Possibly not recommended if they came from a Chinese clinical trial. Photo by Toni Blay on Flickr.

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

A selection of 15 links for you. Quite a lot, really. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

How NPR factchecked the first presidential debate in realtime, on top of a live transcript • Nieman Journalism Lab

Shan Wang:

»

NPR used a transcription service that provides closed captioning via its API and fed the transcript into a single Google Doc where staffers cleaned up the transcription as it came in. Reporters, editors, the visuals team, copyeditors, researchers — ultimately more than 50 people had access to the Google Doc — scrambled to add their annotations, which were individually approved, edited, and then published. A researcher was also backreading the transcript and annotations as they were published to correct typos. 90 NPR member stations embedded NPR.org’s live annotations on their own sites, according to a spokesperson.

«

Pretty soon we’ll have machines that can just do it for us.
link to this extract

80% of Chinese clinical trials’ data fabricated • Pharmafile

»

The government review of clinical trial practise involved 1,622 programs of new pharmaceutical drugs waiting upon government approval to begin mass production. According to the report, the data gathered during the clinical trials failed to meet analysis requirements, were incomplete or were untraceable. 

The SFDA report concluded that some of the companies involved were thought to have hidden or deleted records of potential adverse effects and tampered with the data that did not meet projections. As a result, more than 80% of applications for mass productions of newly developed drugs have been cancelled.

Though the extent of the scandal may be surprising, there has long been an awareness of issues within China’s pharmaceutical practises. Third party agencies that are tasked with inspecting facilities, known as contract research organisation, are quoted by the report as being “accomplices in data fabrication due to cutthroat competition and economic motivation”.

«

But we were told that markets and competition were good things!
link to this extract

China’s fast-growing LeEco just made a big hire as it continues its U.S. expansion • Recode

Ina Fried:

»

Chinese device maker LeEco, which has been on an acquisition and hiring spree in the U.S., said Wednesday it has hired former Qualcomm executive Rob Chandhok to lead its North American research and development efforts.

That follows the recent hiring of Huawei executive Richard Ren to run LeEco’s non-China device business and serve as acting president for North America. In April it hired two former executives from Samsung’s U.S. operations to serve as its revenue chief and chief administrative officer in the U.S.

The company, which makes everything from electric bicycles to smartphones, recently announced plans to spend $2bn to acquire TV and electronics maker Vizio.

«

Big money, big ambitions.
link to this extract

Goodbye world: we’ve passed the carbon tipping point for good • Motherboard

Sarah Emerson:

»

It’s a banner week for the end of the world, because we’ve officially pushed atmospheric carbon levels past their dreaded 400 parts per million. Permanently.

According to a blog post last Friday from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, “it already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year—or ever again for the indefinite future.” Their findings are based on weekly observations of carbon dioxide at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, where climate scientists have been measuring CO2 levels since 1958.

What’s so terrifying about this number? For several years now, scientists have been warning us that if atmospheric carbon were allowed to surpass 400 parts per million, it would mark a serious “tipping point” into some unstoppable climate ramifications. In 2012, the Arctic was the first region on Earth to cross this red line. Three years later, for the first time since scientists had begun to record them, carbon levels remained above 400 parts per million for an entire month.

Chart: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some description adapted from the Scripps CO2 Program website, “Keeling Curve Lessons.”

This time, experts believe we’re stuck here for good, due to the cyclical effects of Mauna Loa’s CO2 curve.

«

Sustainability matters.

link to this extract

New Yorkers can now get unlimited Uber for $100 • Forbes

Brian Solomon:

»

Uber is rapidly moving into Amazon Prime-like subscription plans. After rolling out pricing options in six cities in September, the ride-sharing startup is adjusting and expanding its new “Uber Plus” program–including bringing it to New York City for the first time.

Starting this October, Uber users can pay up front for unlimited UberPool rides (taxi trips that you share with other passengers going in a similar direction) in Manhattan. The cost: $100 for unlimited rides in the first two weeks of October (1-14) and $200 for the full month. All rides must begin and end in Manhattan below 125th street.

«

A subscription! It’s a smart idea – create the expectation that Uber will be available on tap (but price it so most won’t be able to use all its value). Maybe the next step would be a dedicated Uber car. Parked outside your house. Which you can drive yourself. Hang on a minute..
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iMessage, metadata, and law enforcement: What you need to know • iMore

Rene Ritchie on The Intercept’s story that “Apple keeps records of who you contacted on iMessage for 30 days!”

»

Q Why is Apple keeping that log?

My understanding is that, at some point, Apple’s iMessage engineers decided they needed to keep a metadata log in order to detect and fix problems with iMessage dispatch.

Basically, when you type a contact into iMessage it figures out if that contact is also on an Apple device, and then sends an iMessage (blue bubble), or not on an Apple device, and then sends an SMS/MMS (green bubble).

Given that the messages themselves are end-to-end encrypted, that sorting has to be done up front, which generates metadata (data about data.)

Q: Does that really need troubleshooting?

Long time readers and iMessage users will remember that a few years ago, how iMessage handled dispatch was highly controversial. When switching between iPhone and iPad, or when switching to Android devices, people and media outlets were incensed that iMessage sometimes got it wrong.

Hell, people are still incensed when group messages spawn new threads because one of the participants switches devices mid-conversation.

So yes, it needs troubleshooting.

«

The Intercept felt like it was reaching a bit to find a controversy because, well, otherwise it wouldn’t be The Intercept.
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The demise of Google’s Project Ara and modularity in computing • Christensen Institute

Horace Dediu (who works and lectures at the Christensen Institute):

»

This idea of the modular phone was undoubtedly influenced by the history of the personal computer. The original IBM PC introduced modularity to personal computers by building them on a hardware “bus” where systems could be expanded via add-on cards that were user installable. In fact, the entire computer was easily put together from parts—the power supply, motherboard, case, display, video card, microprocessor, memory modules, etc. were all available for purchase separately. I put a few together myself during the 1990s and it was a hobby for many.

But the vast majority of people did not want to bother with building their own computers. The benefit of modularity was mainly for PC OEMs who took advantage of this modular architecture by sourcing parts and doing assembly on a just-in-time basis—as consumers placed their orders online. This “have-it-your-way” flexibility was what modularity enabled. It also meant that various sub-components like video cards and microprocessors could be improved at speeds different than those of hard drives or memories. Assemblers did not need to wait for any single improvement to continue offering a better product. The results were a tremendously rapid adoption of the product. Over a billion people became computer users in a matter of two decades.

When the smartphone emerged as a new computing form factor, it made sense that modularity should eventually take root. Recall that early computers, like early smartphones, where integrated products. The PC emerged after decades of mainframe and minicomputer evolution. The Project Ara visionaries saw this stage of modularity arriving and sought to enable it.

So why has Ara failed to even reach a market launch?

…This process of integration followed by modularization followed by re-integration and re-modularization is synchronized to a clock cycle in which performance is redefined. In other words, if the basis of competition changes, then the need for integration emerges. If and when the basis of competition stabilizes, the need for modularity returns.

«

link to this extract

Google-funded loan startup to pay $6.3m for ‘deceptive’ practices • The Guardian

Sam Levin:

»

A Google-funded lending startup will have to pay $6.3m in fines and refunds for a number of “deceptive” practices, signaling the US government’s interest in regulating the growing industry of online alternatives to traditional payday loans.

LendUp – a San Francisco firm that claims to offer a “secure, convenient way to get the money you need, fast” – misled customers, hid its true credit costs, and reversed pricing without disclosing it to consumers, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

“LendUp pitched itself as a consumer-friendly, tech-savvy alternative to traditional payday loans, but it did not pay enough attention to the consumer financial laws,” bureau director Richard Cordray said in a statement Tuesday, announcing the settlement.

The company, which has funding from high-profile Silicon Valley venture capital firms and GV, Google’s venture capital branch, began marketing its services in 2012.

«

Just as a reminder: in May, Google said it would ban ads from payday lenders as part of a policy to “keep bad ads out”. SEO expert Aaron Wall at once pointed out that LendUp seemed to be well-favoured by Google’s search algorithm despite using “doorway pages” and being, well, a payday lender.

Would love someone versed in SEO to examine where LendUp ranks now on Google search compared to its rivals.
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Huawei could ditch Android Wear for Samsung’s Tizen in its future smartwatches • 9to5Google

Ben Schoon:

»

a report out of Korea has revealed that Huawei may be switching its wearable OS entirely, ditching Google’s Android Wear for Samsung’s Tizen.

Now this should all be taken with a huge grain of salt, but if this report is to be believed, Huawei wants to separate itself from Google’s Android Wear on its wearables. Why? The report states that “Huawei [is] looking for an OS other than Google’s as the US firm had not been very collaborative.” Samsung, on the other hand, apparently has agreed to be fully cooperative in tailoring Tizen for Huawei’s wearables.

So what does that mean? More or less, Huawei wasn’t happy with Google’s tight grip on the Android Wear ecosystem and wants to be able to further customize its devices, as we’ve seen with its software skin on smartphones. We even saw Huawei call on Google to allow more customization of the OS in early 2015.

«

link to this extract

Google pushes Android Wear 2.0 back to 2017, issues third developer beta • Ars Technica UK

Andrew Cunningham:

»

Google announced Android Wear 2.0 alongside what later became Android Nougat at Google I/O a few months ago, but aside from a second Wear 2.0 developer preview build in July, we haven’t heard much since. There’s good and bad news on that front: the good news is that Google is releasing a third Wear 2.0 developer preview today with some new features and tweaks. The bad news is that the final release of the software is being delayed.

Wear 2.0’s release date has been pushed back from a vague “this fall” window to an equally vague “early 2017” window, presumably so Google can keep testing and tweaking. To that end, Google will release a fourth developer preview build, and the 2.0 update will begin trickling out to supported watches after that.

The biggest addition to the Android Wear Developer Preview 4 is a watch version of the Google Play store that can browse and download watch apps and watch faces without your phone—developers told Google that they wanted watch apps to be easier to find, and this is Google’s answer. 

«

Not sure how that delay will help OEMs who have barely seen Android Wear watches leave the shelves.
link to this extract

Google, Andromeda, mythology and hubris • Beyond Devices

Jan Dawson on the widely expected launch of some sort of conjoined Chrome-Android OS from Google called “Andromeda”; Google VP Hiroshi Lockheimer said that “We announced the 1st version of Android 8 years ago today. I have a feeling 8 years from now we’ll be talking about Oct 4, 2016.”

Dawson says:

»

My worry with Lockheimer’s remarks is that, in September 2008, Android wasn’t obviously going to be the hit it has since become. In hindsight, the launch of Android was enormously important, and helped create today’s smartphone market, but at the time the G1 launched it was a clunky and marginal bit of hardware. The concern is that whatever Google announces next week will be received — at least initially — in the same way. Perhaps some will see in it the promise of amazing things to come, but I suspect the initial impact will be marginal, and it will take years to see the true impact. And it’s entirely possible that the impact won’t be nearly as impressive as Google clearly thinks it will be. Although Lockheimer is saying that we’ll look back on October 4th as being a milestone event, he’s saying it ahead of time, and that’s where the hubris comes in.

«

link to this extract

Yahoo data breach investigation • InfoArmor

The security group seems to – sort of – be suggesting that the Yahoo hack wasn’t a state-sponsored one:

»

Unfortunately, the security community and press haven’t verified the dump and appear to be focused only on the significant number of records having @yahoo.com domain name. For any experienced threat intelligence analyst, the price of 3 BTC (~ 1806.42 USD) for 200,000,000 Yahoo user accounts is suspiciously strange and has no rational explanation.

Further, by evaluating a sample of records, more confusion is created because the decrypted passwords from some of them were legitimate for actual Yahoo users. However, the vast majority of the data is not legitimate, including invalid accounts, deleted accounts, and nonexistent accounts. After extensive analysis and cross reference against the data breach intelligence systems of InfoArmor, it was determined that the dump is based on multiple third party data leaks, which have no relation to Yahoo. Presumably, the threat actor specially misrepresented this data set in order to sensationalize and sell it for the purpose of monetizing his efforts following the negative impact of his relationship with tessa88…

…The actual Yahoo data dump is still not available on any underground forums or marketplaces, and has been distributed from so called Group “E” to one of their proxies for further monetization based on the sale of particular records from the dump, which can be delivered based on the specific criteria of the buyer (login, recovery e-mail, geography, etc.).

According to InfoArmor, the data theft of the Yahoo customer database may be the key in several targeted attacks against US Government personnel, which resulted after the disclosed contacts of the affected high-level officials of intelligence community happened in October 2015.

«

Wouldn’t that suggest that it was? This seems confused.
link to this extract

Samsung washing machine fires sparks recall warning reminder • Stuff.co.nz

Phillipa Yalden:

»

Two faulty washing machines have burst into flames in Waikato [New Zealand] in the last week – three years after they were recalled. 

Samsung issued a recall on four models of the top loader in 2013 due to the risk that moisture could penetrate the electrics and spark a fire. 

At the time, there were 34,000 affected machines in the marketplace, Fire Service National manager of fire investigations Peter Wilding said. 

About 88% of those had been recalled, leaving a further 4000 outstanding. 

READ MORE: * Thousands of burning washing machines still at large

«

I love that “still at large” as though they’re roaming the streets spitting at grannies. But it’s becoming a problem for Samsung: in the US, regulators says there are safety issues for top-loading models made between March 2011 and April 2016: a number have exploded.

White goods can be a problem. In the UK, Indesit has millions of tumble dryers which are liable to catch fire, for which it has only very gradually been rolling out a repair programme.
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Self-driving hype doesn’t reflect reality • WSJ

Christopher Mims digs into the details and asks the (peculiarly unasked) questions:

»

Ford, for example, has said it would release a self-driving car by 2021. Dig into the statements and press for details, and a Ford spokesman says that car will only be self-driving in the portion of major cities where the company can create and regularly update extremely detailed 3-D street maps. Ford declines to say how big those areas will be.

Lyft is collaborating with GM and says it will introduce fully self-driving cars by 2021. But co-founder John Zimmer says the vehicles will be limited to a specific geographic area and a top speed of 25 miles an hour.

Representatives of Volvo and Israel’s Mobileye NV, which makes self-driving technology and is collaborating with Intel and BMW, will impose similar limits on their coming self-driving vehicles. Volvo’s cars might refuse to go into self-driving mode on roads that are insufficiently mapped, says Erik Coelingh, the technical lead on Volvo’s self-driving car efforts. The cars will pull over to the side of the road, or come to a stop, if inclement weather impedes the vehicle’s perceptual abilities, Mr. Coelingh says.

That is a scary thought—and one reason why early “fully autonomous” cars will require monitoring by humans.

«

We were promised flying cars. Then we were promised fully autonomous cars…

This is though another example of the difference between good journalism and “oh look another corporate blogpost” writing. Mims simply kept asking for the detail, and the detail turns out to make the painting a lot less attractive than the broad brushstrokes given previously implied.
link to this extract

Across the US, police officers abuse confidential databases • Associated Press

Sadie Gurman and Eric Tucker:

»

No single agency tracks how often the abuse happens nationwide, and record-keeping inconsistencies make it impossible to know how many violations occur.

But the AP, through records requests to state agencies and big-city police departments, found law enforcement officers and employees who misused databases were fired, suspended or resigned more than 325 times between 2013 and 2015. They received reprimands, counseling or lesser discipline in more than 250 instances, the review found.

Unspecified discipline was imposed in more than 90 instances reviewed by AP. In many other cases, it wasn’t clear from the records if punishment was given at all. The number of violations was surely far higher since records provided were spotty at best, and many cases go unnoticed.

Among those punished: an Ohio officer who pleaded guilty to stalking an ex-girlfriend and who looked up information on her; a Michigan officer who looked up home addresses of women he found attractive; and two Miami-Dade officers who ran checks on a journalist after he aired unflattering stories about the department.

“It’s personal. It’s your address. It’s all your information, it’s your Social Security number, it’s everything about you,” said Alexis Dekany, the Ohio woman whose ex-boyfriend, a former Akron officer, pleaded guilty last year to stalking her. “And when they use it for ill purposes to commit crimes against you — to stalk you, to follow you, to harass you … it just becomes so dangerous.”

«

link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: although there is presently no underground station close to Battersea Power Station in London, by the time Apple aims to move in (around 2020?), the Northern Line extension should be completed – and will start/end at, guess where, Battersea Power Station. So Apple’s London staff need not worry about long walks. They’ll just get told off by their Watches for not walking enough.

“Where’s the pig, though?” Photo by Dario-Jacopo Lagana’ on Flickr.

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

A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Advocacy : where we stand • Getty Images

»

Today we’re campaigning to stop Google’s anti-competitive scraping of your imagery. By adding your name to both of the open letters below, you can lend your voice to the campaign and let US and EU anti-trust regulators know that it is not okay for Google to profit from your creativity and unfairly compete in the distribution of your images.

You do not need to be living in the United States or the European Union to sign these letters, nor do you need to be a Getty Images contributor. This affects the entire visual content industry and we are stronger together.

Click the links below to sign today.

«

One aggregator fighting against another.
link to this extract

Two years spamming spammers back • Medium

Brian Weinreich:

»

I created a bot to respond to these types of emails…

»

“Sarah”: My husband dead two years ago and the family members wants to kill me and my children and seat on the inheritance he left for us with bank here l am now in a hiding with my kids and the documents of inheritance is with us…

Bot: Very nice! Where abouts are you located?

«

(Jump to mlooper.com to see how this conversation continued…)

^ that’s the Sp@m Looper. It’s a service I made that puts spammers (and scammers) in an email loop with a bot that regularly asks the spammer questions.

«

Finally a real use for chatbots.
link to this extract

Donate to OpenStreetMap • OpenStreetMap

»

This year, we are raising money with a most important goal: our continued independence as a project.

OpenStreetMap is the largest open geographic database in the world, the data infrastructure for multitudes of mapping projects around the globe. Your donation to the OpenStreetMap Foundation will cover our core operational expenses in supporting the OpenStreetMap project: hardware costs, legal fees, administrative assistant and other expenses of our working groups and administration.

We currently run extremely lean for an operation for a project the size and importance of OpenStreetMap. The OpenStreetMap Foundation relies on revenue from individual and corporate membership dues, profits generated by the annual State of the Map conferences, and past donation drives (thank you so much for the support last year — GBP 60,000 for updating our server infrastructure). We must keep our income sources diversified, as these vary from year to year, but our modest needs stay the same. For this, we need your support.

«

At the time of saving, they’re just over one-tenth of the way to a €70,000 goal. If you use, contribute. And maybe even if you don’t.
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Twitter’s steep premium: the cost of employee stock grants • The New York Times

Michael de la Merced:

»

Buying Twitter would be a challenge for a number of reasons. Among the lesser-explored ones: The struggling social network pays out so much stock to its employees.

Even among its Silicon Valley peers, which have drawn closer scrutiny from investors recently because of their generous stock-based compensation practices, Twitter is notable for how much equity it doles out.

And those grants of restricted stock units or options, which would have to be covered to some degree by any buyer, simply add to the purchase price of any deal.

According to Twitter’s most recent annual filing, the company racked up $682m in stock-based compensation last year. By comparison, the company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — which also excludes stock-based compensation — for the year was $557.8m.

Factoring in the payouts would have pushed Twitter well into the red for the year.

«

Someone did point out this fact about the ESOs to me on Twitter after I wrote about the possibility of it being bought, and I can only apologise that Twitter’s search is so poor for any period longer than 14 days that I couldn’t find it to link to that instead.
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Apple is developing hardware for the ‘iPhone 8’ in Israel • Business Insider

Sam Shead:

»

Apple is using an office in Israel to develop hardware for the “iPhone 8,” which is expected to be released next year with a radical redesign, according to an employee at the site.

Details on the iPhone 8 are scarce at present but some reports, including this one from MacRumours, suggest that it will have an edge-to-edge display that removes the need for the top and bottom bezels where features like the fingerprint sensor and the front-facing camera are located.

Some hardware for the iPhone 8 is being created in Herzliya, Israel, according to a local Apple employee, who said employees in Israel work on all of Apple’s new products.

«

Wow! Tell us more about this knowledgeable person.

»

The employee, whose identity is being concealed by Business Insider, solders components for Apple.

«

🤔
link to this extract

Apple to create stunning new HQ at Battersea Power Station • London Evening Standard

Jonathan Prynn:

»

Apple is to create a spectacular new London headquarters at Battersea Power Station in a massive coup for the developers behind the £9 billion project.

The iPhone and iPad maker will move 1,400 staff from eight sites around the capital into what it calls “a new Apple campus” at the Grade II* listed former electricity generator.

Its employees will occupy all six floors of office space in the brick “cathedral of power”, which is being painstakingly restored after 33 years standing derelict on the banks of the Thames.

In a statement to the Standard, Apple said it was looking forward to the 2021 opening of “our new London campus” as staff relocate to “this magnificent new development at one of the city’s best-known landmarks”. It added: “This is a great opportunity to have our entire team working and collaborating in one location while supporting the renovation of a neighbourhood rich with history.”

«

…though that history doesn’t include “building underground stations nearby”. The nearest is Vauxhall station, 20 minutes’ walk away. For staff used to the joys of Hanover Street and Covent Garden, Vauxhall might be something of a comedown. Perhaps they’ll walk to and from work listening to Pink Floyd’s “Animals”. (But “Dogs” or “Sheep”?)
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Google Car: sense and money impasse • Monday Note

Jean-Louis Gassée:

»

With all of the Can You Top This? PR that surrounds driving automation, [Alphabet CEO Larry] Page’s stance [that an autonomous car must be fully autonomous] is an admirable injection of thoughtfulness, a sobriety check. The visionary statements and self-driving demos (cue demo jokes) blithely omit the “mere matter of implementation”. What’s the plan, the timeline? What are we going to do with the 235 million cars and trucks on US roads, some expected to last 20 years or more? How will manufacturers negotiate the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Automated Vehicles Policy? Sometimes, the last 5% of a project takes 200% of the time and money.

Then we have another unanswered Google Car question: The path to money.

Personally, I think a company needs one really good idea every ten years, so for a company as rich as Google, a few billion dollars for a new breakthrough looked eminently affordable…for a while. But there is such a thing as too much, such as Google barges and many other puzzling pursuits that fall into the Because We Can category.

In May 2015, Ruth Porat left Morgan Stanley where she was Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer to become Alphabet’s CFO. The story is that her appointment had been heavily encouraged by investors who were concerned about Alphabet’s runaway “moonshot” projects. As expected, Porat set out to improve financial discipline and, for many projects, to demand a path to profitability. Highly speculative research, such as the Calico project’s quest to extend human life by 20 to 100 years, doesn’t entail huge financial outlays, but a grand and realistic endeavor such as developing the Google Self-Driving Car will require billions to reach its destination and raises business model questions as a result.

«

The years when Google could pile into lots of “because we can” – about five years ago? – feel distant now. As the presidential debate of some years went, echoing the fast food outlet advert, “where’s the beef?”
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Facebook and Google: the most powerful and secretive empires we’ve ever known • The Guardian

Ellen P. Goodman and Julia Powles:

»

Characterizing Facebook or Google as powerful media organs – even the most powerful – actually understates their power. Marshall McLuhan, 60 years ago, gave us another, fuller understanding of media. Electric light is a medium “totally radical, pervasive, and decentralized” that appears to us as media only when constituted into video content. Electrical current itself completely changes our relationship to the world and, in the process, reconstitutes us. A medium is not merely something that feeds us content. It is a condition like air or water, through which we move without noticing.

The analogy captures part of what is happening, but goes even further. Facebook and Google are not only carrying us, but constituting us. We are, in fact, their media. Geared as they are to sharing, clicking and eyeballs, these media do not measure and do not value solitary contemplation, reflection and disconnection. They thrive and pulse on popularity, not veracity. They feed on extremes, not common causes.

«

link to this extract

BlackBerry bails on building its own phones • CNET

Roger Cheng:

»

BlackBerry posted fiscal second-quarter results on Wednesday that saw it swing to a loss of $372m, or 71 cents a share, from a year-ago profit of $51m, or 24 cents a share. Revenue fell by a third to $334m.

Analysts, on average, forecast a loss of 5 cents a share and revenue of $394m.

[CEO John] Chen confirmed on a call with analysts that BlackBerry will have little to do with future hardware efforts, and will only collect a royalty fee on any phone sold by its partners.

BlackBerry had previously teased a second Android phone to come, but that’s unlikely to show up.

It’s unclear whether future phones from the partnership will make their way to more mature markets like the US, where the carriers have been lukewarm on carrying the devices. But there is still a small, but dedicated, base of users who appreciate the physical keyboard and focus on security.

Chen teased other interested companies looking to strike similar partnerships around the world, but didn’t provide any names. He also hinted there would be high-end devices focused on security.

BlackBerry plans to complete the shutdown of the internal hardware business by the end of this fiscal year.

«

Sic transit gloria mundi. Microsoft next, then Sony?
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Defending against hackers took a back seat at Yahoo, insiders say • The New York Times

Nicole Perlroth and Vindu Goel:

»

In 2013, disclosures by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, showed that Yahoo was a frequent target for nation-state spies. Yet it took a full year after Mr. Snowden’s initial disclosures for Yahoo to hire a new chief information security officer, Alex Stamos.

Jeff Bonforte, the Yahoo senior vice president who oversees its email and messaging services, said in an interview last December that Mr. Stamos and his team had pressed for Yahoo to adopt end-to-end encryption for everything. Such encryption would mean that only the parties in a conversation could see what was being said, with even Yahoo unable to read it.

Mr. Bonforte said he resisted the request because it would have hurt Yahoo’s ability to index and search message data to provide new user services. “I’m not particularly thrilled with building an apartment building which has the biggest bars on every window,” he said.

«

These things build up over time. But eventually they take their toll.
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Nice planet. Let’s go there. Photo by Kevin M Gill on Flickr.

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

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

Elon Musk’s Mars mission: all the news from the big announcement • The Verge

Russell Brandom:

»

On September 27, Elon Musk announced a bold new plan to establish a permanent human habitation on Mars with his company SpaceX. It’s one of the most ambitious schemes Musk — or humanity in general — has ever attempted, relying on huge advances in both rocketry and spaceship construction. Follow along here for the latest news about the project, and whether Musk can succeed in his longheld dream of bringing humanity to Mars.

Developing. Check out our SpaceX Mars Colonization liveblog for the latest updates and our storystream for all the news!

«

Sometimes I think that The Verge is actually one of those fake news sites that you see in films, announcing some new plot exposition. All it’s missing is the spinning headline.

(Sure, Musk announced all this stuff. It’s interesting. But it’s a long way to Mars. Matt Damon can probably sleep easy, without fear of abandonment, for now.)
link to this extract

Facebook ordered to stop harvesting data on WhatsApp users in Germany • TechCrunch

Natasha Lomas:

»

Facebook has been ordered to stop harvesting the data of WhatsApp users in Germany.

The move follows the latter’s shock announcement last month that it would start sharing user data with its parent company, Facebook, including users’ phone numbers and last seen time in the app. Stated uses for the data includes marketing/ad targeting.

Shock because, back at the time of the $19BN acquisition, WhatsApp’s founder publicly stated that nothing would change for users of the ad-free messaging platform as a result of selling to the social network giant. Full marks if you didn’t believe a word of it at the time.

But reneging on such public statement looks to be what’s got the two into hot water in Hamburg now, with the city’s data protection authority describing the resulting situation as both misleading for users and a breach of national data protection law.

«

No doubt in a couple of years the UK’s Data Protection Registrar will decide the same, neatly shutting the stable door after the horse has moved to the next town and sent its kids to university.
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B2G OS and Gecko Annoucement from Ari Jaaksi & David Bryant • Google Groups

Julie McCracken, senior engineering program manager at the Mozilla foundation:

»

By the end of 2015 Mozilla leadership had come to the conclusion that our then Firefox OS initiative of shipping phones with commercial partners would not bring Mozilla the returns we sought. We made the first of a series of announcements about changes in the development of Firefox OS at Mozilla.  Since then we have gradually wound down that work and, as of the end of July 2016 have stopped all commercial development on Firefox OS. This message recaps what transpired during that period of time and also describes what will happen with the Firefox OS code base going forward.

«

Without a smartphone presence, the future for Mozilla looks unclear. The desktop is becoming less important, and it isn’t the default browser on any platform. Of course, that was the case when Firefox rose to prominence on the desktop too.
link to this extract

Ordinary punters will get squat from smart meters, reckons report • The Register

Kat Hall:

»

Smart meters will benefit suppliers nearly twice as much as consumers in terms of cost savings, according to an assessment by the late Department for Energy and Climate Change.

The government’s £11bn smart meter project will require energy suppliers to offer 53 million meters to homes and small businesses by 2020. Smart meters are being rolled out in two phases.

The mass rollout phase is expected to begin next month, after several major delays. There are now more than 3.6 million smart meters in operation.

A Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee “evidence check” of smart meters noted that “although the scale and durability of such savings is contested and it would appear that the rollout could alter consumption levels by 2–3%.”

DECC’s assessment of the cost savings, contained in the evidence check, found that overall consumers in the UK would save £4.3bn, while suppliers would save nearly £8bn by cutting site visits and reduced inquiries.

Nick Hunn, CTO of WiFore Consulting, told the committee he was sceptical of the extent to which consumers will change their behaviour for a relatively modest financial reward, arguing that “£26 a year or 7p a day is not a big incentive”, and that “there are far cheaper ways of achieving savings”.

«

link to this extract

The decline of Stack Overflow • Hackernoon

This is from 2015, but nothing is reckoned to have changed: Stack Overflow – like so many sites which have user-generated content and user-policed content – has been overrun by people who love to be in control. So, asks John Slegers:

»

Are there any alternatives?

Quora might seem like an obvious choice, but it shares many of the issues common at Stack Overflow, albeit in a less obvious manner. For example, downvoted answers are cleverly hidden from the eyes of most users and it’s not uncommon for answers to be deleted without any explanation or notification and/or without a visible trace to anyone but the answer’s author. Quora is giving some users completely anonymous powers to edit the site as they see fit, yet almost nobody seems to know about it.

So while Quora may seem more democratic and reasonable, this is really only at the surface. Trolling and plain petty authoritarianism from privileged users is no less common on that site. For many of the same reasons Huxley’s dystopian A Brave New World is more creepy and disturing than Orwell’s dystopian 1984, Quora is more creepy and more disturbing as a Q&A community than Stack Overflow.

«

link to this extract

Premium commoditization • CCS Insight

»

Apple and Samsung have made $650 the standard starting point for flagship smartphones in the US. Each year these leading manufacturers up the specs with their new generation products while maintaining the price, but at some point in time, this cycle is bound to break down. This could be starting now.

We believe that consumer behaviour is showing a shift that’s starting with the younger generation of users who better understand device pricing and product features. On social media platforms and at several leading online retail sites, some smartphones are trending — an important indication of a growing awareness of value.

In particular, there is a trinity of budget premium smartphones making $400 a new standard price for value buyers. Huawei’s Honor 8, the OnePlus 3 and ZTE’s Axon 7 are attention-grabbing phones and it’s difficult to believe that devices like these won’t have a longer-term effect on the overall global market.

Huawei’s Honor 8 is a 5.2in phone with 32GB of storage, a 12-megapixel rear camera, USB Type-C and 4GB of RAM. It has a fingerprint sensor and NFC as well as an octa-core HiSilicon processor (Huawei’s in-house chipset brand). ZTE’s Axon 7 is a 5.5in phone running Android on a Snapdragon 820 with 4GB of RAM, a 20-megapixel rear camera, and 64GB of on-board storage. It also has a fingerprint sensor and NFC reader. The OnePlus 3 is also a 5.5in phone running on a Snapdragon 820 processor, but comes with 6GB of RAM. It’s also loaded with the same sensors and readers and USB-C.

For consumers who are less brand-conscious and interested in separating their phones from their operator payments, such devices are proving to be appealing.

«

$400 is the new $650.
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The tao of Notch beyond Twitter • The Escapist

Brad Glasgow interviews “Notch” – aka Markus Persson – who became fabulously wealthy when he sold Minecraft to Microsoft:

»

You’ve talked on Twitter about feeling isolated and you mentioned that it is difficult to tell who is your friend and who is there for the money. You’ve talked about how you like Vegas because you know everyone is there for your money.

MP: This was like a year ago or something?

BG: Right.

MP: Since then I’ve basically come completely out of it. Because I also realized that I’m really an introvert. So I think I kind of had this problem before, always, for my entire life. I didn’t necessarily want to have a lot of friends. And then once you sell your company and have a lot of money there’s not much else to do than continue learning or meet friends and exploring the real world, which is really fun, but it has been kind of a jarring change. I got to play it off, all of it, as just being a weird, eccentric Swedish guy, so it was easier to stop being social.

TE: It seems that it created an image online where people think you are this lonely, depressed rich guy with nothing to do.

MP: Well yeah, that’s the cultural idea of who I am, that I’ve become that.

TE: Is it accurate?

MP: I mean, I spend a lot of time alone, but it’s not as if I’m lonely, because that’s how I feel the most productive and happy. Generally if I’ve been alone programming for a couple of months then yeah I’m going to want to go out and see friends. So I kind of go back and forth, spend some time just programming and learning, you know, playing around with WebGL. And then I spend like a month doing a lot of social stuff like partying. I love partying. And a lot of dinners. I’m trying to learn how to appreciate red wine, which is impossible. I like red wine but I never remember any of it, like names of the old French chateaus.

«

It’s an eight-page interview (90 minutes of Skype chat). You can put the idea of Persson as some sort of gloomy bloke sitting in an empty mansion to bed.
link to this extract

Blackberry phones face thumbs down • FT

Nic Fildes:

»

For many, a decision to close the unit would be an inevitable consequence of BlackBerry’s downward spiral since the ill-fated BlackBerry 10 launch in 2013. Then, its creative director, the singer Alicia Keys, unveiled the new handsets on stage, before continuing to tweet from an iPhone in the following days.

The latest industry data make grim reading for [BlackBerry CEO John] Chen as he considers whether to abandon making phones and go all in on software and security technology.

Smartphone sales figures from Gartner, the research company, show BlackBerry had a pitiful market share of 0.1% in the second quarter. That represented shipments of only 400,400 phones — less than a third of what it achieved the year before and a fraction of the 15m it sold in a quarter six years ago when at its peak.

Annette Zimmermann, an analyst with Gartner, said BlackBerry has sold only 1m phones this year. “That is not a sustainable business,” she said. “I don’t see any upside in trying to return it to a better state. It is the end of the story.”

There is still hope that a much smaller, more focused BlackBerry could succeed as a niche player and companies such as the rejuvenated Nintendo have proved that persistence can pay off. In April, Mr Chen hired Alex Thurber, a former McAfee executive, as his new head of device sales, suggesting he had not given up.

«

“Creative director”. Oh yes. And yet Chen boasted at the previous quarterly results that phones were near to gross margin breakeven. (Long way from operating profit though.) BlackBerry announces its quarterly results today, Wednesday.
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Satya Nadella on Microsoft’s new age of intelligence • Fast Company

Harry McCracken:

»

“In the long arc of time, I learned from our own history that you can’t assume any high-volume device will be at the center of all activities for all time to come,” [Satya] Nadella adds, implying that just as Windows didn’t rule the world indefinitely, it’s not a given that iOS and Android will reign forever.

In the time since Nadella began making cloud-first, mobile-first into a mantra, it’s become clear that it involves a lot more than just making sure that Microsoft’s best-known apps are available in capable versions for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

Earlier this year, for instance, the company acquired SwiftKey, a third-party keyboard for Android and iOS that, in its Android incarnation, now utilizes neural network technology to power its guesses about what you’re really trying to type. “We’ve proved that the keyboard is not associated with the device, it’s associated with you,” says Nadella. “That’s a fundamental shift in computing.”

Nothing is more core to Microsoft’s AI vision than the way it treats Cortana as an agent that—with your consent—can know quite a bit about you, and then share it with specialized bots on a need-to-know basis. (The service currently has 133 million active users across Windows iOS, and Android.) As Nadella explains it, “it’s your data, as opposed to something that’s going to be used for advertising or conflated with other data or transferred over to other apps without your consent.”

«

That “long arc of time” phrase is a good one (Tim Cook uses it to insist iPad sales will recover); the numbers for Cortana are surprisingly high to me. (Presume most of those are on Windows 10 PCs and Xbox.) Would love to know what the daily user numbers are.
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Motorola goes through yet another massive layoff (updated) • Droid Life

“Kellex”:

»

According to two sources close to the matter, Lenovo just laid off hundreds of employees at Motorola, potentially more than 50% of the remaining workforce at the mobile device maker. One source actually pegged the number at 700+ out of 1200 remaining who will be told that they no longer have a job within the next day. 

At least one now-former employee took to Facebook to confirm the news (we’ve decided not to include a link to preserve his privacy), saying that he has been with the company for over 20 years and his last day will be this Friday. He mentioned that Lenovo was moving more operations to China, which one of our sources said has been the increasing pattern over the past two years. That source also thinks (according to the internal rumor mill) they may just relocate some remaining Chicago-based staff to North Carolina where Lenovo US is based. EDIT: Motorola denies this rumor and says they plan to keep their HQ in Chicago.

«

Lenovo confirmed to Droid-Life that the total number affected would be “less than 2% of the 55,000 employed by Lenovo globally” – which puts it at up to 1,100.

An executive at a US company once said to me that Google’s disposal of Motorola to Lenovo was a shocking act – the destruction of a longstanding American brand which was a pioneer in the mobile phone business. Now the staff are out too – on brutally short termination periods.
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Print to PDF on iOS 10 • Devonian Times

»

iOS 10 comes with a great but somewhat hidden feature: Print to PDF. It allows you to save any document that you can print as a PDF and send it by email or clip it to DEVONthink To Go.

In the Share sheet from any app choose Print. The print preview dialog appears. Now instead of printing “pinch” on the print preview like just as if you’d want to enlarge it. It opens — now as a PDF — in a separate dialog. Choose Share again and send it anywhere you like.

«

Who on earth thinks of doing the “zoom out” action and discovers this? But thank god someone did. Equally, though, was it put in intentionally by Apple, or is it some byproduct of how iOS 10 renders content (PDF is at the base of all display on OSX, and by extension iOS)?
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Mobile phone sales have peaked. Peaked! Geddit? Photo by jd_hiker on Flickr.

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

A selection of 11 links for you. But fact-check it if you like. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

UK Mobile Consumer Survey • Deloitte

»

This year’s report will likely mark the end of the smartphone growth era, and the start of its consolidation. A mere nine years after the launch of the first full touchscreen smartphone, adoption is nearing a plateau, at 81% of UK adults, and 91% of 18–44 year olds.

The smartphone user base is approaching an unprecedented peak. No other personal device has had the same commercial and societal impact as the smartphone, and no other current device seems likely to.

While the base may plateau, relentless innovation continues at device and network levels. Devices are likely to incorporate more functionality and get even faster.

Biometric sensors, particularly fingerprint readers (this year’s cover image), are likely to see widespread adoption. Over a quarter of smartphones now have a fingerprint reader, of which three quarters are in use.

«

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The mobile phone market has peaked • CCS Insight

»

CCS Insight’s latest global forecast for mobile phones confirms that the market has peaked at about 2 billion units per year after decades of growth.

The research firm expects than in 2016 shipments of mobile phones will slip 1.3% from their level in 2015, with most markets experiencing a difficult year. A notable exception is China, where the market is recovering from a very weak 2015; however, echoing the global trend, total shipments in the country are expected to stabilise at about 450m units a year until 2020.

Marina Koytcheva, Director of Forecasting at CCS Insight, noted, “After years of analysts and commentators talking about mobile phone market peaking within the visible horizon, it has now reached that point”.

CCS Insight’s forecast shows that smartphones remain the powerhouse of mobile phone shipment volumes. They continue to grow as a proportion of the total market and will account for almost three-quarters of the market in 2016, rising to nearly 90% in 2020. In 2016, 1.42bn units are forecast to ship, up 4.1% from 2015.

However, CCS Insight believes the pressure on smaller phone makers is increasing. Koytcheva continues, “As growth is depleting, competition is intensifying and it comes as little surprise that margins are being squeezed harder than ever. Companies without the scale advantages of manufacturers such as Samsung, Apple or Huawei will find it much harder to make money”.

«

Those without scale will lose money because of component price rises. Winter, of a sort, is coming.
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Business Insider testing paywall and an ad-blocking response • AdAge

Jeremy Barr:

»

Business Insider, according to co-founder and CEO Henry Blodget, has long harbored ambitions to create a dual-revenue business model, buoyed by both advertising and subscriptions.

The company plans to test those ambitions, starting this week, with a “small,” randomly selected group of readers, who will be prompted to subscribe to Business Insider. As is standard with so-called metered paywalls, the readers selected for this test will get an allotment of free articles. Multiple meter levels will be tried, starting at 10 free stories. For those impacted, the meter will re-start every 30 days.

These selected users will see the subscription message three times, at the beginning of the test, at the mid-point of their free story allotment, and with one story remaining…

…Also starting this week, readers that have installed and enabled an ad blocker will be told to either whitelist Business Insider’s website or pay up for a subscription, the same one offered to the small group of paywall-testers. (The New York Times is experimenting with a similar, whitelist-or-pay approach, which CEO Mark Thompson said in June is seeing results.)

«

Given that BI is frequently rewrites of paywalled or free articles (though also does original content), what is it offering that is worth a subscription?
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Google’s internet-beaming balloon gets a new pilot: AI • WIRED

Cade Metz:

»

Project Loon’s navigation system does not use deep neural networks. It uses a simpler form of machine learning called Gaussian processes. But the basic dynamic is the same. And it underlines the little acknowledged reality that deep learning is just part of the AI revolution. Over the course of Project Loon, the company has collected data on over 17 million kilometers of balloon flights, and through those Gaussian processes, the navigation system can start predicting what course the balloon should take, when it should move the balloon up and when it should move the balloon down (which involves pumping air into a balloon inside the balloon—or pumping the air out).

These predictions aren’t perfect—in large part because of the weather up in the stratosphere is so, well, unpredictable. The stratosphere sits above a lot of the weather, but according to Candido, the balloons have encountered far more uncertainty than the team expected. So, they’ve also beefed up the navigation system with what’s called reinforcement learning.

«

Would have been helpful if Wired could just to link to the Wikipedia page on Gaussian processes; essentially, they assume that events occur somewhere on a Gaussian (bell curve) probability distribution. So it’s like “dumb AI”.
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Microsoft: Windows 10 now on 400 million devices • ZDNet

Mary Jo Foley:

»

Windows 10 is now running on 400 million active devices as of today, September 26, Microsoft officials said.

That’s up from 300 million as of May 5, and 207 million at the end of March. “Active devices” mean devices than have been active in the past 28 days, Microsoft officials have said. The figure includes not only Windows 10 installed on PCs, tablets, and phones, but also on Xbox One consoles and HoloLens, Surface Hubs.

Microsoft’s original goal was to have Windows 10 running on one billion devices by 2018, but execs recently conceded they wouldn’t make that number until some unspecified time after that.

«

Strangely enough, the graph based on Microsoft’s publicly stated numbers (above, by me: blue line is the polynomial, not straight line, trend) suggests that it’s presently nicely on course to hit a billion by mid-2018. That could change depending on PC sales, though, as those are the main source of new Windows 10 activations.
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Disney is working with an adviser on potential Twitter bid • Bloomberg

Alex Sherman and Sarah Frier:

»

Disney, if it decides to make a bid, would be able to help the company further its video-streaming media strategy. Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer of Twitter, is also on the board of Disney.
Twitter shares reversed previous declines on the news of interest from Disney, rising as much as 2%. The shares were trading at $22.83 at 2:02 p.m. in New York. The stock soared 21% Friday following reports of the talks with Salesforce. Disney shares fell, dropping as much as 2% to $91.40.

“It’s a video distribution play,” said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. “What Disney has to think about is what is its place in a post cord-cutting world. They are investing in technology for distribution — and this would give them the platform to reach audiences around the world.”

Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger has developed a reputation as a strategic thinker with an appetite for bold bets such as the $7.4bn acquisition of animation studio Pixar just months after he became CEO.

«

Hmm, OK – that has some strategy to it, at least.
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New Samsung Note 7 battery issues surface with recall replacements • Patently Apple

Jack Purcher:

»

According to News Channel YTN, “The new handset still has battery issues. A Galaxy Note 7 buyer, surnamed Choi, had received a new Note 7 through the tech firm’s recall program, which began on Sept. 19 in Korea. His new phone, however, had a battery that drained quickly, with its battery level dropping almost 1% every second. It also overheated easily. Even when the Note 7 was being charged, the battery drained quickly.”

The report further noted that “After the battery level dropped to 1 percent, the battery did not get charged above 10 percent. And a technician at Samsung’s after-sales service center disconnected the charger as soon as he found out the power draining issue, probably because he was concerned about a possible explosion,” Choi was quoted as saying.

In a videotaped charge test of Lee’s defective Note 7, the handset showed the battery going from 75% to 49% in 39 minutes.

Another Galaxy Note 7 user, surnamed Lee, also claimed that the new phone he received through Samsung’s recall program had similar battery issues.” So it appears to not be an isolated problem.

«

This just seems to go on and on.
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Android and its first purchasable product, the T-Mobile G1, celebrate their 8th birthdays • Android Police

Richard Gao:

»

Eight years – that’s how long Android has been available to the public for. September 23rd, 2008 marked two huge events in Android’s history: T-Mobile’s release of the G1, the first Android device available to the masses, and Google’s release of the Android 1.0 SDK. Happy birthday, Android!

The T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream and Android Dev Phone 1, was the first Android device that the public could actually purchase. Reading through T-Mobile’s press release is pretty hilarious; things like touchscreen functionality, 3G, Gmail, and the Android Market seemed so futuristic back then, but pretty much every Android device has them now. We don’t have full QWERTY keyboards anymore, though.

Equally hilarious is the G1’s spec sheet – this chunky device sported a 3.2-inch 320p display, a 528MHz Qualcomm chip, 192MB of RAM, 256MB of internal storage, and a 3MP camera. Oh, and there wasn’t a headphone jack; remind you of any modern phones?

«

I usually detest “anniversary journalism” (five years ago today.. seventeen years ago..) but this is one worth marking. Android has transformed the world. You can cavil about whether it took ideas from Apple, but the key point is that it let let OEMs make affordable handsets for billions of people – and made entire new industries possible on a broad front. We’re only just beginning to see the benefit of the Shenzhen ecosystem on the wider economy.
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Why Oculus Rift will struggle at its UK launch • Midia Research

Zach Fuller, noting that the HTC Vive is reckoned to have already sold five times more devices than Oculus:

»

Sony will also be launching their Playstation VR headset next month, with the device holding the distinct advantage of being instantly adaptable to the 3 million PS4 consoles that have already been sold in the UK (as well as retailing at £200 pounds less than the Rift). With content also a pressing issue, with a multi-billion chasm between investment in VR Hardware and actual experiences, it helps that Playstation VR will be arriving alongside several well known game titles, with acclaimed series such as Star Trek and Resident Evil making their Virtual Reality debuts alongside the release. Coupled with brand recognition and Sony’s refined experience at distributing gaming products, this will likely give the Japanese conglomerate at the minimum a short-term lead in headset sales and disrupt momentum for the Rift.

By no means does this put Oculus out of the VR race. With Facebook’s support they are not only shielded by a financial advantage over HTC and Sony but are also invigorated by the ability to leverage their parent company’s mass influence over global consumers for the purpose of marketing.

«

Sony’s advantage in having gamers with compatible devices is huge, though.
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The democratization of censorship • Krebs on Security

Brian Krebs:

»

The Internet can’t route around censorship when the censorship is all-pervasive and armed with, for all practical purposes, near-infinite reach and capacity. I call this rather unwelcome and hostile development the “The Democratization of Censorship.”

Allow me to explain how I arrived at this unsettling conclusion. As many of you know, my site was taken offline for the better part of this week. The outage came in the wake of a historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack which hurled so much junk traffic at Krebsonsecurity.com that my DDoS protection provider Akamai chose to unmoor my site from its protective harbor.

Let me be clear: I do not fault Akamai for their decision. I was a pro bono customer from the start, and Akamai and its sister company Prolexic have stood by me through countless attacks over the past four years. It just so happened that this last siege was nearly twice the size of the next-largest attack they had ever seen before. Once it became evident that the assault was beginning to cause problems for the company’s paying customers, they explained that the choice to let my site go was a business decision, pure and simple.

Nevertheless, Akamai rather abruptly informed me I had until 6 p.m. that very same day — roughly two hours later — to make arrangements for migrating off their network.

«

Krebs’s progress, from a writer on the Washington Post who covered security, to a full-blown expert on the underside of the web – with the attendant problems. He migrated his site with the help of Google’s Project Shield, which is a free program “to help protect journalists from online censorship”. It’s a Jigsaw project – one of the ones I mentioned last week. The source of the attack seems to have been hacked “internet of things” devices: CCTV cameras, video recorders, and so on.

Krebs also notes Bruce Schneier’s comment that “someone is learning how to take down the internet” (also noted here last week). There’s a worrying undercurrent here, as Krebs notes; the biggest problem is that ISPs in particular don’t act to solve it. (And there are ways they could.)
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Some cities are taking another look at LED lighting after AMA warning • The Washington Post

Michael Ollove:

»

If people are sleepless in Seattle, it may not be only because they have broken hearts.

The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a warning in June that high-intensity LED streetlights — such as those in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and elsewhere — emit unseen blue light that can disturb sleep rhythms and possibly increase the risk of serious health conditions, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. The AMA also cautioned that those light-emitting-diode lights can impair nighttime driving vision.

Similar concerns have been raised over the past few years, but the AMA report adds credence to the issue and is likely to prompt cities and states to reevaluate the intensity of LED lights they install.

«

*looks at LED lights around house* Oh.
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

“All I did was say my name was Jennifer Null.” Photo by Random McRandom on Flickr.

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

A selection of 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Response to Airbnb’s report on discrimination • Edelman.org

(Professor) Ben Edelman:

»

This month Airbnb released a report (PDF) investigating discrimination by its hosts against guests (including racial minorities and others), assessing the evidence of the problem and evaluating proposed solutions. The accompanying announcement offers lofty principles—”creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere.”

In contrast to the company’s prior denials, Airbnb now admits the problem is urgent: “discrimination must be addressed”; “minorities struggle more than others to book a listing”; “some members of the community did not receive the timely, compassionate response they expected and deserved when they reported instances of discrimination”; Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy was not widely known, within or outside company. This much is beyond dispute.

While Airbnb’s report is a step in the right direction, it does little to address the crucial subject of how to actually fix the problem of discrimination. Indeed, the report proposes actions of uncertain or unproven effectiveness.  At the same time, the report quickly dismisses a simpler alternative response—removing guest photos and names from booking requests—which would be far more likely to succeed. Meanwhile, the report completely fails to defend the legal gamesmanship by which Airbnb avoids litigation on the merits when consumers complain about Airbnb, and the report equally fails to defend Airbnb’s continued prohibition on users conducting research to uncover and measure discrimination for themselves.

This article offers my critique.

«

Edelman is good at critiquing the subtle discrimination that big and small tech companies do. He pointed out the racial discrimination among AirBnB lettors back in December 2015; it’s still valid.
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New record low solar price in Abu Dhabi – costs plunging faster than expected • Ramez Naam

»

The price of solar power – in the very sunniest locations in particular – is plunging faster than I expected. I’ve been talking for years now about the exponential decline of solar power prices. I’ve often been called a wide-eyed optimist. Here’s what those projections (based on historical learning rates) look like.

In fact, if anything, my forecasts were too conservative. The solar prices I expected have been smashed by bids in the Middle East and in Latin America. I will need to update the model above in a future post.

The latest record is an incredibly low bid of 2.42 cents/kwh solar electricity in Abu Dhabi. That is an unsubsidized price.

«

If there’s anything to give us a little hope, it’s this: allied to electric cars, the almost unlimited supply of silicon (sand is plentiful), you could get towards a future where we use a great deal less fossil fuel.

Equally, this puts the crazily high price that the UK government has agreed to buy electricity from the new Chinese-built Hinkley C nuclear reactor – 9p per kWh, or about 12 cents/kWh – into perspective. It would almost be cheaper just to pay for solar panels on all the UK’s household and factory roofs.
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These unlucky people have names that break computers • BBC Future

Chris Baraniuk:

»

Jennifer Null’s husband had warned her before they got married that taking his name could lead to occasional frustrations in everyday life. She knew the sort of thing to expect – his family joked about it now and again, after all. And sure enough, right after the wedding, problems began.

“We moved almost immediately after we got married so it came up practically as soon as I changed my name, buying plane tickets,” she says. When Jennifer Null tries to buy a plane ticket, she gets an error message on most websites. The site will say she has left the surname field blank and ask her to try again.

Instead, she has to call the airline company by phone to book a ticket – but that’s not the end of the process.

«

And you thought “Robert’); DROP TABLE Students;” was a made-up name. (Of course the XKCD cartoon is worth the second hit of its alt text.)
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Apple still leads in smartwatch sales; sector growth slow • Kantar Worldpanel

»

“In the three months ending July 2016, 47% of wearable sales in the US occurred in the smartwatch category, versus the more basic fitness bands,” said Lauren Guenveur, Consumer Insight Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Apple continues to dominate this segment with a 33.5% share, although that lead shrank slightly in the last three months as the market awaited the Apple Watch Series 2 announcement. The EU4 countries show a similar trend, with 38.6% of all sales coming in the smartwatch category, with Apple leading at 31.8%.”

“Looking ahead, 9.3% of the US-based non-owners we surveyed said they intend to purchase a wearable in the next 12 months, which came in slightly below the 11.3% figure from Great Britain,” Guenveur continued. “September 7th’s unveiling of the Apple Watch Series 2 showed Apple addressing the key considerations cited by those planning to buy, including GPS, one of the most-desired functionalities, and waterproofing, the most-desired feature.”

«

link to this extract

Making sense of modern pornography • The New Yorker

Katrina Forrester:

»

The majority of the world’s [porn] tube sites are effectively a monopoly—owned by a company called MindGeek, whose bandwidth use exceeds that of Amazon or Facebook. Its C.E.O. until recently was a German named Fabian Thylmann, who earned a reported annual income of a hundred million dollars; he sold the company while being investigated for tax evasion.

The millions of people using these sites probably don’t care much about who produces their content. But those who work in porn in the United States tend to draw a firm line between the “amateur” porn that now proliferates online and the legal adult-film industry that took shape after the California Supreme Court ruled, in California v. Freeman (1989), that filmed sex did not count as prostitution. Since then, the industry has been based in Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley, where its professional norms and regulations have mimicked its more respectable Hollywood neighbors. In “The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford), Shira Tarrant explains how that industry works in the new age of Internet porn, and sets out to provide neutral, “even-handed” information about its production and consumption.

It’s not an easy task.

«

But hey, someone’s got to do it. At least it was even-handed rather than.. ok, I’ll stop.
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Airpods – a speculative teardown • LinkedIn

Nick Hunn is chief technology officer of WiForce:

»

Companies have developed a number of proprietary ways to ensure [sound signals, especially music, in separate Bluetooth earbuds] are synchronised. The first was from Cambridge Silicon Radio (now part of Qualcomm), who developed a method where one chip receives the stereo signal, then separates out the left and right and resends one of the channels to a Bluetooth chip in the other earbud. They included synchronisation signals, so that the audio output of both chips could be coordinated in time. You also need to do this if one earbud is a music player, streaming data to the other ear, which is a particularly difficult use case. Others have streamed over Bluetooth A2DP to both earbuds and tried to use Bluetooth low energy to send synchronisation signals between the ears. Others have done the same thing using Near Field Magnetic Induction (NFMI). Some have even attempted to stream audio between earbuds using NFMI.

The problem with all ear-to-ear communication is that the head is remarkably effective in blocking 2.4GHz radio propagation. Designs which fit snugly within the ear have real problems in getting a signal across. The bigger the earbud, the easier this is, as you can include a bigger antenna, but the best solution is to put the antenna outside the ear. Apple’s design does exactly that. By locating the antenna in the long white battery and microphone boom, it moves it closer to the jaw where there’s a lot less attenuation from one side of the head to the other. So I surmise they’re using A2DP to stream audio from the phone to each Airpod and probably using BLE control signals between them to synchronise the audio rendering. So there’s no need for NFMI…

…So why would Apple make [the W1] chip? Developing a wireless chip with this spec isn’t cheap – it will probably cost at least $10m with a similar amount going on the stack. It is just a peripheral chip, which will never go into a phone, so the volumes are not that high. But it is interesting that Apple emphasised that this is their first wireless chip, in a tone suggesting it won’t be the only one. My guess is that Apple wants to incorporate Bluetooth and Wi-Fi into their next generation of processors, as that’s what their competitors are doing. Wireless can be difficult, so it’s a big step to do that in one go. Far better to design the wireless chip and evaluate it in an entirely new product category, as well as forcing one of your subsidiaries to use it. That way you get to test the chip as well as getting useful feedback for your next generation of earbuds.

«

This is the smartest thing you’ll read all week, and it contains a great deal about Bluetooth technology that wouldn’t be obvious. And he’s right – the longer tabs of the AirPods mean they can communicate through flesh (your neck) rather than bone (your skull).
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Yahoo is expected to confirm massive data breach, impacting hundreds of millions of users • Recode

Kara Swisher:

»

While sources were unspecific about the extent of the incursion, since there is the likelihood of government investigations and legal action related to the breach, they noted that it is widespread and serious.

Earlier this summer, Yahoo said it was investigating a data breach in which hackers claimed to have access to 200 million user accounts and was selling them online. “It’s as bad as that,” said one source. “Worse, really.”

The announcement, which is expected to come this week, also possible larger implications on the $4.8 billion sale of Yahoo’s core business — which is at the core of this hack — to Verizon. The scale of the liability could be large and bring untold headaches to the new owners. Shareholders are likely to worry that it could lead to an adjustment in the price of the transaction.

«

Turns out it was 500 million account details in 2014 by a suspected “state-sponsored actor”. Hard to defend against that. I’ve been getting malware emails from hacked Yahoo accounts for months now. No idea if it’s connected.
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The Galaxy Note 7 recall has nothing to do with removable batteries • SamMobile

“Deidre R” on the biggest of the Samsung-watching sites:

»

The batteries being shipped in the Galaxy Note 7 are faulty (at least some of them are; Samsung has never said that all the currently-shipped phones have faulty batteries, though mass hysteria can never be contained, unfortunately). The batteries are faulty because of issues within the battery itself. Nothing has been said to confirm that Samsung’s “sealing” the battery itself, or the battery and the phone together, are causing the conflict that is resulting in explosions worldwide. The issue has been found within the battery cells, an issue that mandates using a different, non-faulty battery that doesn’t suffer from the same defect.

This is the issue, but removable battery fanboys are switching topics, throwing out the real issue and planting a smokescreen from a different discussion. The topic concerns the batteries being defective, but removable battery fanboys want to get you off topic because they still can’t accept that removable batteries are going the way of the dodo and that, contrary to what they like, the old way of battery charging has been replaced with newer, more sophisticated methods of doing so.

«

“Removable battery fanboys”? Truly we have begun to segment the world into ever-smaller niches. What I find fascinating here, though, isn’t the fake row about whether the fault is removability (obviously, it’s in manufacture) but how what used to be near-religious dogma among, uh, boosters of Android devices (removability of batteries trumps the iPhone’s non-removability) has morphed into one where of course you don’t want to be able to swap the battery out.

But then, we have always been at war with Eastasia. Ever since the Galaxy S6.
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Mode Media collapse: the inside story • Business Insider

Nathan McAlone and Eugene Kim:

»

From the winding freeway that links Silicon Valley with San Francisco, the giant Mode Media sign gracing the company’s headquarters was a hard-to-miss proclamation alerting passing drivers to an internet success story with a rich, $1bn valuation.

But on the 11th floor of the gleaming building last week, the mood among employees was sour.

Those gathered in the office and patched in through a crackly teleconference suddenly learned that they had no more jobs, no more health insurance coverage, and no more access to the company email system. Mode Media, founded in 2003 and once known as Glam Media, was shutting down. Oh, and please hand in your laptops on the way out.

People were stunned and shocked, and the management team’s final Q&A session with the troops didn’t help.

Someone asked about severance, one former Mode employee recounted. John Small, the COO, simply responded: “There is no severance. There is no Cobra. There is no company.”

«

Great reportage – though there’s a lot of fingerpointing every which way about quite what went wrong. Programmatic advertising (aka adtech) seems to have been a key element in the downfall.
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You’re not alone: 51% of Amazon Echo owners have it in the kitchen • Recode

Jason Del Rey:

»

Amazon’s Echo voice-controlled speaker can perform more than 3,000 skills today thanks to its Alexa technology, but the most common use case is still simply setting a timer, a recent survey of early adopters found.

And that makes sense when you consider that about half of Amazon Echo owners — 51%, to be exact — surveyed place the device in their kitchen. The second most popular location for the smart speaker is the living room, with about one out of three using the device in that gathering space.

The findings come from a survey of about 1,300 smartphone owners who have used voice-controlled virtual assistants from companies like Apple, Google and Amazon. Of that group, 180 respondents — or about 14% — said they own an Amazon Echo. The survey was a partnership between Experian and the market research firm Creative Strategies.

«

link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Christmas bokeh! Look forward to finding out who got an iPhone 7 Plus under the Christmas tree. Photo by Chris Loyd Photography on Flickr.

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

A selection of 10 links for you. Non-binary. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Google Now is dead: latest beta of Search app erases references to Google Now • Android Police

David Ruddock:

»

It was never clear how Google Now would fit in alongside assistant, as both products were initially pitched as being about giving you contextual and predictive information before you knew you wanted it. But assistant is clearly the way forward, while Google Now is over four years old. But Now On Tap was a fair bit younger, having been announced at Google I/O 2015. This probably means the decision to de-brand Now was fairly recent. Given that Now On Tap’s reception among many users has been less than fantastic, and its recent redesign, it seems likely that the feature never really caught on in the way Google wanted it to.

Assistant would make far more sense as an umbrella term for all the various features Now has come to embody over the years, and Google’s use of the assistant branding in apps like Inbox and Photos made it look as though the “Now” name would never really break out of the Search app. Today, that seems essentially confirmed.

«

The problem with Now On Tap was that it was hard to find, surely – plus it required Android Marshallow? You have to hold the home button (or spot where the home button would be), let the OS figure out what’s on the screen and do a Google Now search on it. (Typical breathless Verge piece explaining it.)

Now On Tap couldn’t be backported. It never reached anything like the majority of Android devices.
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Hands on with the iPhone 7 Plus’ crazy new Portrait mode • TechCrunch

Former professional photographer Matthew Panzarino:

»

I’ll just refer back to my iPhone review to set the scene for how Apple is making Portrait mode work:

The depth mapping that this feature uses is a byproduct of there being two cameras on the device. It uses technology from LiNx, a company Apple acquired, to create data the image processor can use to craft a 3D terrain map of its surroundings.

This does not include the full capabilities of the Primesense chip Apple purchased back in 2013 (we have yet to see this stuff fully implemented), but it’s coming.

For now, we’re getting a whole host of other benefits from the two cameras, including “Fusion,” Apple’s method of taking image data from both the wide angle and telephoto lenses and mixing them together to get the best possible image.

We’re also getting Portrait mode, which launches today in developer beta and later this week in public beta.

The Portrait mode, which prominently displays a beta notification on first launch, resides to the right of the standard photo mode in your camera app. There is no zooming, digital or otherwise, in Portrait mode. Instead, the Portrait mode exclusively uses the 56mm lens to shoot the image and the wide angle lens to gather the perspective data that allows it to generate a 9-layer depth map.

«

So you can pick any spot in a photo to be the “focus”, but unlike Huawei’s implementation you can’t then control the level of bokeh. But Panzarino is very impressed with this first pass. I wasn’t able to examine Huawei’s output (on a P9) in any detail; it looked clever on screen.
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New report suggests Oculus Rift could be a tad pricey for the UK • T3

Dom Reseigh-Lincoln:

»

“CONTEXT’s latest insight into the market shows that 34% of UK gamers are willing to spend up to £500 for their first VR headset,” says retail MD, Adam Simon. “However, this figure drops sharply to only 3% for the £500- £600 bracket. This is also mirrored by general consumers, of whom only 2% would meet Oculus’ asking price.”

“CONTEXT has been tracking the rapidly growing VR sector and recently conducted a huge European-wide consumer survey about attitudes towards the new technology, including opinions on Oculus and other manufacturers in the space,” he adds.

However, while that price point might be a little alienating for early adopters, Simon does agree the decision will ultimately work in Facebook and Oculus’ favour, adding: “By keeping the price out of reach of most of the general public, and focusing on the most committed Oculus fans, they are able to closely monitor demand, and control their supply chain accordingly.”

«

link to this extract

Inside Google’s Internet Justice League and Its AI-powered war on trolls • WIRED

Andy Greenberg:

»

Now a small subsidiary of Google named Jigsaw is about to release an entirely new type of response: a set of tools called Conversation AI. The software is designed to use machine learning to automatically spot the language of abuse and harassment—with, Jigsaw engineers say, an accuracy far better than any keyword filter and far faster than any team of human moderators. “I want to use the best technology we have at our disposal to begin to take on trolling and other nefarious tactics that give hostile voices disproportionate weight,” says Jigsaw founder and president Jared Cohen. “To do everything we can to level the playing field.”

Conversation AI represents just one of Jigsaw’s wildly ambitious projects. The New York–based think tank and tech incubator aims to build products that use Google’s massive infra structure and engineer ing muscle not to advance the best possibilities of the Internet but to fix the worst of it: surveillance, extremist indoctrination, censorship. The group sees its work, in part, as taking on the most intract able jobs in Google’s larger mission to make the world’s information “universally accessible and useful.”

Cohen founded Jigsaw, which now has about 50 staffers (almost half are engineers), after a brief high-profile and controversial career in the US State Department, where he worked to focus American diplomacy on the Internet like never before. One of the moonshot goals he’s set for Jigsaw is to end censorship within a decade, whether it comes in the form of politically motivated cyberattacks on opposition websites or government strangleholds on Internet service providers.

«

“End censorship”. But also “take on trolling and other nefarious tactics”. Are those two congruent? And also, doesn’t one man’s censorship look like another man’s removal of revenge porn/paedophile material/fomenting of radicalisation?
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Microsoft will ‘solve’ cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus, says company • Independent.ie

»

Microsoft says it is going to “solve” cancer in the next 10 years.

The company is working at treating the disease like a computer virus, that invades and corrupts the body’s cells. Once it is able to do so, it will be able to monitor for them and even potentially reprogramme them to be healthy again, experts working for Microsoft have said.

The company has built a “biological computation” unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer.

In the nearer term, the unit is using advanced computing research to try and set computers to work learning about drugs and diseases and suggesting new treatments to help cancer patients.

«

Hmm. Well. From January 2004:

»

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time, Microsoft boss Bill Gates has promised.

Spammers – senders of bulk e-mail that mostly offers dubious products or pornography – were innovative, he said.

However, a three-pronged strategy would soon stamp out the problem, he said in remarks at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

«

Remind me, is spam still a thing that we have to deal with? Asking for a friend. On the other hand…
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Artificial intelligence reveals mechanism behind brain tumor • Scienmag

»

Researchers at Uppsala University have used computer modelling to study how brain tumours arise. The study, which is published in the journal EBioMedicine, illustrated how researchers in the future will be able to use large-scale data to find new disease mechanisms and identify new treatment targets.

The last ten years’ progress in molecular biology has drastically changed how cancer researchers work. Instead of almost exclusively using different biological models, like cells, today large-scale statistical analyses are increasingly used to understand tumour diseases and find new therapies.

Researchers at Uppsala University, together with colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, Chalmers University of Technology and University of Freiburg, have developed a new algorithm, aSICS, that uses large amounts of data to suggest hypotheses about “what causes what” in a cancer cell.

«

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Dropbox hack blocked by Apple in Sierra • AppleHelpWriter

Phil Stokes previously explained how Dropbox uses a sneaky hack to get accessibility access, rather than the system dialog:

»

With the release of the latest version of the Mac operating system, 10.12 macOS Sierra, it’s pleasing to see that Apple have fixed a bug I reported against El Capitan in October of last year, and wrote about on this blog here and here.

The TCC.db is now under SIP, which means hacking the Accessibility preferences is no longer possible.

The bug basically allowed anyone to circumvent the authorisation warning to place an app in the list of Accessibility apps in System Preferences > Security & Privacy. It still required sudo, but an app (Dropbox being the most high profile offender), that got your admin credentials in other ways could insert itself into Accessibility and make it almost impossible for the user to remove.

Users can still alter Accessibility in the normal way (through Sys prefs GUI), but trying to hack the sql database via Terminal now returns “Error: attempt to write a readonly database.”

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Is Amazon really ripping off consumers by promoting more expensive versions of products? • IB Times

Mary-Ann Russon:

»

We found no evidence that Amazon UK was trying to make us pay more money for any product, no matter how popular or expensive, and in some cases, when the product was niche, it would only list the seller that had the product. Because it was rare, the user would need to pay whatever the seller chose to charge for shipping.

However, when it came to Amazon US, we had a completely different experience. We logged both accounts into Amazon US and proceeded to perform tests on the same products we searched for in the UK. There was no difference between the prices offered to Prime users and the prices offered to non-Prime users.

We tried to search for “Loctite super glue”, which was the example used by ProPublica as evidence of Amazon pushing for consumers to spend more money. We found that ProPublica was accurate in their assessment, in this case.

«

Excellent bit of actual “let’s check it first” journalism. This is great work.
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Google backs off on previously announced Allo privacy feature • The Verge

Russell Brandom:

»

Like Hangouts and Gmail, Allo messages will still be encrypted between the device and Google servers, and stored on servers using encryption that leaves the messages accessible to Google’s algorithms.

According to Google, the change was made to improve the Allo assistant’s smart reply feature, which generates suggested responses to a given conversation. Like most machine learning systems, the smart replies work better with more data. As the Allo team tested those replies, they decided the performance boost from permanently stored messages was worth giving up privacy benefits of transient storage.

The decision will also have significant consequences for law enforcement access to Allo messages. By default, Allo messages will now be accessible to lawful warrant requests, the same as message data in Gmail and Hangouts and location data collected by Android. The messages might not be there if the user had previously deleted them, or if the conversations took place in Incognito Mode — but in most cases, they will be. That leaves Google with much less danger of the kind of legal showdown Apple faced in San Bernardino and WhatsApp currently faces in Brazil.

«

Allo is iOS-only at present. It’s meant to be a sort of “smart assistant”, though early reviews have been lukewarm. (Aren’t all of them these days?) Google’s position on repressive regimes is hard to square with its reluctance to take a hands-off approach to user data.
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The Coalition for Better Ads is destined for a glorious failure • Marketing Week

Mark Ritson is a columnist:

»

The main reason people block advertising is not because of poorly conceived creative or annoying, data-heavy executions. It is because they hate advertising and prefer their media without it. In a recent survey of British ad blockers by KPMG, for example, almost half the sample (46%) said they would use an ad blocker because – and I quote – “they do not like advertising at all”.

In contrast, the Coalition believes that “better” advertising will reduce the adoption of ad blockers. They say that because they are all marketers and marketers are the only people on the planet that think people like advertising. They think that because of what psychologists call ‘post-hoc rationalisation’, or what we might also call ‘how the fuck could I go to work each day if I really admitted how much people hate what I do?’.

So you can see how this one will play out. The Coalition spends several million quid creating inane legislation that slightly improves online ads. At which point consumers, who still have their ad blocking software up in the right hand corner of their screen, completely ignore the whole charade and keep blocking ads. They will do that not because the Coalition will fail to improve online advertising, but because the only good ad for most consumers is the one they do not have to download and be distracted by while they consume digital media.

None of this is digital’s fault by the way. If consumers had a similar opportunity to block TV ads, they would jump on it. Oh, hang on, they do and they have.

«

Ritson seems pretty good at hitting nails on the head.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

How would you rate it? How much did you pay? Photo by William Christiansen on Flickr.

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

A selection of 12 links for you. Would you eat a handful? I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Non-blurry photos of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL leak • Android Police

Ryan Whitwam:

»

Today is apparently Pixel leak day. After getting some new details on pricing and spotting the phone in a Nest ad, some actual photos of the phones have emerged. The image above (and another below) show both phones side-by-side. This marks the first time we’ve actually seen the phones in the flesh—er, metal. Whatever.

The images show both phones in the aluminum finish, which does look very light above. I think that’s down to the harsh lighting. The top of the rear panel is clearly lighter and smoother (it’s glass). The fingerprint sensor is up there as well. There are some IDs and markings obscured for obvious reasons.

The front has that same sensor layout we’ve seen before, and the bezels are a little big. Feel free to complain about that in the comments. 

«

Er.. is it just me, or do those really look like iPhones?
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Donald Trump Jr tweet: ‘I’m a refugee’ says Skittles photographer • BBC News

Patrick Evans:

»

Donald Trump Jr’s tweet comparing Skittles to refugees has caused a furore on social media. In a new development, the man who took the photo of the Skittles has revealed himself to be a former refugee.

David Kittos, 48, from Guildford, UK, woke up to find an image he had posted to Flickr in January 2010 had become embroiled in a political controversy.

“This was not done with my permission, I don’t support his politics and I would never take his money to use it,” Mr Kittos told the BBC.

«

Astonishing. The tweet used the photo, with the caption: “If I had a bowl of skittles [sic] and I told you just three would kill you. [sic] Would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

Within hours it had been demonstrated that the “handful” would actually be 10 billion containing three solitary poisonous ones.

And the photo clearly says “All rights reserved”. That’s utterly egregious on the part of Trump. I hope he gets sued, or that he pays compensation which is then given – for annoyance – to Clinton’s campaign.
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Worldwide smartwatch market will see modest growth in 2016 before swelling to 50m units in 2020 • IDC

»

Apple’s WatchOS will stay atop the smartwatch platform list throughout the forecast. The Series 2 Watch addresses some of the shortcomings of its Series 1 predecessor, but the lower price on the Series 1 (starting at $269 USD) may end up driving more volume in the upcoming holiday season. Still, these will be enough to keep watchOS the overall market leader, and future iterations of the Watch with new body styles, materials, and cellular connectivity will help cement the company’s spot later in the forecast.

Android and Android Wear will see the fastest growth of any platform on the list, and by 2020 will challenge watchOS for the top position in the worldwide smartwatch market. Support from OEMs both inside and outside of the IT industry will adopt Android Wear as the cornerstone of their smartwatch strategy, and in the process will address gaps in the product portfolio to lure new users.

«

Related: Is Android Wear going to make Google create the next Zune? Shameless self-promotion, on the point at which Android Wear has just passed 5m activations after 30 months on the market – and Apple has passed 16m sold.
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Hackers hijack Tesla Model S from afar, while the cars are moving • The Register

Darren Pauli:

»

Chinese hackers have attacked Tesla electric cars from afar, using exploits that can activate brakes, unlock doors, and fold mirrors from up to 20 kilometres (12 miles) away while the cars are in motion.

Keen Security Lab senior researchers Sen Nie, Ling Liu, and Wen Lu, along with director Samuel Lv, demonstrated the hacks against a Tesla Model S P85 and 75D and say their efforts will work on multiple Tesla models.

The Shanghai, China-based hacking firm has withheld details of the world-first zero day attacks and privately disclosed the flaws to Tesla.

The firm worked on the attack for several months, eventually gaining access to the motor that moves the driver’s seat, turning on indicators, opening the car’s sunroof and activating window wipers.

Keen Security Lab’s attacks also appear to compromise the touch screen that controls many of a Tesla’s functions.

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Who cares about the new iPhone camera? The real change is Apple Pay • WIRED

Cade Metz:

»

Apple’s not talking about it. Tim Cook and company are too busy trumpeting a new iPhone that’s pretty much like the old iPhone (except there’s — gasp — no headphone jack!). But if Apple’s not talking about it, that probably means it’s far more interesting — and far more important. And indeed it is.

This week, with the arrival of the new iPhone operating system, Apple Pay now works inside web browsers. Yes, that’s more interesting than no headphone jack. And its importance will only grow in the next few weeks as Apple Pay, the company’s digital payments service, reaches the web on Macs as well as iPhones.

«

He has a point.
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Global handset revenues on a steady decline • Strategy Analytics

»

Apple and Samsung together captured 57% of the Global Handset Revenues in Q2 2016, per our latest report from the Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) Service.  Global Handset industry revenues declined by -5% annually in Q2 2016.

Apple led in four of the six regions but has been on a steady decline globally. Samsung though led by volumes retained the second position by revenues. Apart from Huawei, Oppo, vivo, ZTE and Meizu most of the other vendors tracked witnessed an annual revenue decline.

«

That would put total revenues at $81.9bn, of which about $75bn (92%) was contributed by the top 10 OEMs.
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The Wall Street veteran who’s helping Google get disciplined • Fortune

Leena Rao with a long profile of former Wall Street banker Ruth Porat, aged 58, who is now chief financial officer at Google:

»

One source close to the company says it’s now difficult for Other Bets [the non-Google companies inside Alphabet] to get new hires approved. The Bets are also being told to be self-sufficient administratively: They can rely on Alphabet for functions like legal counsel, human resources, and public relations, but only if they pay Alphabet for the services. (One Other Bets subsidiary was billed $500,000 for a year’s worth of PR help.) If these units were independent companies, of course, they’d be shouldering these costs on their own. But within Alphabet, they represent unfamiliar constraints, and for some, a signal that the culture Google was built on— focusing on innovation over profits—is dissipating.

Google executives reject that assertion. Schmidt, the chairman, acknowledges that the focus is new but says it allows Alphabet to invest more efficiently in its winners. Alphabet has been aggressively hiring engineers for cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence projects, for example. “The cost cutting is real, and it’s the right thing to be done, and it’s driven by [Porat],” Schmidt says. “Before she was there, we had lost discipline.”

But is discipline really the problem? In the most recent quarter, Other Bets lost an ugly $859m on $185m in revenue. Still, when you consider that Alphabet generated $7bn in free cash that quarter, the losses seem like something the company could easily absorb. Cost cutting, says Rob Enderle, the analyst, “is like taking painkillers when you are sick. At some point you are going to have to address what is making you sick.” The real issue at Alphabet, he adds, is that “what they are spending money on isn’t successful.”

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It astonishes me to say it, but Enderle has a point.
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What matters for Apple: line length or average selling price? • BTIG Research

Walter Piecyk:

»

Despite the lack of lines [outside stores when the new iPhones were released], we expect Apple to grow iPhone units in the December quarter to 77.5m units (3.6% y/y growth). This is the primary driver in our expectation of a return to revenue and EPS growth for Apple in fiscal 2017. We assume an iPhone ASP decline of 6% in the December quarter. If there is a mix shift to iPhone 7+ purchases, Apple could deliver upside to our revenue estimate, which is already above consensus. The increase in the memory of entry level phones to 32GB from 16GB is compelling, however 128GB could also attract some upward migration to the mid-level phones which could help also ASP.

«

Includes lots of photos of no people queueing. Still, there’s a first for your predictions on iPhone sales in the next quarter. Seems an ambitious target.
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Google Trips is a killer travel app for the modern tourist • The Verge

Casey Newton:

»

Google today announced Trips, a new app that serves as a trip planner and travel guide for anyone who is exploring a new place. The free app, which is available on Android and iOS, will organize your plane tickets and hotel reservations, offer editorial guides to more than 200 cities, and make personalized recommendations based on your Google history. Best of all, it works offline: you can download everything to your phone before you leave, including maps and walking directions — sparing you from having to use an expensive international data plan.

Trips is the culmination of more than two years of work on improving Google’s travel products, said Richard Holden, a vice president of product management at the company, in an interview. In recent months Google introduced Destinations, a travel-planning feature inside mobile search, and revamped its hotel and flight search features.

Now the company is introducing an app that it hopes will become the default way for travelers to organize trip information ahead of their travels and get around town once they have arrived. “We’re doing a great job on the planning stages, but we really need to help consumers when they’re actually at their destination,” Holden said.

«

More aggregation by Google (see ridesharing yesterday – which as Sameer Singh pointed out, labels the ridesharing services as Ads, which means it’s both getting people to use its apps *and* getting paid). It is very noticeable how focussed it has become on leveraging its strengths (search, aggregation, brand) to get people using its apps on mobile in the past few months.
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Statement from Sunlight Foundation’s board chairman • Sunlight Foundation Blog

Mike Klein:

»

We are aware that the robust maturation of technology over the past decade has — happily but substantially — reduced the urgency of Sunlight’s early role as a leading transparency innovator. In addition, the board had to recognize that Sunlight’s initiating objective— to build support for better legislation against and regulation of the power of money in politics— has been significantly limited by the US Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision.

Those factors required a rethinking of what, if anything, can most effectively be done with the resources available to continue the technology/transparency cause and Sunlight’s role in it. We’ve done that work, and here is what we have determined.

The board has not found a candidate for executive director who persuaded us of both a compelling new strategic vision and of their capacity to lead Sunlight to its achievement. Accordingly, we have determined to explore alliances with other organizations similarly motivated, perhaps merging with one of them, in an arrangement that advances and preserves Sunlight’s mission and identity with increased efficiency and effectiveness.

During this time period, we will deliver on all existing obligations to funders and partners, making certain that we continue the great work we’re doing in the What Work Cities initiative, for instance. We are making necessary adjustments to staff in accordance with this direction.

We will discontinue our tool building and database maintenance activities, and encourage others to continue our most promising projects. The decision to retire OpenCongress is an example.

«

Wait, so – you’re shutting down your services and closing up shop? Why not say so in the headline?
link to this extract

Analysis of 7m Amazon reviews: customers who receive free or discounted item much more likely to write positive review • Review Meta

»

If you’ve read reviews on Amazon within the last few years, you’ve surely noticed a disclaimer at the bottom of many that look like this:

“I received this product for free or at a discount in exchange for my honest, unbiased review”
 
At ReviewMeta, we call these “Incentivized Reviews”.

Consumers have growing distrust and even disdain for incentivized reviews, especially when it seems every single one is a glowing 5-star review.  We wanted to confirm or deny this seemingly anecdotal opinion, so we analyzed 7 million reviews.  

After looking at over 7 million reviews, here’s what we see
We found that reviews containing language that would indicate the reviewer received the item for free or at a discount in exchange for a review (incentivized reviews) on average rate the product .38 stars higher than reviews that did not contain this disclosure (non-incentivized reviews).

«

It’s not a huge difference, but it’s consistent, and it means you’re being misled by reviews. And that’s before one considers all the glowing reviews put there by people paid via Amazon Turk by the product makers.
link to this extract

Amazon says it puts customers first. But its pricing algorithm doesn’t • Pro Publica

Julia Angwin wanted to buy something:

»

In an instant, Amazon’s software sifted through dozens of combinations of price and shipping, some of which were cheaper than what one might find at a local store.

TheHardwareCity.com, an online retailer from Farmers Branch, Texas, with a 95% customer satisfaction rating, was selling Loctite for $6.75 with free shipping. Fat Boy Tools of Massillon, Ohio, a competitor with a similar customer rating was nearly as cheap: $7.27 with free shipping.

The computer program brushed aside those offers, instead selecting the vial of glue sold by Amazon itself for slightly more, $7.80. This seemed like a plausible choice until another click of the mouse revealed shipping costs of $6.51. That brought the total cost, before taxes, to $14.31, or nearly double the price Amazon had listed on the initial page.

What kind of sophisticated shopping algorithm steers customers to a product that costs so much more than seemingly comparable alternatives?

One that substantially favors Amazon and sellers it charges for services, an examination by ProPublica found.

«

I know, you’re shocked. The deeper question is: how does one discover that this is going on?
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

What makes a good chatbot? Photo by reynermedia on Flickr.

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A selection of 11 links for you. Not for resale in Kansas. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Prices of low-end smartphone panels hit new historical highs in september as demand outpaces supply • TrendForce

Julian Lee is an analyst at research company Trendforce:

»

strong demand is pushing up prices of LCD panels for smartphone displays of the lower resolution specs. With demand for high-end device models falling short of expectations, smartphone brands are now relying on low-end devices with bargain-priced panels to boost their product shipments. However, limited supply and increasing demand have caused prices of 4-inch WVGA and 4.5-inch FWVGA panels to reach new highs in September, with monthly increases at over 50%, respectively. Looking ahead, prices of lower-end smartphone panels are expected to keep rising in the fourth quarter.

WitsView’s latest analysis indicates that this year’s high-end smartphone models have not been well-received by consumers due to various reasons, such as the lack of innovations, unclear product positioning and even serious product quality issues. Adjusting to the market conditions, smartphone brands are now stepping up shipments of mid-range and low-end devices to achieve their annual shipment targets. Though lower-end smartphone panels are not actively promoted by suppliers due their weak product margins, their demand has soared recently as smartphone brands need them to sustain their overall device shipments.

«

That bit about “annual shipment targets” – and the miss on the high end (and the “various reasons”) – is notable.
link to this extract

Common bot misconceptions • Medium

Amir Shevat, head of developer relations at Slack:

»

With every new technology and paradigm, there are a lot of misconceptions, but I’ll try to set the record straight about the most common ones concerning bots.

1. “Bots are AI”

Wrong, most bots do not currently use AI, a lot of them will never need to use AI.

Some bots use Natural Language Processing/Understanding to map what the user is saying to the bot to an actual intent. For example, there are many ways to say you want to book a ticket to a movie — “I wanna book a ticket for later this evening”, “I want to go to the movies tonight”, “book me a ticket to a movie after 8pm”- all of these mean more or less the same, but for a developer it is quite hard to map these into an intent to book a ticket this evening. That is the most common use of AI today in bots, this is not what most people think about when they say artificial intelligence.

In addition, AI is not limited to bots – bots are by far not the only use case for AI. There are great AI solutions, for example image recognition or finding the right song you want to hear right now — solutions that uses AI but does not require bots.

«

And there’s more.
link to this extract

Google acquires natural language understanding startup Api.ai • VentureBeat

Jordan Novet:

»

Google today said that it’s acquired API.ai, a startup with tools for speech recognition and natural language understanding. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

In addition to its developers tools, Api.ai offers a conversational assistant app with more than 20 million users.

Google did not disclose its plans for integrating the startup’s technology. That will be important, as Google already has tools for natural language understanding and speech recognition, and it has unveiled a Google Assistant that will be available through text messaging interface and the Google Home smart speaker.

“API.AI has a proven track record for helping developers design, build and continuously improve their conversational interfaces,” Google vice president of engineering Scott Huffman wrote in a blog post. “Over 60,000 developers are using Api.ai to build conversational experiences, for environments such as Slack, Facebook Messenger and Kik, to name just a few. Api.ai offers one of the leading conversational user interface platforms and they’ll help Google empower developers to continue building great natural language interfaces.”

«

Just a guess, but might they use it for conversational AI?
link to this extract

iTunes will never work well • Medium

Firas Durri:

»

At this point, whatever the causes of the product problems with iTunes and related iOS apps — feature scope, management, team structure, etc. —we can be pretty sure that the only ‘solution’ will appear when this software achieves end-of-life, the same way that the mystery of how to set recording time on VCRs was finally solved by their obsolescence.

«

iTunes used to be really simple, because it didn’t have a great deal to do: play music stored on your computer, through your computer. Then it had to sync with an iPod. Then it had to sync with an iPhone and its apps. Then with video content which might be rented. Then with an iPad and its apps. Then with a cloud library. Then with a music streaming service. No wonder its UI looks exhausted; its functions have been split into separate apps on iOS (Podcasts, App Store, iTunes Store, Music).

And yet it’s still widely used.
link to this extract

Snake oil software – or how SoftRAM hoodwinked the world • Digital Trends

Brad Jones:

»

When Windows 95 launched in August 1995, there was only one piece of software available that was specifically written for the brand new operating system. SoftRAM 95 was a utility intended to double a system’s memory without the need for a hardware upgrade, and it was in stock at retail locations around the country as consumers ventured out to make the jump from Windows 3.1.

There was only one problem. SoftRAM 95 didn’t work.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t common knowledge. No one knew until after the software had become a best-seller across the globe. Back in the 1990s, SoftRAM hoodwinked hundreds of thousands of people. But that was before the age of widespread internet connectivity. Today, we’re more informed and harder to fool — right?

“The reason that it got as much attention and publicity as it got was that on the day that Windows 95 launched — August 24, 1995 — it was the only Windows 95-specific software available,” recalled Larry Seltzer, then a technical director for PC Magazine.

“Someone told me that they had been testing this, and that their claims are full of crap,” Seltzer continued. “I had already been involved in test labs for a long time, and the people involved with those labs talked with each other, so there was a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter about it.”

Despite these rumors of wrong-doing, SoftRAM was a hit with the general public.

«

It took a while to tear down (much longer, oddly, than the real problem with Intel’s flawed multiplication a year before) and prove false. But as Jones points out, “placebo” is still around today – you just don’t pay for it with money.
link to this extract

Samsung unloads tech shares as it braces for Galaxy Note 7 recall costs • WSJ

Kwanwoo Jun:

»

Over the past decade, Samsung has used its massive manufacturing scale to expand into smartphones, televisions and components such as displays and semiconductors. But top executives believe that those markets are no longer able to generate the huge growth returns Samsung has seen in the past. In the smartphone market, Samsung is currently facing Chinese and Indian upstarts that are offering high-spec phones at cheaper prices. Meanwhile, Apple Inc. on Friday launched its newest iPhone, matching Samsung’s waterproof and advanced camera phones.

In a statement Sunday, the South Korea-based tech giant said it sold off its entire 4.2% stake in Seagate Technology and its whole 4.5% stake in Rambus, both based in California. Samsung also confirmed the previously reported sales of half of its 2.9% stake in ASML Holding and its full 0.7% stake in Sharp.

A person familiar with the stake sale told The Wall Street Journal last week Samsung was selling about half of its stake in ASML for €606m ($676m). Samsung’s stakes in Rambus, Seagate and Sharp were valued at more than $500m combined, based on Friday’s closing prices.

«

The Note 7 recall costs will be an exceptional item, so won’t affect operating profits (except they couldn’t sell any more), but will affect the bottom (net) line. This sale near quarter end thus looks like an effort to keep the dividend up by having cash on hand.
link to this extract

Exclusive: Google may face over $400m Indonesia tax bill for 2015 – government official • Reuters

Gayatri Suroyo and Eveline Danubrata:

»

Most of the revenue generated in the country is booked at Google’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. Google Asia Pacific declined to be audited in June, prompting the tax office to escalate the case into a criminal one, [Indonesian tax affairs chief Muhammad] Hanif said.

“Google’s argument is that they just did tax planning,” Hanif said. “Tax planning is legal, but aggressive tax planning – to the extent that the country where the revenue is made does not get anything – is not legal.”

The tax office will summon directors from Google Indonesia who also hold positions at Google Asia Pacific, Hanif said, adding that it is working with the Indonesian police.

Globally, it is rare for a state investigation of corporate tax structures to be escalated into a criminal case.

«

link to this extract

Hailing more ride service options in Google Maps • Google Maps blog

»

Back in March, we introduced a new way for people to find and compare the fastest ways to get around town by adding a new ride services tab when searching for directions in Google Maps. Today, we’re adding two more partners in the U.S., Lyft and Gett. Now Google Maps will display options from 9 ride-sharing partners in over 60 countries, allowing you to compare the fastest, most affordable ride near you, without having to download and open multiple apps.

Say you’re looking to get from the High Line to Times Square in Manhattan. When typing these locations into the Google Maps app, you’ll see a ride services tab appear alongside driving, transit and walking directions. Just tap the icon and you’ll find fare estimates and pick up times from multiple ride service partners, depending on driver availability. We’ll also show various types of services offered by each partner— for instance Lyft may also show options for a Lyft Line ride.

«

Ben Thompson pointed out this blogpost in his daily Stratechery update, suggesting that it creates a threat for Uber because it will now be priced directly against other services.

My first thought though was: this is Google trying to get people out of non-Google apps, and back onto its own ones. If you order your Uber in Google Maps, it can (potentially) show you an ad.

The question now is: does Uber mind this use of its API? If it does, can it afford to block it, or would the lost business be too great? (I suspect “no” and “perhaps”.) So far, then, a win for Google.
link to this extract

Microsoft lays off hundreds of employees this week, largely in Redmond, London • ZDNet

Mary Jo Foley:

»

The Financial Times reported on September 16 that Microsoft is planning to shut down Skype’s London offices. A Microsoft spokesperson with whom I spoke today characterized the London cuts as a consolidation of some engineering positions that affected both Skype and Yammer. The spokesperson said about 220 jobs would be eliminated as a result.

Microsoft cut about 300 additional people globally this past week, the company spokesperson confirmed, with the majority of those cuts affecting those working in the Puget Sound, Wash., area. I saw a few people cut from various teams in Redmond earlier this week post about the cuts on Facebook.

«

link to this extract

Sony Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact won’t have fingerprint scanners in the US • Phone Arena

Florin T:

»

Sony’s brand new Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact are coming soon to the US. In case you’re planning to buy any of them, you should first know this: unlike their European counterparts, the US-bound Xperia XZ and X Compact do not feature fingerprint scanners. This is confirmed by Sony Mobile’s US website, where full specs for both phones are available (see the source links below), and there’s no mention of fingerprint scanners whatsoever.

The non-US Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact have fingerprint scanners embedded in their power buttons, but Sony decided to remove them from the devices that will be shipped in the States. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Sony did the same with the Xperia X Performance, Xperia Z5, and Xperia Z5 Compact. As for why this is happening, there is no official explanation.

«

Perhaps I can help? HP has a patent in the US on fingerprint scanners in power buttons. Filed in 2009, published in 2012, and I’d guess that HP wants some good money for it – which Sony’s money-losing mobile division really can’t afford given the tiny volumes in the US.

The patent is also published (hence valid?) through WIPO, Europe and China – but maybe Sony thinks it’s worth paying there. Though one would think it would move to a different design, to avoid the patent.
link to this extract

Has the UK got Tech Talent? • BBC News

Rory Cellan-Jones:

»

Across BBC News outlets this week, under the banner Tech Talent, we are asking whether the UK can compete in the global technology industry – and why we haven’t produced a tech giant on the scale of Google or Apple. Here are my thoughts on those questions.

In the last ten days I’ve met the founder of a British games company which is still independent after a quarter of a century, and about to launch one of Sony’s first virtual reality titles.

I’ve attended a celebration to mark the extraordinary success of the Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer created in Cambridge to teach children to code, which has now achieved global sales of ten million.

And I’ve had a demo of the latest products from a fledgling company called Chirp, created by a University College London scientist to transmit data via an audio signal.

All of these are examples of a thriving British technology landscape. So why, over nearly 20 years of covering the tech scene, do I keep getting asked the same thing – where is the UK’s Google?

«

What isn’t mentioned in the piece, but seems relevant, is that Google, Apple, Facebook and so on can count on scale: the US is largely homogenous and can be largely covered using a single language (add Spanish and you’re pretty much at 100%). The UK is part of Europe (presently) but crucially you can’t reach all its users with a single language, plus there are cross-border differences in business practice.

That said, the UK has produced lots of top-flight tech companies. We just tend to overlook them until they get bought.
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: yesterday we linked to Ars Technica’s piece about the 2003 Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP, which didn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack. Guess what? Every model after that did have a headphone jack. (Bet the iPhone 7’s successors won’t.)

Removing the headphone jack didn’t hurt sales in 2003. Photo by yuankuei 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 13 links for you. Please enable your ad blocker, or something. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Fewer than 15% of the 1m US Galaxy Note 7 phones have been returned • Recode

Ina Fried:

»

Despite the risk of fire or explosion, the vast majority of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 owners in the US have been holding on to their devices.

Only about 130,000 units have so far been returned as part of an exchange program that Samsung kicked off nearly two weeks ago. On Thursday the company formally recalled the device in conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the agency charged with overseeing safety-related product issues.

«

Probably because they simply haven’t heard about it. Most people (one forgets) aren’t that interested in tech news.
link to this extract

Remember that time Nintendo got rid of the headphone jack? • Ars Technica

Kyle Orland:

»

A leading technology company announces the next in its successful and long-standing line of handheld hardware. The new update sports plenty of long-awaited features, including an improved screen and a better battery. But it also includes one major omission: the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, which had been included on all of its portable products until this point, has been replaced by a proprietary standard. Many in the press are livid, and consumers largely react with confusion, but many shrug it off and decide to buy the product anyway.

«

But that was 2003. How do you expect anyone to remember that far back? (Ars does a nice job finding examples of “outrage” from the time.)
link to this extract

HP allegedly time bombs unofficial ink cartridges from working in its printers • Hot Hardware

Brandon Jill:

»

HP… is allegedly using a rather destructive method to prevent customers from using remanufactured ink cartridges. The company reportedly preprogrammed a date into its printers to display a message informing customers that their non-genuine ink cartridges were damaged. Specifically, the message reads:

Cartridge Problem. The following ink cartridges appears to be missing or damaged. Replace the ink cartridges to resume printing.

If the objective is to get people to abandon the use of non-genuine/remanufactured ink cartridges, HP could have a used a subtler approach. Instead of using a randomly generated date to “fake” a failure, HP choose preprogrammed September 13th into the most recent firmware updates for its printers. So on that date, scores of HP customers at the same time began complaining about the same problem. Nice.

Because of this sudden influx of complaints, it didn’t take long to trace the “failures” to a HP firmware update that was released during the spring. HP’s support forums are flooded with complaints from customers that have received the warning and at least one reseller of remanufactured cartridges was also inundated with its own customer complaints.

«

The forum link supports it, but this story seems to have happened repeatedly over the years. (It feels like a rewrite, too.)
link to this extract

Google and 16 other companies have formed a coalition that wants to police ads on the web • Business Insider

Lara O’Reilly:

»

“The Coalition for Better Ads” was announced on Thursday at digital advertising trade show Dmexco in Cologne, Germany.

The Coalition was formed as a direct response to the rise of ad blocking, and will act as a kind of regulator for internet ads.

The group has been put together to create global standards for online advertising, which will be deployed using technology created by the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau)’s Tech Lab. The technology will essentially score ads based on a number of criteria — such as page load time, the number of tracking pixels, and the type of creative — with only ads that meet a certain threshold making it through to the web page of participating companies.

«

Won’t make any difference, because people aren’t driven to block ads by the lovely fast-loading ads they encounter – it’s the other 90% of ads. And those won’t want to be controlled by these companies.
link to this extract

Asenqua Ventures: the venture capital firm that wasn’t there • Fortune

Dan Primack does some great digging:

»

After [Albert] Hu’s trial [in which he was convicted of fraud], Asenqua Ventures seemed to disappear. Its website went offline, and its various business entities dissipated, per records at the California Secretary of State’s office.

But then, in the summer of 2015, http://www.asenquavc.com reemerged, claiming to represent two entities:

• Asenqua Ventures, a “private equity merchant banking firm focused on early stage and middle market opportunities.”
• Asenqua Financial Advisors Inc, which “can support a diverse array of financial engagements, including mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, restructurings, recapitalizations and capital formation.”

There was no more mention of Albert Hu, but the website’s “team” page was full of people with impressive-looking resumes. For example, managing director Peter Arnold “spent 23 years as an Investment Banker/Venture Capitalist, where he was instrumental in the development of over 200 businesses with early-stage funding in excess of $2 billion dollars.” Fellow managing director Bob Lin had been “responsible for the financial management of over 6,000 IBM ibm software developers and responsible for over $500 million in annual company revenues.”

Moreover, Arnold had a LinkedIn profile claiming that he had spent nearly six years as a managing director with New York-based investment giant BlackRock BLK .

None of this, however, holds up.

«

link to this extract

OverhypedPods • Medium

Nati Shochat isn’t impressed by the AirPods. Sure, he says, they have:

»

• Pairing — an easy way to pair the headphones (which also uses the cloud to propagate the pairing to other related devices).
• Connectivity — improved connectivity over regular Bluetooth.
• Ease of use when switching between devices.
• Battery life — Longer battery life than regular Bluetooth headsets of that size.

These capabilities are not to be dismissed as nothing else but true engineering innovations. But also they are not making the AirPods a platform, or the next computing devices. Yet.

Further more, Bluetooth headsets have been around for more than a decade, so they are nothing new about the notion of using a wireless headset to make calls, or even listen to music. Also tapping into Siri with wireless headsets has been available for a few years now, with a (long) press of a button. So the fact that with the AirPods a user can double tap the headphone and trigger Siri is not a new feature. Perhaps a new UI.

Yes, you can grab almost any Bluetooth headsets connect them to an iPhone or an iPad and long press the main button, to trigger Siri. Perhaps the sound quality will be different (for better or worse), perhaps the comfort levels will not be similar (again for better or for worse), but AirPods don’t bring any new capabilities to the world. They only enhance and improve the current ones.

«

Compare and contrast with the following.
link to this extract

Why Silicon Valley is all wrong about Apple’s AirPods • Medium

Chris Messina:

»

Apple began the journey of promoting user acceptance of technology apparatuses as fashion accessories with the introduction of the iPod in 2001, fifteen years ago.

You can hear it when Jobs explains why he decided to pursue music in the first place: he knew it was universal and represented a huge addressable market in which there was no market leader. He also knew that everyone loved music, and that their personal, emotional relationships with music would give him the opening he needed to send in the  ᴛʀᴏᴊᴀɴ ʜᴏʀsᴇ to permeate their lives for a generation.

And now, by exploiting that same relationship, Apple is doing it again: offering a sexy fashion statement, an expensive luxury item, an entertainment accessory, which will usher in the era of voice-controlled intimate computing. Apple won’t sell the AirPods by enumerating their tech specs but by evoking an emotional, aspirational response — which is an approach vividly different from nearly anything else that comes out Silicon Valley’s burgeoning nerdtopia.

«

In my experience – so far – people outside tech are interested in AirPods in a way that they absolutely aren’t about Bluetooth headphones.
link to this extract

Half of US smartphone users download zero apps per month • Recode

Dan Frommer:

»

Specifically, some 49% of U.S. smartphone users download zero apps in a typical month, according to comScore, reflecting a three-month average period ending this past June.

Of the 51% of smartphone owners who do download apps during the course of a month, “the average number downloaded per person is 3.5,” comScore’s report says. “However, the total number of app downloads is highly concentrated at the top, with 13% of smartphone owners accounting for more than half of all download activity in a given month.”

Do these concepts sound familiar? That’s because comScore has been banging this drum for a while. Two years ago, a similar study found that almost two-thirds of US smartphone owners downloaded zero apps in a typical month. So this year’s 49% suggests an improvement.

What’s the deal? ComScore’s Andrew Lipsman says it’s more a reflection that his company has improved its methodology since then — rather than any drastic changes in the app economy — so it’s not fair to compare the two surveys apples-to-apples.

«

One point: if you download an app in one month, then you have the app. You don’t need to re-download it the next month. (That’s rather different from, say, Google searches on mobile: it needs a constant flow of those.)

What would be more useful would be the percentage of users who download 1, 2, 3, 4 apps over the course of a year or two years – because that’s probably the life of the device. That’s probably pretty high.
link to this extract

iOS 10 is a major shift for iOS • The Brooks Review

Ben Brooks:

»

Let’s take a normal scenario to see how iOS changes things. My wife and I have been looking at houses on Zillow. Typically, for me, that means [in iOS 9] a lot of copy and pasting, or other hijinks to get a satellite view from Apple Maps (I can do it in the app, but I like to see images hopefully taken at different times — I’m odd like that, but I have reasons). It’s even worse when I wanted to drive by these places because I would constantly be switching apps and pasting in addresses.

With iOS 10 this changes a lot, now Maps knows what house and address I have been looking at, and it prompts me to use that address in Maps. Now the workflow is: look at house in Zillow, move to Maps, and tap the address suggested. No copying and pasting, it just is there, and there without Zillow being updated for iOS 10.

It was also crazy that the fastest way to get directions to the next event on your calendar, was by tapping the location field in Calendar, not from within Maps — completely counter intuitive. Under iOS 10, this again changes, now Maps knows that the location is on the calendar, is your next event, and puts the address one tap away inside of Maps — where it should have been the entire time.

There’s a lot of little things like this, because for once iOS knows what the other hand is doing and it’s about time. This is one of the biggest reasons why I say that iOS 10 is going to be a tipping point — because now iOS has tangible usability benefits over macOS. Limited still, yes, but significantly better in many ways also.

«

I hadn’t noticed that (yet) in iOS 10, and of course the next Mac OSX update (to become MacOS) brings some more cross-platform integration (such as the clipboard, and Apple Watch unlock). But iOS is definitely getting things Mac OS isn’t.
link to this extract

Raw Data becomes first VR title to hit $1M in a month • Gamasutra

Chris Kerr:

»

Vive-exclusive sci-fi shooter Raw Data has become the first virtual reality game to hit $1m in sales in the space of a month.

Developer Survios made the claim in an interview with Fast Company, and said at least 20% of HTC Vive owners have purchased the action title. 

Earlier this year, Raw Data also became the first VR release to top the overall Steam charts, although its stay at the summit was brief. 

The game currently retails for $39.99 on Steam – though it was launched at a discounted $31.99 –  and Survios believes the game’s success is rooted in the VR market’s “need” for a true triple-A experience. 

«

Daniel Ahmad reckons this means the HTC Vive install base is under 150,000 units.

($1m/$32 = 31,250; $1m/40 = 25,000; if the larger number represents 20% of HTC Vive units, there are 156,250 Vive units in all. If it’s a larger percentage, there are fewer Vive units – down to 25,000 at the minimum.

However we had a figure of “approaching 100,000” back in July, so this feels consistent. If it’s gone from 100,000 to 150,000 in three months, that seems like solid growth.
link to this extract

Facebook Video leaves a small window for advertisers • The Information

Tom Dota:

»

Most video ads on Facebook are seen for only a second or two, according to a new study, well below the average for video ads on YouTube and other websites. It suggests few people on Facebook are clicking on video ads as they scroll past them in their News Feed.

The data provides further evidence to advertisers who want to use Facebook that they have to come up with specially designed ads that can capture people’s attention quicker than the standard TV spot. As Facebook makes a hard push for more TV ad dollars, it also could be used by advertisers as a cudgel in pricing negotiations.  

The study found that little more than 30% of video ads on Facebook met the industry standard of a “viewable” ad, one that is played for two seconds or more with at least half the video in view, said a person familiar with the study. On YouTube, more than 70% of ads are deemed viewable…

…A spokesman for Facebook said the [Media Ratings Council] standards for viewability are designed for desktops and don’t accurately assess the the News Feed format. “Within a mobile feed, research shows that value can be created within the first second, much sooner than the MRC mobile guidelines suggest,” the spokesman said in an email. He pointed to data that shows an ad can have impact with as little as one-quarter of a second.

«

That bar for viewability is set so low it should be in the finals of the world limbo championships. How sustainable are video ads on Facebook going to be with that sort of criterion?
link to this extract

Setting up a new iPhone — it just does not work • Medium

Ouriel Ohayon:

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Restoring all your apps take a good one hour at minimum because they need to be re-downloaded. In my case (have a lot of apps) it will take a few hours.

Some of those apps (eg Spotify, Downcast for podcasts, Audible…) have content to be downloaded for offline consumption. iTunes and iCloud backup don’t include those (it would cost me a lot of icloud $) and iTunes back up does not include those. So there you go, you need to download again each app the content. One by One.

Then if you have an Apple watch, you need to unpair it from the old phone, then reset the watch, and pair again the Watch (a good 30 min). Even John Gruber (ZE Apple expert) screwed up in this.

Then you need to reset Apple pay and all your cards, on your iPhone and your watch.

Then you have for certain apps to go through the 2 key authentication process again (payment apps, bank apps).

Reset 2 key authentication for all services you are already using (a real pain in the b…). Certain apps just need sign in again like Google Apps and of course Authenticator. Reset of 1password (if sync with Dropbox). Then for Communication apps (Viber..) you need to reset your account to your new Phone (even with the same line).

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(Odd he doesn’t mention doing a restore from iTunes – though I understand some people detest iTunes. But you could, you know, just use it for setting up your phone. It won’t reach out and kill you.)

Setting up a new iPhone from an iCloud backup (if you’re not going down the iTunes route) is like Churchill’s description of democracy – the worst, except for all the others. Has Ohayon ever tried setting up a new Android phone? The experience is nowhere near that on iOS. There is an Android Backup service, but as Google’s help notes, “not all apps use [it]. Some apps may not back up and restore all data.”

As for the complaints about two-factor authentication – the idea of 2FA is that it’s hard to configure a new device. Ditto for credit cards in Wallet.

Sometimes it feels as though people complain without considering what they’re complaining about. If this stuff were easy to do, imagine the real havoc that a hacked iCloud password would cause to the actual owner – and how much someone like Ohayon would complain if they were the victim: I’m sure we’d hear that Apple had made it too easy for people to set up new phones from a UID/password combination.
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Software application risks on the OSX continuum • Cyber ITL

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We always look across all of the binaries to identify the very best and very worst applications in any run, to see if anything of interest pops out.  We were dismayed to see that Microsoft AutoUpdate (the update software that ships with their office suite) had one of the worst 10 scores out of all 38k+ binaries we evaluated.  It’s a 32 bit application with no ASLR, an executable heap, unfortified source, and no stack guards.  In the office suite scores from the prior histogram, we did not include this update software. If we change the score of the office suite to include all the software it comes with, this pulls the score down significantly. It should be pointed out that this updater is related to Microsoft’s DRM (digital rights management – anti software piracy) component that is listening on the network on your OS X system if you have MS Office installed. 

In contrast, the native OSX Auto Update software does quite well, scoring slightly better than Google Chrome did.  Given what a target auto updaters are for attackers, this is more along the lines of what we would like to see for this sort of software.

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They’ve also looked at OSX v Linux v Windows 10 in terms of “security” against attack. Windows 10 is miles ahead – which just goes to show what more than a decade of “Trustworthy Computing” initiatives can do.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified