgers that accountants had used for centuries, to their digital equivalent on the PC.

The PC was arguably the first modern tech platform—that is, a thing that had value because it enabled many different types of software and services—and much of what happened next became typical of every computing platform that has come since.

Unfortunately for Messrs. Bricklin and Frankston, the second lesson of VisiCalc was that a killer app doesn’t guarantee enduring success. The software might have been the first tech victim of what academic Clayton Christensen would later call “disruptive innovation”—when a smaller company outflanks an incumbent by targeting an overlooked market.

Mitch Kapor, who worked for VisiCalc’s publisher as a product manager, left the company and began working on his own spreadsheet program. Instead of creating it for the Apple II, Mr. Kapor put his money on another horse: the brand-new IBM PC. Released in 1983, his software—Lotus 1-2-3—took the world by storm on a scale that even VisiCalc’s success couldn’t have foretold.

«

Terrific piece.
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Kim Darroch was a victim of the UK government’s huge email problem • WIRED UK

Chris Stokel-Walker:

»

Intelligent Protection International Limited, a private security firm, was asked to conduct an investigation to pinpoint the source of a leak of commercial information – allegedly perpetrated by a staff member– to a company working with the [unnamed UK government] department. “We were gobsmacked when we did our investigation,” says Alex Bomberg, chief executive officer of Intelligent Protection International.

Bomberg’s company produced a 300-page report – a redacted version of the recommendations of which we have seen – laying bare the issues with how the civil service handles sensitive data such as diplomatic briefings and cables. All routine public service information is classed as “Official” – one of three security classifications set out by the government. Official documents can include “routine international relations and diplomatic activities.

However, particularly delicate information can be labelled “Official – Sensitive”, which is meant to involve additional measures to limit the “need to know”. That additional marking is deployed to head off the risk of such information being stolen, lost or published by journalists because it “could have more damaging consequences,” official advice on classification explains.

According to The Mail on Sunday, which first reported the contents of Darroch’s diplomatic cables, the documents leaked last week were labelled “Official – Sensitive”.

It turns out that these labels are expected to do a lot of work. One of the main concerns Intelligent Protection International raised in its report was the principle of “delegated access” to email accounts of the highest-ranking officials in the civil service.

In short, that means that staff would be allowed to access an official’s inbox in order to triage emails and deal with problems.

«

I thought that diplomatic cables were classified as “Eyes Only” rather than “Official – Sensitive“. But email, and the need to triage it, makes a mockery of that.
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How many kinds of USB-C™ to USB-C™ cables are there? • Benson Leung

»

tl;dr: There are six. Unfortunately it’s very confusing to the end user.

Classic USB from the 1.1, 2.0, to 3.0 generations using USB-A and USB-B connectors have a really nice property in that cables were directional and plugs and receptacles were physically distinct to specify a different capability. A USB 3.0 capable USB-B plug was physically larger than a 2.0 plug and would not fit into a USB 2.0-only receptacle. For the end user, this meant that as long as they have a cable that would physically connect to both the host and the device, the system would function properly, as there is only ever one kind of cable that goes from one A plug to a particular flavor of B plug.

Does the same hold for USB-C™?

Sadly, the answer is no.

«

Oh, USB-C. The solution: clearer labelling. The problem: cable manufacturers aren’t interested in better labelling.
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Trump’s tax law threatened TurboTax’s profits, so the company started charging the disabled, the unemployed and students • ProPublica

Justin Elliott and Paul Kiel:

»

The 2017 tax overhaul vastly expanded the number of people who could file simplified tax returns, a boon to millions of Americans.

But the new law directly threatened the lucrative business of Intuit, the maker of TurboTax.

Although the company draws in customers with the promise of a “free” product, its fortunes depend on getting as many customers as possible to pay. It had been regularly charging $100 or more for returns that included itemized deductions for mortgage interest and charitable donations. Under the new law, many wealthier taxpayers would no longer be filing that form, qualifying them to use the company’s free software.

Intuit executives came up with a way to preserve the company’s hefty profit margins: It began charging more low-income people. Which ones? Individuals with disabilities, the unemployed and people who owe money on student loans, all of whom use tax forms that TurboTax previously included for free. The shift was described to ProPublica by two people familiar with the process…

…Under a 2002 deal with the government, most Americans are supposed to be able to file their taxes for free as long as they make under $66,000 a year. In return, the IRS has agreed not to offer its own free service.

But, as ProPublica has been reporting, Intuit has steered eligible customers away from the truly free version, aggressively marketing products that are called “free” even though many customers end up paying.

«

An unusual case of regulatory capture: Intuit squirms away from any attempt to lock down what it does. It really is past time for the US government to take over the process.
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‘Just a matter of when’: the $20bn plan to power Singapore with Australian solar • The Guardian

Adam Morton:

»

Known as Sun Cable, it is promised to be the world’s largest solar farm. If developed as planned, a 10-gigawatt-capacity array of panels will be spread across 15,000 hectares and be backed by battery storage to ensure it can supply power around the clock.

Overhead transmission lines will send electricity to Darwin and plug into the NT grid. But the bulk would be exported via a high-voltage direct-current submarine cable snaking through the Indonesian archipelago to Singapore. The developers say it will be able to provide one-fifth of the island city-state’s electricity needs, replacing its increasingly expensive gas-fired power.

After 18 months in development, the $20bn Sun Cable development had a quiet coming out party in the Top End three weeks ago at a series of events held to highlight the NT’s solar potential. The idea has been embraced by the NT government and attracted the attention of the software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is considering involvement through his Grok Ventures private investment firm.

The NT plan follows a similarly ambitious proposal for the Pilbara, where another group of developers are working on an even bigger wind and solar hybrid plant to power local industry and develop a green hydrogen manufacturing hub. On Friday, project developer Andrew Dickson announced the scale of the proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub had grown by more than a third, from 11GW to 15GW. “To our knowledge, it’s the largest wind-solar hybrid in the world,” he says.

«

Would be good if Australia shift from exporting coal to exporting solar energy. I thought DC was a bad idea for long-distance power transmission, but apparently not. Singapore generates all its own electricity at present – but 98% of that is from fossil fuels.
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Apple plans to bankroll original podcasts to fend off rivals • Bloomberg

Lucas Shaw and Mark Gurman:

»

Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn’t make before.

Apple all but invented the podcasting business with the creation of a network that collects thousands of podcasts from across the internet in a feed on people’s phones, smartwatches and computers. The Apple Podcast app still accounts for anywhere from 50% to 70% of listening for most podcasts, according to industry executives.

The news sent shares of Spotify down as much as 2.7% to $150.09 in New York on Tuesday, marking the biggest intraday decline in three weeks. The stock had been up 36% this year through Monday’s close.

After years without making substantial changes to its podcasting business, which first launched in 2005, Apple has recently focused on upgrading its app and has added new tools for podcast makers.

«

Going to be a challenge for Spotify. Apple-only podcasts will have a lot more reach than Spotify-only podcasts, as the data suggests. Then the problem is how you get people to see them.
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Measles is killing more people in the DRC than Ebola—and faster • Ars Technica

Beth Mole:

»

Since January 2019, officials have recorded over 100,000 measles cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly in children, and nearly 2,000 have died. The figures surpass those of the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, which has tallied not quite 2,500 cases and 1,665 deaths since August 2018. The totals were noted by World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a speech today, July 15, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.

“Frankly, I am embarrassed to talk only about Ebola,” Dr. Tedros said (he goes by his first name). He gave the speech in response to two new developments in the Ebola outbreak. That is that two Ebola responders were murdered in their home in the DRC city of Beni and that officials on Sunday had identified the first case of Ebola in Goma, a DRC city of over one million at the border with Rwanda.

«

In case there’s anyone around who thought measles wasn’t deadly.
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Delta, Alaska, and American Airlines have all been sued over their cabin crew uniforms • Vox

Rae Nudson:

»

Delta is the latest airline to have flight attendants report health issues possibly related to their uniforms, and employees at the airline filed a lawsuit in May against the manufacturer, Lands’ End. But flight attendants have been battling health issues that have appeared after an airline instituted new uniforms for years. And for years, airlines have said their uniforms are safe.

Meanwhile, flight attendants and others are working to discover the cause of their symptoms and the identity and total number of chemicals present in their uniforms, all of which can be difficult to ascertain. Until the cause can be identified — or until airlines start listening to employees and moving quickly after their complaints — it’s likely employees will continue to face symptoms. And it’s likely that flight attendants will keep heading to court, where they’ve historically needed to go to get policy changed by their employers.

The problem was first reported after employees at Alaska Airlines got new uniforms toward the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011. Flight attendants began to report rashes and eye irritation, and documented hives, blisters, and scaly patches, according to a 2012 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) report looking into the issue. In 2013, flight attendants at Alaska Airlines filed a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the uniforms, Twin Hill, and the airline recalled the uniforms in 2014. In October 2016, Twin Hill won the lawsuit, with the court claiming there was no reliable evidence the injuries were caused by the uniforms.

Then in 2016, shortly after flight attendants at American Airlines got new uniforms, also manufactured by Twin Hill, they began to show symptoms as well. Flight attendants reported rashes, blisters, open sores, and swelling.

«

I thought I had linked to this before, but couldn’t find any trace. This is a weird one; the link between uniform and illness seems undeniable, yet the cause evades discovery.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Protests on 14 July in Hong Kong: why is YouTube limiting ads on their videos? CC-licensed photo by Studio Incendo 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 there’s no spam.

A selection of 10 links for you. Still here, then. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Why YouTube keeps demonetizing videos of the Hong Kong protests • OneZero

Will Oremus:

»

the company’s guidelines would seem to rule out ads on huge swaths of what is generally considered mainstream news coverage. Imagine your evening newscast stripped of any story whose topic includes “violence,” “harmful or dangerous acts,” “tobacco,” “firearms,” or “controversial issues and sensitive events.” Note further that YouTube’s explanation of that last category includes “war,” “death and tragedies,” “political conflicts,” “terrorism or extremism,” and “sexual abuse.” You’d be left with the local sports roundup, the winning lotto numbers, and weather report — assuming, one supposes, the weather isn’t causing any deaths or tragedies.

In practice, it’s clear that YouTube makes plenty of exceptions for news coverage. You can find ads on segments about ethnic cleansing in Myanmar to clashes between Israel and Hamas in the West Bank. But when pressed by OneZero to explain on what basis it makes those exceptions, YouTube declined to elaborate, except to clarify that videos of political protests are eligible for ads unless those protests include violence. That’s a tricky stance, given that many protest movements start off peaceful but escalate to include incidents of violence — as has happened in Hong Kong.

On June 16, China Uncensored posted a video called “Biggest Protest in Hong Kong’s History,” chronicling the massive demonstrations of the day before. It was quickly marked by YouTube with a yellow monetization icon, indicating that it was eligible for “limited or no ads.”

«

The problem with an unaccountable, inexplicable paymaster.
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A layer of ‘aerogel’ could make Mars habitable and even enable life to develop there – but here’s why we should wait

Andrew Coates:

»

Ideas for changing or “terraforming” Mars, by introducing an atmospheric greenhouse effect to warm it, have been around for a long time. Recently it was shown that the carbon inventory on Mars is insufficient to do this, apparently killing off these ideas for now.

But the new study suggests a different approach – that smaller areas of Mars could be covered by a thin (2-3cm) covering of aerogel, providing a greenhouse effect by locking in heat. Using lab experiments, the researchers showed that this could increase the surface temperature by 50°C. The authors then used a climate model of Mars to confirm that the gel would be able to keep the water below it liquid up to a depth of several metres. It would also protect against harmful radiation by absorbing the radiation at UV wavelengths, while still allowing enough light for photosynthesis.

This suggests that a habitable region could be produced, enough even to grow some plants to fuel eventual human exploration. The idea is certainly interesting, and according to the experiments potentially plausible. But it ignores the other key issue affecting life on Mars – cosmic radiation. Silica aerogel, the proposed material, is sometimes called “frozen smoke” due to its low density. But because it is so low density, cosmic radiation of higher energy than ultraviolet light can pass through it almost unscathed. Without magnetic protection, this radiation threatens any life on the Martian surface, just as it does today.

«

(An aerogel is “a synthetic and ultralight material made by taking a gel and replacing the liquid component with a gas.”)
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The Metamorphosis • The Atlantic

Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher:

»

In the nuclear age, strategy evolved around the concept of deterrence. Deterrence is predicated on the rationality of parties, and the premise that stability can be ensured by nuclear and other military deployments that can be neutralized only by deliberate acts leading to self-destruction; the likelihood of retaliation deters attack. Arms-control agreements with monitoring systems were developed in large part to avoid challenges from rogue states or false signals that might trigger a catastrophic response.

Hardly any of these strategic verities can be applied to a world in which AI plays a significant role in national security. If AI develops new weapons, strategies, and tactics by simulation and other clandestine methods, control becomes elusive, if not impossible. The premises of arms control based on disclosure will alter: Adversaries’ ignorance of AI-developed configurations will become a strategic advantage—an advantage that would be sacrificed at a negotiating table where transparency as to capabilities is a prerequisite. The opacity (and also the speed) of the cyberworld may overwhelm current planning models.

The evolution of the arms-control regime taught us that grand strategy requires an understanding of the capabilities and military deployments of potential adversaries. But if more and more intelligence becomes opaque, how will policy makers understand the views and abilities of their adversaries and perhaps even allies?

«

Yes, it really is that unindicted war criminal Henry Kissinger (age 96), ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt (64), American academic Daniel Huttenlocher (59). The article’s full of vagueisms – unsurprisingly – but the idea of nation states using AI for their defence/attack strategies is quite worrying.
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The US, China, and case 311/18 on Standard Contractual Clauses • European Law Blog

Peter Swire:

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In the aftermath of the 2015 case [on Facebook transferring data to the US, which found against Facebook and invalidated those transfers], most companies that transfer data from the EU were left to rely on contract standards promulgated by the European Commission, called Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC).  The SCCs set strict requirements for handling personal data by the company that transfers the data.

The legality of SCCs is now before the CJEU, with a similar challenge to Privacy Shield awaiting the outcome of the first case.

A CJEU decision that invalidates SCCs would result in the prohibition of most transfers of personal data from the EU to the US. The case primarily concerns the quality of legal safeguards in the United States for government surveillance, especially by the NSA. (Note – I was selected to provide independent expert testimony on US law by Facebook; under Irish law, I was prohibited from contact with Facebook while serving as an expert, and I have played no further role in the litigation.)

A decision invalidating SCCs, however, would pose a terrible dilemma to EU courts and decisionmakers.

At a minimum, the CJEU might “merely” prohibit data flows to the US due to a finding of lack of sufficient safeguards, notably an insufficient remedy for an EU data subject who makes a subject access request to the NSA. The EU on this approach would continue to authorize the transfer of personal data to countries not directly covered by the Court decision, such as, for example, China.  This approach would be completely unjustified: it would prohibit transfers of data to the US, which has numerous legal safeguards characteristic of a state under the rule of law, while allowing such transfers toward China, where the protection of personal data vis-à-vis the government is essentially non-existent.

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German privacy watchdog: Microsoft’s Office 365 cannot be used in public schools • WinBuzzer

Luke Jones:

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A data authority in the German State of Hesse has warned Microsoft’s Office 365 cannot be used in schools. Michael Ronellenfitsch, Hesse’s data protection commissioner, says the standard Office 365 configuration creates privacy issues.

He warned this week that data stored in the cloud by the productivity suite could be accessed in the United States. Specifically, personal information from teachers and students would be in the cloud. Ronellenfitsch says even if the data was held in centers in Europe, it is still “exposed to possible access by US authorities”.

The commissioner says public intuitions in Hesse and across Germany “have a special responsibility with regard to the permissibility and traceability of the processing of personal data.”…

…It is worth noting that Ronellenfitsch previously endorsed the use of Office 365 in schools. Back in 2017, he said schools can use the suite under certain conditions that match Germany’s data protection compliancy laws. At the time, Microsoft was partnered with Deutsche Telekom and offering the “Germany Cloud” initiative that is now depreciated.

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This isn’t an opportunity for Google or Apple: they don’t meet the authority’s criteria on privacy and data either.
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Trump’s racist tweets aren’t racist, Twitter decides • Gizmodo

Dell Cameron:

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Last month, Twitter announced that while the president will continue to remain exempt from the consequences of violating its policies, it would downrank and flag any “public interest” tweets that violate its rules.

“We may allow controversial content or behavior which may otherwise violate our rules to remain on our service because we believe there is a legitimate public interest in its availability,” the company stated. “When this happens, we add a notice to clarify that the Tweet violates our rules, but we believe it should be left up to serve this purpose.”

Noticeably, Trump’s go-back-to-your-country tweets remain unflagged.

“The plain reading of Twitter’s policies against repeated targeting and bullying of individuals using racist slurs and tropes makes clear that the president’s latest rant against Rep. Ilhan Omar and other congresswomen of color goes too far,” said Madihha Ahussain, a special counsel for Muslim Advocates, one of many civil rights groups working to persuade Twitter and other social networks to take meaningful action to address racist and extremist content.

Twitter declined to comment on the record about its decision, pointing instead to its policy of adding a “notice” to any “public interest” tweet that violates its rules.

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Twitter then contacted Cameron and complained about the headline. The sheer display of pusillanimity in the US media, and social networks, over the weekend has been astonishing. If Twitter bans anyone for anything after this, it’s rank hypocrisy.
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Award-winning reporter to counter-sue man who bankrolled Brexit for ‘harassment’ • Daily Beast

Nico Hines:

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The award-winning journalist whose investigations led to the collapse of Donald Trump’s campaign data gurus Cambridge Analytica and a record $5bn fine for Facebook has launched a lawsuit for harassment against the man who bankrolled Brexit.

Carole Cadwalladr, a freelance investigative reporter, served the papers Monday against Arron Banks, the largest Brexit campaign donor. Solicitors acting on her behalf say a campaign of harassment, trolling and threats of violence culminated Friday with a libel suit filed at the High Court against Cadwalladr for remarks she made during a TED talk, at a convention in London, and in a tweet.

“This is such an abuse of the law by Arron Banks. He’s not suing TED. He’s not suing the Observer or the Guardian. He’s a bully who’s targeting me as an individual to harass and intimidate me and prevent me from doing journalism, a course of behavior that has been going on for more than two years,” Cadwalladr told The Daily Beast.

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I hope Carole wins this, and the libel case, and gets gigantic personal damages for both. She deserves it, and Banks’s behaviour deserves to be spotlighted for what it is.
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There’s a big problem with Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency • Ars Technica

Timothy B. Lee:

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Facebook envisions a Libra ecosystem that looks a lot like the existing bitcoin ecosystem. Just as people use intermediaries like Coinbase to acquire and manage their bitcoins, Facebook envisions users interacting with the Libra network via exchanges and user-friendly apps—including Facebook’s own app called Calibra. Each company building a Libra payment service will need to hire its own lawyers to make sure it’s complying with all applicable laws.

A key assumption behind this plan is that the Libra network itself will operate beyond the reach of any country’s regulatory regime in the same way that bitcoin does. A Libra Association representative, Dante Disparte, articulated this principle in a recent interview with blockchain podcaster Laura Shin. Shin asked Disparte what would happen if a government like the United States demanded that the Libra Association blacklist certain Libra addresses in order to comply with sanctions laws—something that’s required of most conventional payment networks.

“The Association won’t interact with any jurisdiction,” Disparte said. “The Association has three macro-level functions: governance, management of a reserve, management of an open-source technology. The companies that offer consumers and citizens in different jurisdictions around the world are the regulated entities that provide an on- and off-ramp to Libra the currency.”

But this position has a fair number of skeptics. One of them is Jerry Brito, a lawyer who runs a blockchain-focused think tank called the Coin Center.

“I don’t understand how this is possible,” Brito tweeted. If the US government asked the Libra Association to block a list of Libra addresses, the Association’s members—big companies like Facebook, Mastercard, Visa, and Uber—would have little choice to comply, he argued.

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See for comparison: Amazon’s hosting, briefly, of Wikileaks during the US diplomatic cables leak; Paypal and Visa denying payments to Wikileaks subsequently.
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Florida DMV sells your personal information to private companies, marketing firms • ABC Action News

Adam Walser:

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In Idaho, [Tonia] Batson lived in a group home where someone else handled her finances, daily living and healthcare arrangements. She had no digital footprint because she can’t read or write.

That’s why [Batson’s sister and legal guardian Sonia] Arvin wanted to know how marketers got Batson’s personal information.

“The only one that had it was the DMV,” said Arvin. “Even if it’s a public record in Florida – if we tell them we want it private, it should be kept private.”

The state opened an investigation into Batson’s case after ABC alerted FHSMV officials.

That’s because Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) said companies buying data on Floridians are not allowed to use that information for marketing.

But not every company plays by the rules.

The state told ABC it has banned data sales to three companies since 2017 for misusing driver and ID cardholder information.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles told ABC that under the law, it must provide driver information but said federal privacy laws and its own rules limit how outside companies can access Floridian’s personal information.

One of the data brokers accessing Florida DMV information is Arkansas-based marketing firm Acxiom, which has an agreement with the state to buy driver and ID cardholder data for a penny a record.

On its website, Acxiom claims it has collected information from almost every adult in the United States.

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A penny per record. The incentive for flouting that is far higher, and the fines probably much lower – if fines are handed out (none are mentioned in the story).

US data privacy? It would be a nice idea. But if even the government is selling your data, people like Facebook could legitimately claim, Catch-22 style, that “everyone’s doing it, so I’d be a fool not to”.
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Huawei plans extensive layoffs in the US • WSJ

Dan Strumpf:

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Huawei Technologies is planning extensive layoffs at its US operations, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Chinese technology giant continues to struggle with its American blacklisting.

The layoffs are expected to affect workers at Huawei’s US-based research and development subsidiary, Futurewei Technologies, according to these people. The unit employs about 850 people in research labs across the US, including in Texas, California and Washington state.

Huawei declined to comment. The exact number of layoffs couldn’t be determined, but people familiar with the matter said they were expected to be in the hundreds. Some of Huawei’s Chinese employees in the US were being given the option of returning home and staying with the company, another person said.

Futurewei employees have faced restrictions communicating with colleagues in Huawei’s home offices in China following the May 16 Commerce Department decision to put Huawei on its so-called entity list, which blocked companies from supplying US-sourced technology to Huawei without a license, according to these people.

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I saw this division referred to by one person on Twitter as the “Thievery Division”. Ouch. Though he’s a hedge fund manager, so make your own jokes.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Turns out the “anything” you can organise with it includes families. CC-licensed photo by Brian Dys 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. Two match points, though. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

The families who use Slack, Asana, Trello, and Jira • The Atlantic

Taylor Lorenz, Joe Pinsker:

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Children’s free-play time has been on the decline for more than 50 years, and their participation in extracurricular activities has led to more schedule-juggling for parents. Parents are busier too, especially those whose jobs demand ever more attention after hours: 65% of parents with a college degree have trouble balancing work and family, a 2015 Pew Research Center report found, compared with about half of those without a college degree. In an effort to cope, some families are turning to software designed for offices. Parents are finding project-management platforms such as Trello, Asana, and Jira, in addition to Slack, a workplace communication tool (its slogan is “Where work happens”), particularly useful in their personal lives. In other words, confronted with relentless busyness, some modern households are starting to run more like offices.

Julie Berkun Fajgenbaum, a mom of three children ages 8 to 12, uses Google Calendar to manage her children’s time and Jira to keep track of home projects. Ryan Florence, a dad in Seattle, set up a family Slack account for his immediate and extended family to communicate more easily. And Melanie Platte, a mom in Utah, says Trello has transformed her family life. After using it at work, she implemented it at home in 2016. “We do family meetings every Sunday where we review goals for the week, our to-do list, and activities coming up,” she says. “I track notes for the meeting [in Trello]. I have different sections, goals for the week, a to-do list.” Her oldest son started high school last year, and Platte says that without productivity and task-management software, she doesn’t know how he could manage it all.

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Giant batteries and cheap solar power are shoving fossil fuels off the grid • Science

Robert Service:

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This month, officials in Los Angeles, California, are expected to approve a deal that would make solar power cheaper than ever while also addressing its chief flaw: It works only when the sun shines. The deal calls for a huge solar farm backed up by one of the world’s largest batteries. It would provide 7% of the city’s electricity beginning in 2023 at a cost of 1.997 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the solar power and 1.3 cents per kWh for the battery. That’s cheaper than any power generated with fossil fuel.

“Goodnight #naturalgas, goodnight #coal, goodnight #nuclear,” Mark Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, tweeted after news of the deal surfaced late last month. “Because of growing economies of scale, prices for renewables and batteries keep coming down,” adds Jacobson, who has advised countries around the world on how to shift to 100% renewable electricity. As if on cue, last week a major U.S. coal company—West Virginia–based Revelation Energy LLC—filed for bankruptcy, the second in as many weeks…

…Precipitous price declines have already driven a shift toward renewables backed by battery storage. In March, an analysis of more than 7000 global storage projects by Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the cost of utility-scale lithium-ion batteries had fallen by 76% since 2012, and by 35% in just the past 18 months, to $187 per MWh. Another market watch firm, Navigant, predicts a further halving by 2030, to a price well below what 8minute has committed to.

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FTC approves roughly $5 billion Facebook settlement • WSJ

Emily Glazer, Ryan Tracy and Jeff Horwitz:

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Facebook said in April that to settle the probe it was expecting to pay up to $5bn. A resolution was bogged down by the party-line split on the FTC, with the Democrats pushing for tougher oversight of the social-media giant.

One point of disagreement was the extent to which Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg should be held responsible or be made accountable for future missteps.

The FTC investigation began more than a year ago after reports that personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users improperly wound up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked on President Trump’s 2016 campaign. The FTC investigation centered on whether that lapse violated a 2012 consent decree with the agency under which Facebook agreed to better protect user privacy.

Cambridge Analytica shut down in 2018 after the allegations surrounding Facebook data and other questions about its political tactics. The company had won political consulting work in the US by promising to use data to profile and influence voters with political messages. It contracted for several Republican presidential candidates ahead of the 2016 election, including Mr. Trump’s campaign.

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So the decision split along party lines, in the bizarre way that everything in the US must be politicised. The question about Zuckerberg isn’t resolved anywhere in the story: guess we’ll have to wait for the official FTC announcement.
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The biggest star at VidCon 2019 is TikTok • The Atlantic

Taylor Lorenz:

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TikTok, which boomed in China before entering the US market in August, allows users to upload and edit 15-second videos, usually set to catchy music or voice-overs. The videos are fun and silly, and watching them feels like taking a break from the broader, toxic world of social media. In one video, a teen does a viral dance with traffic cones fitted to his legs. In another, a stream of puppies tumble over one another to the beat of an EDM song. Less than a year after its US launch, the platform is poised to dominate the American social-media landscape and upend the creator ecosystem.

Nowhere is that more apparent than at VidCon. Vanessa Pappas, the general manager for TikTok, spoke with industry executives at a fireside chat yesterday that was so popular, many people couldn’t get in; later, big TikTok stars held a meet and greet that was packed to capacity. Outside the primary entrance to the convention center, teenagers swarmed TikTok creators, shouting their names as they shot dance videos.

None of this is by accident. All those mozzarella sticks and gummy bears didn’t come from nowhere: TikTok reportedly spent nearly $1bn on advertising alone last year, and has aggressively courted YouTube’s biggest creators. According to The Wall Street Journal, TikTok paid one influencer $1m for a single 15-second video. TikTok was the third-most-installed app worldwide in the first quarter of 2019, behind WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. It boasts 1.2bn monthly users globally, making it potentially bigger than Instagram, which reported 1bn monthly users in 2018, and a viable competitor to YouTube (1.9bn monthly users) and Facebook (more than 2bn).

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On TikTok, teens meme Life360, the safety app ruining their summer • WIRED

Louise Matsakis:

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Apps like Life360 can give kids and parents a sense of security, but they also raise questions about privacy and children’s autonomy. And on TikTok, teenagers are discussing and debating them. Videos with the hashtag #Life360 have been viewed there over 13 million times. In some of the most popular clips, teens share with each other strategies for circumventing the app, usually by turning off various phone settings. Other videos are less practical and serve more as a form of venting. In one recording with more than 30,000 likes, a photo of Life360’s founder and CEO Chris Hulls appears onscreen, while a rap song with the lyrics “Snitch, snitch, the snitch, the snitch, snitch” plays.

“I think it’s completely unfair and detrimental to teenagers if their parents use this app on them regularly,” said a 16-year-old boy from Texas who, like all the young people in this story, was contacted via social media and requested anonymity to talk freely about his family. “I spend most of my time texting my parents about what’s going on rather than spending time with my friends.”

Other teens are more understanding of their parents’ use of the app but think Life360 is too invasive. “If I am going a little over the speed limit on the freeway just to keep up with traffic, my parents freak out,” said a 16-year-old girl from California. “I understand where my parents are coming from, but I believe that the app has too many features that make it over the top.”

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Gives a new meaning to helicopter parenting.
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Gartner, IDC agree that PC sales are up—but they don’t agree what a PC is • Ars Technica

:

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We’ve been hearing for quite some time that the traditional PC is dying, but it’s not quite dead yet. Business analyst firms Gartner and IDC tackle the numbers differently, but both agree that sales of traditional PCs were up—in some regions, way up—in Q2 2019.

While both firms reported market growth in year-on-year PC sales, their actual figures differed. IDC reported a 4.7% growth in Q2 sales, where Gartner only reported 1.5%. The two firms’ numbers for US regional sales differed even more sharply, with Gartner claiming a 0.4% loss and IDC claiming a “high single digit gain.”

We spoke to IDC’s Jitesh Ubrani about the difference, and it turns out the two companies don’t quite agree on what is or is not a traditional PC. IDC counts Chromebooks as traditional PCs but doesn’t count Microsoft Surface tablets; Gartner does count Surface but doesn’t count Chromebooks. The higher numbers from IDC indicate a stronger market for Chromebooks than Surface, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone with children in North American schools, where the inexpensive and easily locked-down Chromebooks are ubiquitous.

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Should be pretty easy to get the Chromebook number: estimating the number of Surfaces sold isn’t hard (it’s typically about a million per quarter, tops). Subtract and there you go.
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MMFixed: your Magic Mouse, but comfortable

Speaking of design:

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The Magic Mouse Fix is a quick and comfortable solution to the poor ergonomics of the Magic Mouse. If you plan on using your magic mouse for more than thirty minutes a day, this product will reduce stress on your wrist and improve the ergonomics of what is otherwise an amazing mouse. In the past 10 years we’ve sold the Magic Mouse Fix to many thousands of satisfied customers and believe you’ll love the Magic Mouse Fix! 

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Jony Ive’s mistakes: when beautiful design is bad design • OneZero

I wrote about the design of objects which are intended to be used:

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All of the plaudits for Jony Ive begin with how he and Steve Jobs saved Apple with the iMac. No doubt about it: that instantly recognizable shape became an icon, and led to thousands of imitations using translucent colored plastic, often in that same Bondi Blue, to show that they were part of the late-90s vibe. In a sense, the iMac was a triumph of packaging: the components inside were pretty straightforward. If Apple had put them into a beige box, the company would now be a historical footnote.

Yet what’s almost universally overlooked in the paeans to Ive’s design legacy is that the fabulous iMac design also included one of his worst mistakes: the “hockey puck” mouse, whose round shape was so unfriendly to the human hand that it effectively kickstarted the market for third-party USB mice out of thin air.

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There’s more (including the Apple TV remote, aka the “Siri remote”), the “trashcan” Mac Pro v the cheesegrater, butterfly keyboard and others.
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How US tech giants are helping to build China’s surveillance state • The Intercept

Ryan Gallagher:

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The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and US chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.

Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people…

…Anna Bacciarelli, a researcher at Amnesty International, said that the OpenPower Foundation’s decision to work with Semptian raises questions about its adherence to international human rights standards. “All companies have a responsibility to conduct human rights due diligence throughout their operations and supply chains,” Bacciarelli said, “including through partnerships and collaborations.”

Semptian presents itself publicly as a “big data” analysis company that works with internet providers and educational institutes. However, a substantial portion of the Chinese firm’s business is in fact generated through a front company named iNext, which sells the internet surveillance and censorship tools to governments.

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Malicious apps infect 25 million Android devices with ‘Agent Smith’ malware • Phys.org

Cat Ferguson:

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The apps, most of them games, were distributed through third-party app stores by a Chinese group with a legitimate business helping Chinese developers promote their apps on outside platforms. Check Point is not identifying the company, because they are working with local law enforcement. About 300,000 devices were infected in the US.

The malware was able to copy popular apps on the phone, including WhatsApp and the web browser Opera, inject its own malicious code and replace the original app with the weaponized version, using a vulnerability in the way Google apps are updated. The hijacked apps would still work just fine, which hid the malware from users.

Armed with all the permissions users had granted to the real apps, “Agent Smith” was able to hijack other apps on the phone to display unwanted ads to users. That might not seem like a significant problem, but the same security flaws could be used to hijack banking, shopping and other sensitive apps, according to Aviran Hazum, head of Check Point’s analysis and response team for mobile devices.

“Hypothetically, nothing is stopping them from targeting bank apps, changing the functionality to send your bank credentials” to a third party, Hazum said. “The user wouldn’t be able to see any difference, but the attacker could connect to your bank account remotely.”

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Atlantic League introduces ‘robot umpires’ to baseball • The Washington Post

Jacob Bogage:

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The either long-dreaded or long-awaited arrival of digitally rendered ballpark justice has come to professional baseball. Robot umpires have arrived.

Except, they’re not really robots. They’re human umpires wearing a Bluetooth-connected earpiece, connected to an iPhone, connected to a software program in the press box. The software doesn’t make every call, just balls and strikes. And if it’s wrong, the human umpire can step in to overrule the program, and his decision, not the software’s, is final.

The Atlantic League, an independent circuit with seven teams on the East Coast and one in Texas, became the first American professional baseball league to let a computer call balls and strikes at its All-Star Game on Wednesday night.

“It’s amazing how good these robots look. They look just like the actual umpires,” league president Rick White joked in a phone interview before the game. “Once people actually see this happening, they’re going to realize it’s not that big a deal.”

And during the game, it wasn’t. Home plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an Apple AirPod in his right ear, which connected to an iPhone in his back pocket. That communicated ball or strike calls from a computer in the press box.

Players shook their heads at a couple of pitches each inning and acknowledged the system’s general criticism — it awards higher and lower strikes that human umpires generally do not — but overall they didn’t have any major qualms with the electronically enabled strike zone.

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Next step, umpires wearing AR glasses showing the strike zone and the ball? So cricket, tennis, football, rugby, baseball all now have computer-aided review. Any major sports that need it which don’t have it? (Side note: observe the assumption in the story that baseball umpires are always male.)
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified