Start up: BB Priv sales figured, Google drives to Ford, Samsung’s culture shock, and goodbye 2015

Posted on December 23, 2015 by charlesarthur

“Shot and processed on iPhone 6Plus”. Photo by andrewXu on Flickr.

This is the last Start Up of 2015. Thanks all so much for reading, and for your feedback. It will return on Monday 11 January.

A selection of 9 links for you. Freely given. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

BlackBerry sold under 50,000 Priv units, Play Store data suggests » AndroidAuthority

Matthew Benson:

Because the Priv apps can only be installed on the Priv itself, this offers a very good indication of the kind of sales numbers BlackBerry has achieved. At worst, there are possibly 10,001 sold, and at most, there are possibly 50,000. For the sake of argument, there is the possibility that the statistics on the Play Store are not accurate. Even assuming that installs are double that which is reported, that would still give a range between 20,002 and 100,000 units.

It is difficult to make heads or tails of this presumed purchase point. Considering that BlackBerry sold approximately 700,000 total handsets in Q3, it would mean the Priv was not a major seller. Granted it was only available for 2 weeks before the end of Q3, but many devices typically see the highest sales in the initial release window.

Nah, it’s pretty easy really. People had already worked out that BlackBerry shipped (as in, “recognised revenue on”) about 125,000 Privs. (You can figure it from previous average selling prices, and the ASP in the past quarter.) These figures show how many have actually reached peoples’ hands; it wouldn’t be too hard to look at the trend in installs and figure it out pretty exactly.

The difference between the 125,000 and the 50,000 (max) is down to “sell-in” (what BlackBerry can persuade carriers and other vendors to take) and “sell-through” (what people have actually bought). Time will tell how quickly the two come into line. If they don’t, then BlackBerry’s handset business is surely, finally, come on now, done.
link to this extract

Fossil Q Founder review: good watch, mediocre smart watch » Android Police

Ryan Whitwam:

The screen looks nice, but there is that flat tire [cut-off strip at the bottom of the screen] to contend with. It’s lame that we’re still putting up with this design quirk, but on the upside you get an ambient light sensor. So, I guess it’s not all bad. You’re either willing to tolerate this or you despise it.

Fossil dropped the ball with the software. The few exclusive faces included with this watch are mostly boring with strange design decisions, and the companion app is almost useless. The watch itself also has some bugs that need to be worked out. I don’t expect a smart watch to necessarily be as stable as a mechanical one, but when I have to reboot because the time froze 30 minutes ago, that’s a problem. The reboots certainly don’t help the battery life, which is mediocre right now. If it gets any worse as the watch ages, then you’d probably have trouble making it through a full day away from the charger.

Have to say that since Apple’s Watch got Watch OS 2.1, the only time I’ve run down to 10% in a day from a 6.30 start has been when I did 3.5 hours of workout on the day. Otherwise, it has lots of charge left.

Android’s still looking for a winner in this category; the Huawei watch (compared in the piece) looks like the best so far.
link to this extract

Google pairs with Ford to build self-driving cars » Yahoo

Justin Hyde and Sharon Carty:

Google and Ford will create a joint venture to build self-driving vehicles with Google’s technology, a huge step by both companies toward a new business of automated ride sharing, Yahoo Autos has learned.

According to three sources familiar with the plans, the partnership is set to be announced by Ford at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. By pairing with Google, Ford gets a massive boost in self-driving software development; while the automaker has been experimenting with its own systems for years, it only revealed plans this month to begin testing on public streets in California.

Effectively the Model T – or T-Mobile G1? – of this emerging class.
link to this extract

Home broadband 2015 » Pew Research Center

Three notable changes relating to digital access and digital divides are occurring in the realm of personal connectivity, according to new findings from Pew Research Center surveys. First, home broadband adoption seems to have plateaued. It now stands at 67% of Americans, down slightly from 70% in 2013, a small but statistically significant difference which could represent a blip or might be a more prolonged reality. This change moves home broadband adoption to where it was in 2012.

Second, this downtick in home high-speed adoption has taken place at the same time there has been an increase in “smartphone-only” adults – those who own a smartphone that they can use to access the internet, but do not have traditional broadband service at home…

…many “smartphone-only” users say that the reason they do not have broadband at home is because their smartphone lets them do all they need to do online, underscoring the device’s utility for those without a home high-speed subscription.

The same pattern is happening in China: fixed broadband has stalled (or is just replacing dialup) while mobile broadband is exploding.
link to this extract

Your smartphone camera should suck. Here’s why it doesn’t » WIRED

Tim Moynihan:

The sensor simply senses light and converts it into an electrical signal. To use an analogy, it buys the groceries. Someone else cooks dinner. So while a high-quality sensor helps, it’s hardly the most important component. The lens is important, of course, but the biggest difference between a great camera and a good camera is the image signal processor—the secret sauce to any smartphone camera’s features and performance.

Hung says that the image sensor isn’t the only thing feeding information into the ISPs. A modern smartphone has several sensors at its disposal. “The gyroscope has evolved in terms of image stabilization,” he says. “A lot of the ISPs now can take the input from the gyroscope (and) combine that input with the image sensor to provide image stabilization. It’s a new kind of digital stabilization system.”

Apple and Samsung use their own image signal processors for the iPhone and Galaxy phones, respectively. However, many high-end Android handsets use the integrated image signal processors in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon system-on-a-chip, which keeps camera features relatively consistent from phone to phone. As good as it is, the company says the next-gen processor arriving early in 2016 will improve noise reduction, artifact correction, autofocus, and color reproduction.

That last point explains a lot about so many Android phones. I wonder how many people Qualcomm has working on its ISP systems.
link to this extract

Judge, siding with Google, refuses to shut down Waze in wake of alleged theft » Ars Technica

Cyrus Farivar:

Google, the owner of the traffic app Waze, has managed to beat back a copyright lawsuit filed by lesser-known rival PhantomAlert.

Back in September 2015 PhantomAlert sued Google over allegations of copyright infringement. Google purchased Waze in June 2013 for over $1bn. PhantomAlert alleged that, after a failed data-sharing deal between itself and Waze collapsed in 2010, Waze apparently stole PhantomAlert’s “points of interest” database.

In a judicial order filed earlier this month, the San Francisco-based federal judge found that PhantomAlert could not allege a copyright claim on simple facts of where different places actually are.

As Michael Love observed on Twitter, doesn’t this mean that Apple (or whoever) could simply steal Google’s, or Waze’s, POI database? The judge also dealt with the question of whether organising those facts meant they attracted copyright: he decided PhantomAlert hadn’t done enough to merit that.

PhantomAlert can file an amended complaint within two weeks, and says it will.
link to this extract

Humans are slamming into driverless cars and exposing a key flaw » Bloomberg Business

Keith Naughton:

“It’s a constant debate inside our group,” said Raj Rajkumar, co-director of the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab in Pittsburgh. “And we have basically decided to stick to the speed limit. But when you go out and drive the speed limit on the highway, pretty much everybody on the road is just zipping past you. And I would be one of those people.”

Last year, Rajkumar offered test drives to members of Congress in his lab’s self-driving Cadillac SRX sport utility vehicle. The Caddy performed perfectly, except when it had to merge onto I-395 South and swing across three lanes of traffic in 150 yards (137 meters) to head toward the Pentagon. The car’s cameras and laser sensors detected traffic in a 360-degree view but didn’t know how to trust that drivers would make room in the ceaseless flow, so the human minder had to take control to complete the manoeuvre.

“We end up being cautious,” Rajkumar said. “We don’t want to get into an accident because that would be front-page news. People expect more of autonomous cars.”

Turns out, though, their accident rates are twice as high as for regular cars, according to a study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Driverless vehicles have never been at fault, the study found: They’re usually hit from behind in slow-speed crashes by inattentive or aggressive humans unaccustomed to machine motorists that always follow the rules and proceed with caution.

“It’s a dilemma that needs to be addressed,” Rajkumar said.

Well, strictly it’s the humans who are at fault. The “key flaw” is that lots of humans drive badly, but they also have expectations of how the car in front will behave – so it’s a “theory of mind” problem too.
link to this extract

Culture shock: Samsung’s mobile woes rooted in hardware legacy » Reuters

Jeremy Wagstaff and Se Young Lee:

Interviews with former and serving employees paint a picture of confusion and overlap between competing divisions, where the short-term interests of promoting hardware trump long-term efforts to build platforms that would add value for customers and increase their loyalty to the brand.

One said he only learned from someone outside the company that the hands-free app his team was updating for the upcoming Galaxy S4 launch had competition — from inside Samsung. For the manager, who has since left the company but declined to be identified because his present employer does business with Samsung, it was one of many examples of the low priority the hardware-minded company placed on software, which was treated as little more than a marketing tool inside the firm.

“Samsung’s upper management just inherently doesn’t understand software,” the former employee said. “They get hardware – in fact, they get hardware better than anyone else. But software is a completely different ballgame.”

As a result, critics say, initiatives involving software or services languish and often fail.

Despite being pre-installed on Galaxy phones, Samsung’s ChatON messaging service gained few adherents and closed without fanfare in March, while the Milk Video app, a high profile project run by newly hired US executives, lasted a year, closing in November.

Knox (hardening security) has been a qualified success (though it’s unclear how many extra sales it has generated); jury still out on Samsung Pay.
link to this extract

Trends 2016: adblocking is here to stay » Global Web Index

Jason Mander:

Adblocking has captured a lot of headlines in recent months, despite the fact it’s still just 28% of online adults who say they are deploying one of these tools.

The heaviest consumers of the internet, 16-24s, are at the very forefront of the trend, with over a third of them blocking ads. But that presents something of a paradox: older groups are the most concerned about their privacy and personalized recommendations/ads and yet are the least likely to be blocking ads.

That’s surely a symptom of awareness; currently, older groups are the least likely to know what ad-blockers are. As such tools become more mainstream, there can be little doubt that usage levels will creep upwards and show fewer variations by age. It’s certainly telling that 55-64s are already about as likely as 16-24s to be deleting cookies on a regular basis, an action which is rather more established and well-known among internet users.

In light of these trends, trying to resist the spread of ad-blocking feels rather futile.

link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: bitcoin for Greece?, news apps’ key problem, when hamburger menus are good, and more

Posted on July 6, 2015 by charlesarthur

Coming to the UK on 14 July? Apple Pay photo by DopiesLife.com on Flickr.

A selection of 7 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Why it’s totally okay to use a hamburger icon » UXmatters

Steven Hoober:

Not too long ago, I was observing a test in which the subject was a mechanic in a truck repair shop. He didn’t have a computer at home, had no access to a smartphone, so had no base of knowledge. But we gave him a smartphone and an app to try out. He did fine with the big, obvious bits on the screen and performed every task. Then, we got to the tricky part. We asked him to reconnect the phone to the IoT (Internet of Things) device we were testing, then refresh the display on the screen.

“Hmm… I don’t see it. Maybe in here?” he said, tapping Menu, where he found the Refresh button. He said, “Ah, there it is,” as he tapped it.

I’ve experienced this sort of observation over and over again. Why? Well, first because of a fundamental behavior of mobile-device users, who do not scan a page top to bottom and left to right, but always gravitate toward the center. In Figure 3, you can see a chart showing where users tapped when presented with a scrolling list of selectable items.

The same preference for the center applies to tap accuracy, speed, and comprehension. When designing, I assume users view and read the center, then move outward if they do not find the information they need.

This is actually starting to become a design principle of mine. Assume that users focus on and interact with things at the center of a page, and make sure that you can live with their missing or ignoring things at the top and bottom edges.

Some pushback in the comments: how do you get back from the hamburger?

The problem every news aggregation app faces » Medium

Simon Owens:

The chief problem I have with many news apps is they don’t deliver the level of customization that I can get on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. I launched my Twitter account in late 2008. In the intervening years I’ve accumulated a list of over 700 people whom I follow, and for a significant portion of those people I wouldn’t be able to remember my reasoning for following them. In some cases they’re colleagues I’ve worked with. In others they’re writers and journalists I admire. But there are still plenty more I followed because something in their profile caught my eye or they authored an article I enjoyed but have long since forgotten.

But despite not having a complete understanding of all my follow choices, my Twitter feed is a well-oiled machine, one that produces a rich tapestry of news and commentary (and plenty of jokes) every time I open it.

True, but it’s taken him six years to reach that level of aggregation on Twitter. News apps don’t get that. But his key point is that

“The problem is that news tastes go beyond mere categories and keywords.”

And that’s the crux of it.

Some miners generating invalid blocks » bitcoin.org

For several months, an increasing amount of mining hash rate has been signaling its intent to begin enforcing BIP66 strict DER signatures. As part of the BIP66 rules, once 950 of the last 1,000 blocks were version 3 (v3) blocks, all upgraded miners would reject version 2 (v2) blocks.

Early morning UTC on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block – as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block.

Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far.

All software that assumes blocks are valid (because invalid blocks cost miners money) is at risk of showing transactions as confirmed when they really aren’t. This particularly affects lightweight (SPV) wallets and software such as old versions of Bitcoin Core which have been downgraded to SPV-level security by the new BIP66 consensus rules.

Now bitcoin is getting the inertia problems of widespread use and software updates.

Leak suggests iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will be able to capture 4K video » MobileSyrup.com

Igor Bonifacic:

If a new leak is to be believed, the next iPhone will feature a 12 megapixel rear-facing camera that is able to capture 4K video.

The leak comes courtesy of anonymous poster on China’s Sina Weibo website.

If true, that will mean that the 6s and 6s Plus will boast cameras that are a significant upgrade from the already excellent shooters that are found on their predecessors.

While 4K TVs and computer displays still have a long way to go before they’re ubiquitous, there’s a case to be made that consumers could still get use out all those extra pixels. Current smartphones, TVs and computers might not be able to display 4K content at its native resolution, but consumers will still see an improvement in visual quality through downsampling.

A couple of things. (1) “If a new leak is to be believed”? This takes arms-length writing to an extreme. Later in the piece he says “Of course, it’s impossible to verify a rumour like this one”, which is patently untrue. You just need much, much, much better connections. (2) It can’t be surprising that the next iPhones will have better cameras. The only question will be how much better. (3) I’d like a clearer explanation of how it’s useful to shoot video at that resolution.

Apple Pay expected to go live in the U.K. on July 14th, £20+ transactions starting this fall » 9to5Mac

Mark Gurman:

Apple appears to be planning to enable its Apple Pay iPhone mobile payments service in the United Kingdom on July 14th, according to sources at multiple retailers. Apple has informed some Apple Retail employees in the U.K. that Apple Pay support will go live on that Tuesday, while an internal memos for supermarket Waitrose plus an additional retail partner indicate the same date…

Apple will also begin training its U.K staff on supporting Apple Pay on July 12th.

Given that the UK has widespread availability of NFC terminals, the UK could quickly become the largest location for Apple Pay payments – the penetration of iOS devices is high (32% or so of smartphones).

Huawei says Honor brand on track to sell 40 million smartphones » Chinadaily.com.cn

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s Honor brand has sold 20m smartphones in the first half of 2015 and by should reach its goal of 40m shipments by the year end, double the 2014 figure.

Honor’s sales amounted to $2.6bn of revenue during the first half of the year, Honor President George Zhao said at the launch of the Honor 7 phone in Beijing.

Huawei, the world’s No. 4 handset maker, has invested heavily in the past two years to establish Honor as a stand-alone brand to compete against Beijing-based Xiaomi Inc to win over young, fashion-conscious customers.

Zhao said that he expected 15%, or 6m, of the unit’s total sales this year to come from overseas, with the majority coming from China.

Since you’re wondering, that gives the Honor an average selling price (ASP) of $130 – which puts it some way below the top-end Android price, and lower even than Lenovo.

Fearing return to drachma, some Greeks use bitcoin to dodge capital controls » Reuters

Jemima Kelly:

Although absolute figures are hard to come by, Greek interest has surged in the online “cryptocurrency”, which is out of the reach of monetary authorities and can be transferred at the touch of a smartphone screen.

New customers depositing at least 50 euros with BTCGreece, the only Greece-based bitcoin exchange, open only to Greeks, rose by 400% [translation: tripled – CA] between May and June, according to its founder Thanos Marinos, who put the number at “a few thousand”. The average deposit quadrupled to around 700 euros.

Using bitcoin could allow Greeks to do one of the things that capital controls were put in place this week to prevent: transfer money out of their bank accounts and, if they wish, out of the country.

“When people are trying to move money out of the country and the state is stopping that from taking place, bitcoin is the only way to move any value,” said Adam Vaziri, a board member of the UK Digital Currency Association.

The problem is that in order to translate your euros into bitcoin, you have to find someone willing to take your euros – and you also have to have the euros available. It’s getting money out of the Greek banks that has been the problem lately. And this remains a minority sport.

Start up: Kickstarter disappointment, the Apple leaks source?, Google is listening, and more

Posted on June 24, 2015 by charlesarthur

Wikipedia: missing pieces on mobile. Photo by @bastique on Flickr.

A selection of 8 links for you. They join things together. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

After raising $1 million, the super-thin CST-01 watch won’t make it to Kickstarter backers » The Verge

Jacob Kastrenakes:

The project has run into quite a few issues, but the broadest one is that the watches just aren’t easy to make. Little more than half of them are fully working after assembly, according to the two engineers behind CST-01, which means that the costs to make them are effectively doubled unless they can resolve the underlying issues. At this point, they can’t. As they explained in an earlier update, their project is basically out of money. One of their engineers supposedly went as far as sleeping in a van outside of the production factory so that he didn’t have to pay for a hotel.

Hardware is difficult.

Thoughts on Mark Gurman’s 9to5Mac article about Apple Watch rumors » Mobile Forward

Hristo Daniel Ushev, who worked at Motorola for eight years, on Gurman’s likely source, who he reckons is probably not an Apple employee:

It’s probably someone helping Apple with consumer research. I’m saying that because the leaked information concerns:

• “Considerations” (as far from a shipping product as a PowerPoint slide)
• Visible features, but no granular attributes (spec-level knowledge or software features)
• Price point variants
• Granular information from consumer research

Let’s combine these: a likely-external person, discussing feature “considerations”, without spec or software detail, about price point variants, and quoting granular information from consumer research. Based on that, I think it’s probably a low level employee (or attention-seeker) from a research firm that Apple trusted. The “considerations” may be features that appeared in a research aid.

Rings true. Takes nothing away from Gurman’s work in developing sources, of course.

Can Wikipedia survive? » The New York Times

Andrew Lih:

One of the biggest threats it faces is the rise of smartphones as the dominant personal computing device. A recent Pew Research Center report found that 39 of the top 50 news sites received more traffic from mobile devices than from desktop and laptop computers, sales of which have declined for years.

This is a challenge for Wikipedia, which has always depended on contributors hunched over keyboards searching references, discussing changes and writing articles using a special markup code. Even before smartphones were widespread, studies consistently showed that these are daunting tasks for newcomers. “Not even our youngest and most computer-savvy participants accomplished these tasks with ease,” a 2009 user test concluded. The difficulty of bringing on new volunteers has resulted in seven straight years of declining editor participation.

In 2005, during Wikipedia’s peak years, there were months when more than 60 editors were made administrator — a position with special privileges in editing the English-language edition. For the past year, it has sometimes struggled to promote even one per month.

Google Chrome listening in to your room shows the importance of privacy defence in depth » Privacy Online News

Pirate Party chief Rick Falkvinge:

it should be noted that this was Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome. If somebody downloads the Google product Google Chrome, as in the prepackaged binary, you don’t even get a theoretical choice. You’re already downloading a black box from a vendor. In Google Chrome, this is all included from the start.

This episode highlights the need for hard, not soft, switches to all devices – webcams, microphones – that can be used for surveillance. A software on/off switch for a webcam is no longer enough, a hard shield in front of the lens is required. A software on/off switch for a microphone is no longer enough, a physical switch that breaks its electrical connection is required. That’s how you defend against this in depth.

Of course, people were quick to downplay the alarm. “It only listens when you say ‘Ok, Google’.” (Ok, so how does it know to start listening just before I’m about to say ‘Ok, Google?’) “It’s no big deal.” (A company stealth installs an audio listener that listens to every room in the world it can, and transmits audio data to the mothership when it encounters an unknown, possibly individually tailored, list of keywords – and it’s no big deal!?) “You can opt out. It’s in the Terms of Service.” (No. Just no. This is not something that is the slightest amount of permissible just because it’s hidden in legalese.) “It’s opt-in. It won’t really listen unless you check that box.” (Perhaps. We don’t know, Google just downloaded a black box onto my computer. And it may not be the same black box as was downloaded onto yours. )

Early last decade, privacy activists practically yelled and screamed that the NSA’s taps of various points of the Internet and telecom networks had the technical potential for enormous abuse against privacy. Everybody else dismissed those points as basically tinfoilhattery – until the Snowden files came out, and it was revealed that precisely everybody involved had abused their technical capability for invasion of privacy as far as was possible.

When Google is making Falkvinge look reasonable, it’s made a bad mistake.

April 2010: Nokia exec: phones to make system cameras obsolete » Reuters

Tarmo Virki:

(From April 2010:) Fast developing cameraphone technology will shortly make SLR system cameras and even professional cameras obsolete, the sales chief of the world’s top cellphone maker Nokia said on Tuesday. “They will in the very near future revolutionise the market for system cameras,” Anssi Vanjoki said in a speech in Helsinki.

“There will be no need to carry around those heavy lenses,” Vanjoki said, pointing to a professional photographer taking pictures of him.

The proliferation of smartphones with picture quality comparable to most pocket cameras has boosted photography around the world, but they have so far not challenged real system cameras due to phones’ smaller size and weaker technology.

Vanjoki said high-definition (HD) quality video recording was also coming to cellphones within the next 12 months.

Wasn’t wrong. Yet the other elements of the smartphone business were more important.

The Asia report: leading the shift from… » Flurry Insights Blog

Flurry’s Chris Klotzbach:

Although we continue to see growth and user engagement in traditional app categories like Messaging & Social and Gaming, users in Asia demonstrated that in 2015, they are utilizing their smartphones and apps for more functional and practical purposes. This is indicated in the growth in the Shopping & Lifestyle and Utilities & Productivity app categories. Asia is the home of the phablet, and we see users have embraced this form factor- not only in terms of installed base but actual app usage. Just as the rest of the world is beginning to catch on to the phablet, only time will tell if we’ll catch up to Asia’s propensity to be productive and shop!

Impact of iOS 9’s space requirement » David Smith

Smith is an iOS developer:

using the dataset I have from my Audiobooks app I took at look at how many of my customers have enough space for the upgrade.

The result was pretty promising.

66% of my customers on eligible devices have at least 1.3GB of free space. This compares to just 37% of users who would have immediately had sufficient space at the old iOS 8 requirement.

The distribution of eligible devices breaks out roughly as you’d expect for the various capacities Apple sells:

The rate for the 16GB devices (54%) is higher than I would have initially feared. The 16GB capacity accounts for 58% of devices, so it is vitally important that its users have the ability to upgrade.

This reduction in the space requirement (and other things Apple is doing on this front) make me think iOS 9 adoption to be even faster than iOS 8’s.

Google launches free streaming service ahead of Apple Music debut » Reuters

Yasmeen Abutaleb:

Google Inc launched a free version of its music streaming service on Tuesday, as it sought to upstage the debut of Apple Inc’s rival service next week.

Google Play Music has offered a $9.99 per month subscription service for two years but Tuesday’s launch is the first free version of the streaming service. It is available online and will be available on Android and iOS by the end of the week, Elias Roman, Google product manager, said.

Apple said earlier this month it would launch a music streaming service on June 30 for $9.99 per month along with a $14.99 per month family plan, with a free three-month trial.

As with other streaming services, such as Spotify and Rhapsody, Google Play Music curates playlists. Users can tailor playlists based on genre, artist or even activity, such as hosting a pool party or “having fun at work.”

“We believe this is a play that will expose a lot of people to the service,” Roman said in an interview.

Unlike Google’s subscription music service, the free service will carry ads, be unavailable offline and exclude certain songs.

Here’s the official announcement. What I find really weird is that Google, the high priests of “let machines do it”, is highlighting the human-curated nature of these playlists.

Start up: Starbucks app hack, more image recognition, HomeKit on the way, drone questions and more

Posted on May 15, 2015 by charlesarthur

That’s another sort of third-party keyboard altogether. Photo by zen on Flickr.

A selection of 7 links for you. They are. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

EXCLUSIVE: Hackers target Starbucks mobile users, steal from linked credit cards without knowing account number » Bob Sullivan

Sullivan broke this story:

Because Starbucks isn’t answering specific questions about the fraud, I cannot confirm precisely how it works, but I have informed speculation, based on conversations with an anonymous source who is familiar with the crime. The source said Starbucks was known to be wrestling with the problem earlier this year. Essentially, any criminal who obtains username and password credentials to Starbucks.com can drain a consumer’s stored value, and attack their linked credit card.

Hackers often manage to steal hordes of username and password combinations, the way they steal databases of credit card account numbers. Because consumers often re-use credentials, hackers take them and “brute force” thousands of potential logins at the website. Because Starbucks’ mobile payment app is so popular, any large set of stolen credentials is bound to have at least a few combinations that unlock Starbucks accounts.

Perhaps you’re wondering: what’s the use of hacking the Starbucks app? Answer, as a wilier mind than mine pointed out: you can buy Starbucks gift cards at the counter with them. Then you sell them on eBay. (Though I can’t decide if this is pretty small-time crookedness or a huge line of business. Certainly going to be inflating Starbucks’s bottom line though.)

Wolfram Language Artificial Intelligence: the Image Identification project » Stephen Wolfram Blog

“What is this a picture of?” Humans can usually answer such questions instantly, but in the past it’s always seemed out of reach for computers to do this. For nearly 40 years I’ve been sure computers would eventually get there — but I’ve wondered when.
I’ve built systems that give computers all sorts of intelligence, much of it far beyond the human level. And for a long time we’ve been integrating all that intelligence into the Wolfram Language.
Now I’m excited to be able to say that we’ve reached a milestone: there’s finally a function called ImageIdentify built into the Wolfram Language that lets you ask, “What is this a picture of?”— and get an answer.

Apple says first HomeKit smart devices coming in June » WSJ Digits blog

Daisuke Wabayashi:

“HomeKit [hardware certification] has been available for just a few months and we already have dozens of partners who have committed to bringing HomeKit accessories to market and we’re looking forward to the first ones coming next month,” said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller.

Apple’s statement comes on the heels of a report in Fortune that said Apple’s software platform — which will allow the company’s devices to control connected home appliances — was experiencing problems and that the introduction of the first HomeKit devices were being delayed.

For its part, Apple has never said when HomeKit-compliant devices would start hitting the market, but one developer working with Apple on the platform had told Re/code earlier this year that new products would be ready in May or June.

Interesting: Apple moved quickly to respond to this – within hours – and chose the WSJ to say it.

Dirt cheap drones: Is Europe’s largest Kickstarter in over its head? » Ars Technica UK

Cyrus Farivar:

In January 2015, the Welsh drone startup concluded its Kickstarter campaign to fund production of the Zano. It raised over £2.3m ($3.4m) in under two months, becoming the most crowdfunded European project ever. This summer, Torquing [Group, which is making the device] says it will ship drones to the more than 12,000 people who backed the project.

There’s only one problem. Despite Zano’s release date being less than two months away, no one outside Torquing has actually flown the drone. And it’s questions about the project that are truly beginning to take off.

Ars visited Torquing last month for an exclusive tour of the company’s offices. After spending a couple of hours with the Zano team, we don’t have a good sense of how well the device actually flies. Although we heard more about its touted “swarm” feature, we didn’t see the drone working in a real-world situation; we were merely able to hold a Zano and verify its existence.

Reece Crowther, the company’s head of marketing, regretfully informed us that we turned up just before a shipment of 500 last-minute prototypes arrived. Torquing, therefore, said it was unable to let us fly one. At the time, Reedman noted that only 12 Zanos existed, and we saw what appeared to be only a few of them.

I’m one of the backers. Fingers crossed. I’d expect this to be late, at best.

Sunrise launches ‘Meet’, a custom keyboard to schedule meetings » MacStories

Federico Viticci:

When I first tried Meet, Sunrise’s latest addition to their popular calendar app, I didn’t think it made much sense as a custom keyboard. Now, a few months later, Meet has become my favorite way to check on my availability from any app and create one-to-one meetings. With Meet, the Sunrise team has created one of the most innovative mobile calendar features I’ve seen in years.

Sunrise, part of Microsoft since February, rarely shied away from subverting traditional calendar features found in most clients for smartphones and tablets. As I explored last year, Sunrise’s biggest strengths lie in excellent integration with web services, prolific use of icons to quickly discern events, weather support, external calendars, and the ability to show details for event participants. At its core, Sunrise aims to reimagine the calendar by expanding it beyond a list of days and events

Super-clever. Expect more lateral thinking on keyboards as a result. Available on iOS and Android. Oh, Windows Phone? Doesn’t allow third-party keyboards.

How smartphone startup Light plans to replace high-end cameras » Re/code

Ina Fried on a company that’s not exactly making a smartphone; it’s making the camera systems to go into them:

Put more simply, Light tries to emulate digitally what a big zoom lens does through expensive glass lenses. It aggregates the data from the different cameras to create both optical zoom and high-resolution images. Light has applied for a bunch of patents to cover aspects of its approach, including creating zoom using images from the multiple fixed-focal length lenses.

As a business, Light is banking on the fact that using smartphone cameras, even a bunch of them, is a far more economical way to achieve the kind of images that in the past have required expensive glass lenses.

The technology is ready, says Grannan, who previously ran start-up Vlingo and also worked at Sprint PCS. There is of course, added cost in putting a bunch of cameras and mirrors inside a cell phone, an addition of perhaps $60 to $80 in the final cost of a phone, Light estimates.

Seems high. Creating a big lens from smaller ones is a solved software problem: it’s how the Very Large Array works, for example. Wonder if this is really a defensible USP.

Why I’m breaking up with Google Chrome » The Next Web

Owen Williams, on a topic I previously linked to:

The Verge reported that using Chrome over Safari resulted in a three and a half hour shorter battery life on the latest MacBook.

I’ve always loved Chrome’s interface, its plethora of extensions, and how it integrates with services every day, but it’s time for something new. We can do better.

The problem is that the Web is now optimized for Chrome users and that means alternatives often provide a terrible experience.

Thanks in part to the browser’s massive market share, the best developer tools and Google’s aggressive adoption of the latest Web technologies, developers have gravitated toward Chrome’s rendering engine as the only one they support.

I’ve switched to Safari (on a Mac), and found that yes, processor use plummets and battery life extends dramatically. Nor is it noticeably slower (or faster).

But the important point here is in the third paragraph of this excerpt: that lots of sites are now using Chrome-specific tweaks, which means that they don’t work as well in other browsers, at least on the desktop.

This does pose a problem if it becomes dominant in mobile: Android isn’t going away, and Chrome is increasingly the default browser on mobile too.

Start up: iPhone sales visualised, stopping VR sickness, Canon lurches downward, mobile design and more

Posted on April 28, 2015 by charlesarthur

Not so many of these being sold. Photo by lonelysandwich on Flickr.

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

iPhone sales by quarter » Bare Figures

Have a play with this excellent site, which shows financial data for all sorts of companies. Notable: iPhone sales in the just-gone quarter of 61.2m, up 39.9%. That really is a lot. And the revenues too.

How to reduce VR sickness? Just add a virtual nose » WIRED

Liz Stinson:

Eliminating simulator sickness is a major interest of the burgeoning VR industry, but so far there hasn’t been a clear answer. Home remedies include drinking alcohol, while companies like Oculus Rift are exploring better positional tracking and improved display resolution. But researchers at Purdue University believe they’ve found a way to reduce the negative physical effects of virtual reality by using something that’s right in front of your face.

“We’ve discovered putting a virtual nose in the scene seems to have a stabilizing effect,” says David Whittinghill, an assistant professor in Purdue University’s Department of Computer Graphics Technology.

Windows Phone and Prepaid in the US » Tech.pinions

Jan Dawson:

based on the combination of AdDuplex and Comscore data, it’s likely Cricket has between 1 and 1.5 million Windows Phone devices in its base, which is a fairly significant chunk of Cricket’s overall base, perhaps as much as 25%. Secondly, remember the overall Windows Phone growth numbers we looked at earlier? There was net growth of about 1 million Windows Phone handsets in the base during that same nine month period or, in other words, the difference between those that left the platform and joined it was 1 million. Given Cricket likely added around 1 million during that period, it’s possible it accounted for the vast majority of that net growth.

Cricket isn’t the only prepaid brand where Windows Phone is big, though. It’s hard to get a full postpaid/prepaid breakdown from the AdDuplex numbers because, for the major carrier brands, the two aren’t separated. But even if we just focus on MetroPCS, Cricket and a phone only available on AT&T’s GoPhone prepaid service, these three add up to around 40% of the total base in the US. Add in a few percentage points for other prepaid sales on the major carriers and we could be getting close to half the Windows Phone base on prepaid, compared with about 25% of the total US phone base on prepaid. In this sense, Windows Phone is the anti-iPhone, with the iPhone well underrepresented in the prepaid market, just as Windows Phone is well over-represented.

(The full article is via subscription – monthly or one-off.)

The hidden politics of video games » POLITICO Magazine

Michael Peck:

Sim City lets you indulge your wildest fiscal fantasies. Banish the IRS and set taxes to zero in Teapartyville, or hike them to 99 percent on the filthy rich in the People’s Republic of Sims. Either way, you will discover that the game’s economic model is based on the famous Laffer Curve, the theoretical darling of conservative politicians and supply-side economists. The Laffer Curve postulates that raising taxes will increase revenue until the tax rate reaches a certain point, above which revenue decrease as people lose incentive to work.

Finding that magic tax point is like catnip for hard-core Sim City players. One Web site has calculated that according to the economic model in Sim City, the optimum tax rate to win the game should be 12% for the poor, 11% for the middle class and 10% for the rich.

In other words, playing Sim City well requires not only embracing supply-side economics, but taxing the poor more than the rich. One can almost see a mob of progressive gamers marching on City Hall to stick Mayor McSim’s head on a pike.

The subtle reinforcing effects of such models isn’t much thought about. Philip K Dick did, for his short story War Game.

Canon first-quarter profit drops as compact camera demand collapses » Reuters

Thomas Wilson:

Japan’s Canon Inc reported first-quarter net profit that fell by almost a third on Monday, grossly undershooting expectations, citing a collapse in demand for compact digital cameras.

Profit at the world’s largest camera maker fell to 33.93bn yen (£188 million) in January-March, compared with the 53.64bn yen average estimate of 5 analysts according to Thomson Reuters data.

The result comes as the world’s No.1 camera maker contends with a shift in consumer preference toward increasingly capable smartphone cameras. That shift has dragged Canon’s compact sales down nearly 70% since the market’s peak in 2008 – the year after Apple released its game-changing iPhone.

“Sales volume for low-end (digital camera) models declined due to the ongoing contraction of the market in all regions from the previous year,” said Canon in its earnings release.

Revenues down 1% year-on-year; operating profit by 20%. Also cut this year’s forecasts for compact sales by 23% and for higher-end cameras by 9%.

Telecom act to stifle sales of LG G4, Galaxy S6 » Korea Times

Bahk Eun-ji:

LG Electronics will release its latest smartphone, the G4, on Wednesday and seek to steal customers from its bigger rivals Samsung Electronics and Apple. LG is betting big on the new smartphone to gain fresh momentum in its earnings.

However, it faces a bigger obstacle than Samsung and Apple in the domestic market ― the Telecom Act that caps handset subsidies.

Two weeks ago, the KCC [Korean Communications Commission] raised the maximum amount of subsidy that customers can receive when buying a new handset to 330,000 won [£203/$304], from 300,000 won [£185/$268]. However, the maximum subsidy is possible only for those who choose the highest monthly phone bill rate. For most consumers, the actual subsidies available for them are insignificant. That’s why they are not buying new handsets.

The government has drawn criticism for the enforcement of the Telecom Act from all interested parties, including consumers, telecom companies and retail shop operators.

In particular, retail handset dealerships have condemned the act as their handset sales plunged after the Mobile Distribution Act took effect in October. Under the current law, when consumers buy Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and select a highest phone bill rate, they can receive up to 330,000 won in subsidies.

Normally, retail shop owners get rebates from telecom companies when they sell new handsets, but if customers do not buy the devices at the shop, the owners will not get the rebate.

Besides, if customers cancel their contracts before six months, the shop owners have to pay a 200,000 won [£123/$184] penalty to the telecom companies.

This probably explains the low reported sales of the Galaxy S6. The purpose of the subsidy cap is to prevent carriers and handset makers colluding to lure customers from rivals in South Korea’s saturated market. In 2014, Samsung lobbied to raise the subsidy ceiling. Not hard to work out why.

Racist Camera! No, I did not blink… I’m just Asian! » Flickr

Jared Earle offered a followup to the story on Kodachrome from Monday, pointing to this photo and commentary from 2009:

We got our Mom a new Nikon S630 digital camera for Mother’s Day and I was playing with it during the Angels game we were at on Sunday.

As I was taking pictures of my family, it kept asking “Did someone blink?” even though our eyes were always open.

Surprising, to say the least, that Nikon would have this problem.
Time picked up the story about a year later, and pointed out more strange examples where systems seemed to have built-in prejudices.

Of course, you can blame “the algorithms”. But they don’t write themselves.

Obvious always wins » LukeW

Luke Wroblewski, on how using menu controls (especially “hamburgers” and similar) can create big problems, even though the screen looks “simpler” (and so “better”, right?):

In an effort to simplify the visual design of the Polar app, we moved from a segmented control menu to a toggle menu. While the toggle menu looked “cleaner”, engagement plummeted following the change. The root cause? People were no longer moving between the major sections of the app as they were now hidden behind the toggle menu.

A similar fate befell the Zeebox app when they transitioned from a tab row for navigating between the major sections of their application to a navigation drawer menu. Critical parts of the app were now out of sight and thereby out of mind. As a result, engagement fell drastically.

[By contrast] When critical parts of an application are made more visible, usage of them can increase. Facebook found that not only did engagement go up when they moved from a “hamburger” menu to a bottom tab bar in their iOS app, but several other important metrics went up as well.

Start up: Google swipes ad injectors, streaming v vinyl, Galaxy S6 reviewed, FTC-Google scrutiny, and more

Posted on April 1, 2015 by charlesarthur

Wait, is that from Amazon? Photo by star5112 on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. None is an April Fool. (Apparently it’s necessary to say this stuff.) I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Out with unwanted ad injectors » Google Online Security Blog

Nav Jagpal, software engineer for “safe browsing”:

To increase awareness about ad injectors and the scale of this issue, we’ll be releasing new research on May 1 that examines the ad injector ecosystem in depth. The study, conducted with researchers at University of California Berkeley, drew conclusions from more than 100 million pageviews of Google sites across Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer on various operating systems, globally. It’s not a pretty picture. Here’s a sample of the findings:

• Ad injectors were detected on all operating systems (Mac and Windows), and web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE) that were included in our test.
• More than 5% of people visiting Google sites have at least one ad injector installed. Within that group, half have at least two injectors installed and nearly one-third have at least four installed.
• 34% of Chrome extensions injecting ads were classified as outright malware.
• Researchers found 192 deceptive Chrome extensions that affected 14 million users; these have since been disabled. Google now incorporates the techniques researchers used to catch these extensions to scan all new and updated extensions.

Tidal, Apple, Beyonce, and the future of streaming music » NextDraft Originals

First of two links on this. Point 8 (you should also read 1-7):

You just held a press conference with some of the biggest celebrities of our time. And the consumer buzz and press you got wasn’t even close to a Tim Cook Apple keynote. You’re in the technology business now. And we’re all in a new world. Today, product is a bigger star than any celebrity. That’s so important and so right, I’m gonna make it the chorus of this post and repeat it a couple more times. Product is a bigger star than any celebrity … Product is a bigger star than any celebrity. And in the high end tech business, we got 99 problems, but UI ain’t one. Seriously, if you think having a beef with another rapper is dangerous, try dealing with a product manager who disagrees with your vision. Here’s what the company that acquires Tidal should do to further differentiate itself…

9. Push back against the Internet-era dogma that we all hate having our music streams hosted by a human curator. That idea was never more than an assumption. And it’s one that needs to be tested. You’ll still have access to uninterrupted music when you want it. But when you want a radio station or a hosted playlist, then someone should let you hear a human voice.

True. Will Zane Lowe be the human voice on Beats?

Google and Asus announce the Chromebit, a sub $100 Chrome PC » MobileSyrup.com

Igor Bonifacic:

Thanks to Google and Asus, an entirely new type of Chrome OS computer is coming this summer. The two companies just announced the Chromebit, a $100 computer on a HDMI dongle.

Each one comes equipped with a 1.8GHz ARM Cortex-A17 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16 GB of solid state storage, Bluetooth 4.0, a dual band 802.11ac WiFi chip and a single full-size USB 2.0 port. Using its HDMI port, the Chromebit can be connected with any other HDMI-equipped monitor or television.

When it ships this summer, the Chromebit will be available in three different colours—blue, orange and grey. Google and Asus haven’t yet announced how much the unit will retail for in Canada, but based on a post on its Chrome Blog, it appears the company’s aim is to have the Chromebit cost less than $100 everywhere it’s sold. Of course, those that purchase one will still need to provide a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

So you need an HDMI monitor, mouse and keyboard. Who’s going to have those hanging around yet not have a PC?

Samsung Galaxy S6 review: the iPhone 6 has met its match » WSJ

Joanna Stern:

No, neither of the new Galaxys brings any original ideas to the evolution of the smartphone. If anything, Samsung has actually sucked out the differentiators, including the waterproof design and removable storage and battery. And Samsung still needs some schooling in the software department.

Yet with a series of improvements, the Galaxy now has a leg up on the hardware of other Android phones and the iPhone. It’s got me, a once extremely satisfied iPhone 6 owner, wishing for a better screen, sharper camera and faster charging.

One reason I probably like the new Galaxys so much—especially the white models I’ve been testing — is that the design looks like a compilation of the iPhone’s greatest hits.

Okey doke. The one thing the S6 does have: a dual-app view. Hard to pull off, but potentially useful. The cameras (S6 v iPhone 6) seem like a dead heat.

And this isn’t where the battle will be fought. It’ll be in China, and Europe.

Noah Smith on Twitter: “10/And what near-future sci-fi used to be – Neuromancer, Snow Crash, etc. – is now just called “real stuff happening in the news”.”

10/And what near-future sci-fi used to be – Neuromancer, Snow Crash, etc. – is now just called "real stuff happening in the news".

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) March 14, 2015

What with the events in Turkey.. part of a larger tweetstorm that’s worth reading at Eugene Wei’s blog.

US recording industry dips slightly, streaming and vinyl jump » Billboard

Ed Christman:

The story within digital remains intriguing. While streaming revenue jumped nearly 29% – to $1.87bn from $1.45bn – download sales fell 9.5%, to $2.64bn from $2.92bn. That means that overall digital grew by $140bn, 3.2%, to $4.5bn, up from $4.37bn in the prior year.

Looking more closely at digital streaming revenue, paid subscriptions’ value jumped to nearly $800m, via 7.7m subscribers, up 25% from 2013’s $639m in revenue and 6.2m subscribers. The RIAA also reports that ad-supported streaming services’ contribution to the overall U.S. music industry grew 34%, to nearly $295m – from $220m in the prior year – while SoundExchange distributions grew 31%, to $773.4m.

CD albums fell 12.3%, to $1.85bn from $2.12bn in 2013. Overall CD sales, on a unit basis, were down 16.3%m to 144.1m from $172.2m…

On a bright note, vinyl sales continued to grow, contributing $320.8m to the total pie, from the prior year’s total of $213.7m – a 50% growth.

Got that? Ad-supported “free” streaming generated less revenue than vinyl in the world’s largest, most connected market. (This likely doesn’t include YouTube revenues, though.)

Key senator to take closer look at FTC-Google meetings » NASDAQ.com

A key US senator plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission for information about meetings it had with Google Inc. executives during the time it was investigating the company for possible antitrust violations.

Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who chairs the Senate’s antitrust panel, will conduct a preliminary inquiry to determine what conversations took place between the FTC and the Internet giant during the probe, people in his office said on Monday.

The senator could later expand his inquiry to include conversations people in the White House had with the FTC and Google, these people said.

A Republican senator is looking at Google’s relationship with the White House? No doubt to irk Obama, but it makes Google’s blogpost thumbing its nose at the Wall Street Journal (in which it used GIFs of babies) look both incredibly jejeune and ill-judged. Even if (as is likely) this comes to nothing, I suspect it will be embarrassing for Google to explain the post, which detailed visits to the White House by Google staff.

Criminal charges against FBI agents reveal staggering corruption in the Silk Road investigation » Forbes

Sarah Jeong describes

a sprawling case tainted by an unbelievable web of corruption. A state’s witness took the fall for an agent’s theft, thus becoming the target for a murder-for-hire—a murder that was then faked by the same agent. The Silk Road case was compromised again and again as Force and Bridges allegedly took every opportunity to embezzle and steal money. With so much bitcoin on their hands, the two had to coax various bitcoin and payments companies to help convert their ill-gotten gains to dollars. When companies resisted, investigations were launched, subpoenas were issued, and civil forfeitures were sought in retaliation.

Someone’s gotta be writing the screenplay, right? More to the point, I wonder if there was some assumption that bitcoin transactions would be anonymous on anyone’s part..

Amazon Dash Button » Amazon

Dash Button comes with a reusable adhesive and a hook so you can hang, stick, or place it right where you need it. Keep Dash Button handy in the kitchen, bath, laundry, or anywhere you store your favorite products. When you’re running low, simply press Dash Button, and Amazon quickly delivers household favorites so you can skip the last-minute trip to the store.

I know, it looks like an April Fool’s. But it isn’t – it’s real. Amazon is making it easier to order stuff directly, with a very clever, Internet of Things approach.

Next question is whether people will trust Amazon to always be the cheapest to deliver this. Miles ahead of supermarkets – though what’s to stop them doing the same? Maybe your washing machine will be festooned with buttons offering lights showing which is cheaper at any time (excluding P&P, of course).

Start up: Apple gets prismatic, the tricorder cometh, smart home dilemmas, oceans in trouble, and more

Posted on March 25, 2015 by charlesarthur

Coming to a future iPhone camera? Photo by refeia on Flickr.

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

The HTC One M9 review: part 1 » AnandTech

Why part 1? Because, Joshua Ho explains, there was a big ol’ software update last Friday which changed lots of stuff. Which is a good thing:

Friday’s software update introduced significant changes to the phone’s power and temperature management capabilities, which in turn has introduced a significant changes in the phone’s performance. HTC’s notes on the matter are very brief – updates to the camera, the UI, and thermal throttling – in practice it appears that HTC has greatly altered how the phone behaves under sustained loads. Our best guess at this point is that HTC appears to have reduced the maximum skin temperature allowed on the phone, which means that for short, bursty workloads that don’t approach the maximum skin temperature the changes are minimal, but for sustained loads performance has gone down due to the reduction in the amount of heat allowed to be generated.

Case in point, our GFXBench 3.0 battery life results were significantly altered by the update. With the initial version of the phone’s software we hit 1.73 hours – the phone ran fast but almost unbearably hot – and after the software update the One M9 is over 3 hours on the same test with a maximum temperature of 45C, a still-warm but certainly much cooler temperature, as seen in the photo above. And none of this takes into account the camera changes, which so far we are finding to be similarly significant. It has made the One M9 a very different phone from when we started.

Part 2 will look at the camera.

Apple invents 3-sensor iPhone camera with light splitting cube for accurate colors, low-light performance » Apple Insider

Mikey Campbell on a Apple patent filed in 2011 that has just been published:

Older three-CCD cameras relied on the tech to more accurately capture light and negate the “wobble” effect seen with a single energy-efficient CMOS chip. Modern equipment employs global shutter CMOS modules that offer better low-light performance and comparable color accuracy, opening the door to entirely new shooting possibilities.

Apple’s design uses light splitting techniques similar to those applied in current optics packages marketed by Canon, Panasonic, Philips and other big-name players in the camera space. For its splitter assembly, Apple uses a cube arrangement constructed using four identical polyhedrons that meet at dichroic interfaces.

By coating each interface with an optical coating, particular wavelengths of incident light can be reflected or allowed to transmit through to an adjoining tetrahedron. Adjusting dichroic filters allows Apple to parse out red, green and blue wavelengths and send them off to three sensors positioned around the cube. Aside from RGB, the patent also allows for other color sets like cyan, yellow, green and magenta (CYGM) and red, green, blue and emerald (RGBE), among others.

Light splitters also enable other desirable effects like sum and difference polarization, which achieves the same results as polarization imaging without filtering out incident light. The process can be taken a step further to enhance image data for feature extraction, useful in computer vision applications.

Basically, it’s about Apple wanting to have the smartphone with the best and fastest camera on the planet. Nothing more or less.

MAGZET: the audio jack reinvented with the power of magnets » Kickstarter

Basically, it’s Apple’s MagSafe idea applied to headphone jacks. A neat idea, though with a gigantic target of over a quarter of a million dollars. But I like it, so I backed it. (Then again, think how often your headphone lead has saved your phone from plunging to the floor. On the other hand, it may have yanked your phone out of your pocket.. oh anyway.)

The tricorder, an all-in-one diagnostic device, draws nigh » ReadWrite

After pushing back deadlines by a few months, the 10 remaining teams in the Tricorder X Prize are nearing the day they will deliver a device that can diagnose 15 diseases and other basic health information through at-home tests. The teams are scheduled to deliver working prototypes in June to a UC-San Diego study that will test the devices on patients with known medical disorders to measure their accuracy.

“We’re pretty confident that the majority of the 10 finalist teams will actually be able to deliver,” senior director Grant Company said. “Some may merge, and some may fall out, just because they can’t pull it together. And that just reinforces how big of a challenge this really is. It’s because the goals are very high.”

Another thing posited in Star Trek (the original series) being made reality.

Improbable: enabling the development of large-scale simulated worlds » cdixon blog

Chris Dixon of a16z, which is putting $20m into London-based Improbable, a spin-out from the University of Cambridge:

The Improbable team had to solve multiple hard problems to make this work. Think of their tech as a “spatial operating system”: for every object in the world — a person, a car, a microbe —the system assigns “ownership” of different parts of that entity to various worker programs. As entities move around (according to whatever controls them — code, humans, real-world sensors) they interact with other entities. Often these interactions happen across machines, so Improbable needs to handle inter-machine messaging. Sometimes entities need to be reassigned to new hardware to load balance. When hardware fails or network conditions degrade, Improbable automatically reassigns the workload and adjusts the network flow. Getting the system to work at scale under real-world conditions is a very hard problem that took the Improbable team years of R&D.

Wow! What will it be used for? Mars missions? Lunar missions? Climate calculations?

One initial application for the Improbable technology is in gaming.

Gnnnh..

Beyond gaming, Improbable is useful in any field that models complex systems — biology, economics, defense, urban planning, transportation, disease prevention, etc. Think of simulations as the flip side to “big data.” Data science is useful when you already have large data sets. Simulations are useful when you know how parts of the system work and want to generate data about the system as a whole. Simulations are especially well suited for asking hypothetical questions: what would happen to the world if we changed X and Y? How could we change X and Y to get the outcome we want?

Better.

Connected car lawsuits begin » LinkedIn

Peggy Smedley:

It was only a matter a time before this was going to happen. And now it has. A lawsuit has been filed against three leading automakers seeking damages in the millions. But as I talked about on my radio show http://www.peggysmedleyshow.com a little more than a week ago, this lawsuit just might surprise you.

From court documents filed in Dallas, Texas, it appears this class action has been issued against Toyota, Ford Motor Co., and General Motors, for selling connected vehicles for allegedly knowing these in-vehicle systems could be hacked.

But, more importantly, the court documents go on to assert the automakers attempted to mislead consumers by not revealing the dangers associated with connected cars and not addressing the safety concerns.

The smart home decade dilemma » Tech.pinions

Bob O’Donnell thought he might be in line for some new (and smart?) appliances:

The new GE connected refrigerator won’t be available until later this spring but we needed to replace our fridge now. Plus, frankly, all the smart fridge seems to offer is a warning the water filter needs to be replaced and an optional alarm when someone leaves the door open. Nice to have, sure, but really essential? Hardly. Same thing with the new smart dishwasher. Getting an alert the dishes are done isn’t my idea of something I need to have.

In the case of the smart oven, the ability to remotely start preheating your oven, get a timer notice when something has finished cooking, or change the temperature or turn off the oven from the comfort of your sofa, did actually sound modestly interesting. But then the paranoid side of me kicked in and I realized that, though highly unlikely, a device sitting on my home WiFi network could theoretically get hacked (despite both mine and GE’s best efforts.) Now, if there was one appliance in my home I really didn’t want to be taken over and remotely controlled by someone other than my family, it would be the oven because, in theory, it could actually end up burning your house down. So, my previous disappointment with not getting at least one smart appliance in the overhaul actually morphed into a modest sense of relief.

The “decade” reference in the title is to the fact that appliances have typical lifespans of at least 10 years, and often 20. That’s longer than some tech companies.

Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially dire consequences » The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/c1f126ae-d192-11e4-8b1e-274d670aa9c9

Chris Mooney:

Welcome to this week’s installment of “Don’t Mess with Geophysics.”

Last week, we learned about the possible destabilization of the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica, which could unleash over 11 feet of sea level rise in coming centuries.

And now this week brings news of another potential mega-scale perturbation. According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Change by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a group of co-authors, we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation that, among other planetary roles, helps to partly drive the Gulf Stream off the U.S. east coast. The consequences could be dire – including significant extra sea level rise for coastal cities like New York and Boston.

Somehow just linking to this feels insufficient. Equally, we’re talking about the world’s oceans here, and it’s hard to know quite what to do.

Gartner recommends Samsung, LG partner with watchmakers » Korea Times

Yoon Sung-won:

Gartner said Tuesday that Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics may need to adjust strategies in the wearable device business to strengthen their brand’s position.

The global market research agency said in a briefing session in Seoul that many fashion brands are launching smartwatches as jewellery or luxury items in the second phase of the wearable devices market. Gartner stressed that electronics makers are recommended to partner with traditional watch brands on quality features.

“Customers believe that fashion brands can set a new trend in the smartwatch industry tapping into their strong brand power and consumer channels, which many electronics makers do not have,” Gartner’s research director Angela McIntyre said.

Yeah, might help.

Start up: SLR death throes, why fusion won’t change things, Apple’s waterproof phone?, Samsung’s big spend, and more

Posted on March 9, 2015 by charlesarthur

A selection of 10 links for you. Slather over the body when nobody is looking. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Prediction: the age of the standalone still camera is coming to an end for all but pros » Vincent Laforet’s Blog

who wants to stick a CF/SD card in a computer, import, edit, tone, export, share / publish a website anymore – when you can do the same thing in 1-3 clicks of your thumb on a smartphone?

The battle is over… the smartphones and iOSs have won. The quality is good enough on a smartphone/iPhone today, that when combined with software the need for a dedicated still camera can appear to be a burden to the majority of people out there: unless they have a specific technical need that only a DSLR or speciality lenses can offer.

With platforms like Twitter, FB, Storehouse, Instagram, 500 pixels, Tumblr etc etc – it’s too late to go back to the clunky way of doing things unless you are TRULY a big time hobbyist who loves the process. And I do! But not that often… and truth is: we’re in the vast minority…

The technological trends and shift towards digital and now smartphones that are connected to the web are undeniably the most important factors at play here: we’re all gotten used to having a $300-$900 mini computer on us at ALL times, and you can’t compete with a tool that is glued to your end-user… no camera company can compete with that, and they simply haven’t even tried to put editing/social media software into their cameras, which is a potentially devastating oversight long term.

It’s not that dramatic a prediction, but it’s the relentlessness that’s so imposing.

If Lockheed’s recent announcement on nuclear fusion energy is true, how would it change the world? » Quora

Ryan Carlyle, who says he’s a BSChE (chemical engineer?) and subsea hydraulics engineer, is here to rain on the parade:

Real-world fusion reactors aren’t going to be like “Mr Fusion” style reactors from Back To The Future. I mean, seriously -it ran on garbage and powered a flying car. That almost makes the time travel plot seem realistic in comparison. But that’s what people seem to think when they hear “miniature fusion plant.”

Pro tip: the physics of fusion power do not support the concept of automobile-scale fusion. Seriously, this isn’t Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor; it’s just a thermoelectric power plant with a slightly smaller heat source. You need a giant steam turbine and ridiculously giant cooling system to generate serious electricity from a fusion reactor. Even if you miniaturize the reaction chamber, the support equipment required for electricity generation will still be extremely large.

Here’s a small nuclear power plant. I have helpfully indicated the size of the actual fission reactor inside the containment structure:

And here’s my detailed conceptual rendering of a “miniature” fusion reactor power plant with the same power output:

And that’s only the start of it.

Ghacks is dying and needs your help » gHacks Tech News

Martin Brinkmann, who started the site in 2005 and was able to make it his full-time job, now faces the chasm:

In addition to [Google downranking the site in 2011 with its Penguin search update], ad blockers and script blockers became increasingly popular. Since advertisement is what keeps this site alive, a yearly increase between 5 and 10% in ad-block usage is not something that you can endure for long especially if it goes hand in hand with a decline in traffic.

Currently, between 42% and 44% of all users use blockers when they visit the site and if the trend continues, more than 50% might before the end of the year.

If you take these two factors together, it is only a matter of time before ad revenue won’t be sufficient to pay for the site’s upkeep anymore.

Advertising is dying in its current form. While I could make a quick buck throwing popups, auto-playing videos or other nasty stuff at you, I’d never do that.

Heck, those are the things that make people use ad-blockers in the first place and as much as I like this site to survive, I like to protect the integrity of this site and you from these diabolical monetization methods even more.

Advertisements won’t be sufficient to keep this site up and there is not really much out there that I could implement or try instead to make sure this site is not taken off the Internet in the next year.

He’s going to try Patreon. Presently the pledges aren’t enough to cover the server costs – $280 per month?! I wish him luck, but I’m not optimistic. (I’ll return to see how things are in a few months.)

I think Brinkmann’s business problems are probably echoed all over the web by small sites which were once able to make money from ads, but are now finding them sucked up by Facebook, or Twitter, or the effect of Google invisibility.

US DOJ accuses three men in largest email breach ‘in the history of the Internet’ » GeekWire

Frank Catalano:

The indictments against two Vietnamese citizens and a Canadian citizen — operating from Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Canada — alleges the trio were involved in hacking at least eight U.S. email service providers, spamming tens of millions of email recipients, getting money from affiliate relationships for spammed products, and laundering the proceeds.

“The defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by stealing over a billion email addresses from email service providers,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said in a statement. “This case again demonstrates the resolve of the Department of Justice to bring accused cyber hackers from overseas to face justice in the United States.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) estimates the accused allegedly took in approximately $2 million through the affiliate marketing sales linked to spam. One of the three is said to have already pleaded guilty.

Brian Krebs suggests it was a breach of the email marketing company Epsilon in 2011 – whose servers were then hijacked to send the spam. A reminder that spam is still big, big business.

Why do we care about Xiaomi? » Benedict Evans

Evans (who works at VC company a16z) thinks we care (or should) because of what it implies for the “next stage” of Android:

Historically, Google’s lock on Android outside China has therefore been based on three things:

• You can’t experiment outside very tight constraints: making even one forked device means Google won’t allow you to sell a single phone running Google services. And all the OEMs have too much to lose to risk experimenting
• There’s a widespread belief that an Android device without Google services (really, this means Maps and the app store) is unsaleable outside China (I’m not entirely sure about this, as I wrote here)
• No OEM managed to build a compelling set of services or tools of its own that might offer alternatives to Google, because, well, that was impossible (see above)

These new trends place all of those in question. The growth of smaller operators pursuing different models, with no existing base of sales and hence nothing to fear from Google ban, may mean more experiments with forks. Xiaomi and its imitators point to a new potential model to differentiate (and note that Xiaomi is not a fork), and Cyanogen (an a16z portfolio company) offers the tools to do it. Smaller OEMs are less powerful than Samsung as a counterpart to Google, but also harder collectively to impose upon – Google can’t shout at them all.

Apple researching device waterproofing via vapor deposition, silicone seals » Apple Insider

Mikey Campbell:

As published by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple’s filing for “Methods for shielding electronic components from moisture” outlines a process for coating sensitive device components using advanced vapor deposition technology and protecting solder leads with silicone seals.

Instead of sealing off the entire device housing like a common wristwatch, Apple proposes coating integral components, like the printed circuit board (PCB), with a hydrophobic coating. Depositing the coating via plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (PACVD) would create an acceptable insulating layer to protect against short circuits that occur when high voltage parts are exposed to liquid.

I’ve thought for some time that Apple would add waterproofing (well, water resistance) to its phones in due course, but that it sees no rush while it’s not completely commonplace elsewhere. (Look at how Samsung has taken it out of the Galaxy S6.) This would also require factory equipment, so might be something for 2016’s range.

Technology helps visually impaired navigate the Tube » BBC News

Hugh Pym (the health editor):

Members of the Youth Forum of the Royal London Society for Blind People (RLSB) said they wanted to navigate the tube system independently.

Currently most have to rely on friends to help them get used to familiar routes or phone ahead to request assistance from London Underground staff. Many do not feel confident about using the whole network. They group teamed up with a digital products designer, ustwo, which then devised a system which was effective below ground.

The Bluetooth beacons transmit signals which can be picked up by smartphones and other mobile devices. Audible directions are provided to users via “bone conduction” earphones which allow them to hear sounds around them as well.

The directions warn users when they are approaching escalators and ticket barriers and which platforms they may be approaching. It’s the first such trial of a technology which can guide blind and partially sighted people underground or in areas with limited mobile phone reception.

Developers say it could be used in other subway networks like those in Newcastle and Glasgow or in other busy public transport hubs

That’s ustwo, as in Monument Valley. Many strings to their bow. Wonderfully clever application.

Samsung breaks records with £45m push behind Galaxy S6 » Daily Telegraph

Chris Williams:

Samsung is launching a record-breaking £45m marketing barrage to support its new Galaxy S6 smartphone and regain ground lost to Apple.

The figure, disclosed by industry sources, is the largest ever for a mobile phone launch and is believed to be the largest for any single product in the UK.

Samsung is spending heavily across all traditional and new media marketing channels, but is understood to be especially targeting the mass audiences provided by television and high-profile outdoor advertising sites.

The Galaxy S6 is already being heavily promoted on the digital billboards on the London Underground network, for instance.

Samsung also paid for a special advert based on the Galaxy S6 launch event last week in Barcelona. It aired three hours later in the UK on Sunday evening during ITV’s primetime drama Mr Selfridge.

Samsung has long been among the world’s biggest marketing spenders, devoting a larger proportion of its annual sales to promoting its products than any other top 20 global company.

Reading the comments under Apple articles always reveals two trains of thought, often following each other: (1) Apple is only popular because it spends so much on marketing (2) [when it’s pointed out that Samsung spends more] Apple is only popular because “the media” pushes it.

On the basis of (1), the S6 is going to be the most humungous hit, surely?

Popular Xiaomi phone could put data at risk » Bluebox Security

There’s a big asterisk on this one, but first read what Andrew Blaich found:

We ran several of the top malware and antivirus scanners on the Mi 4 to determine if any questionable apps came pre-loaded on the device. We used several scanners to compile a comprehensive list as some scanners returned nothing and others flagged different apps. Ultimately, we found six suspicious apps that can be considered malware, spyware or adware; a few were more notable than others.

One particularly nefarious app was Yt Service. Yt Service embeds an adware service called DarthPusher that delivers ads to the device among other things[2]. This was an interesting find because, though the app was named Yt Service, the developer package was named com.google.hfapservice (note this app is NOT from Google). Yt Service is highly suspicious because it disguised its package to look as if it came from Google; something an Android user would expect to find on their device. In other words, it tricks users into believing it’s a “safe” app vetted by Google.

Other risky apps of note included PhoneGuardService (com.egame.tonyCore.feicheng) classified as a Trojan, AppStats classified (org.zxl.appstats) as riskware and SMSreg classified as malware[3]

However, Xiaomi says that the device “appears to have been tampered [with] in the distribution/retail process by an unknown third party”. But as Blaich points out, if it’s that easy to mess with, that raises other questions too. Selling smartphones isn’t as simple as just choosing a spec list.

The Apple Watch is time, saved » TechCrunch

Matthew Panzarino does that thing where, you know, you talk to sources to find stuff out, which he then collects in this fascinating article:

Here’s a tidbit you might not know — in order to receive notifications from apps, the Watch must be on your wrist and locked. The Watch requires contact with your skin to receive notifications. There will be no in-app dropdown notifications or constant pinging while it’s off your wrist. Push notifications also cease when the battery reaches 10%. Those decisions speak to the care with which Apple is handling notifications.

The notifications are also different at an elemental level than the ones on your phone — both on the developer and user side of things. These are seen right away rather than at some point. You act on them quickly and they don’t stack up like they do on the phone.

There is that added bit of context because you know exactly when they got it, which means that time-sensitive notifications like those that recommend a precise establishment or ping you during a live event become much more germane.

And this is a key point:

the only resource we all have exactly in common is time. Kings don’t have more of it than peasants. Not everyone will be able to afford an Apple Watch (or even an iPhone), but if they’re in an economic situation where that’s feasible then they’re also in the situation where they are probably willing to trade money for time.