Tag Archives: cyanogen

Start up: hacked ATMs in Mexico, Cyanogen + Cortana, iPhone forecasts, Apple TV v consoles, and more

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Content blockers are days away from going live with iOS 9. Photo by Dave Lanovaz on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Wash at 40 degrees. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Should police have the right to take control of self-driving cars? » Techdirt

Karl Bode:

Just how much power should law enforcement have over your self-driving vehicle? Should law enforcement be able to stop a self-driving vehicle if you refuse to? That was a question buried recently in https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2388355/rand-rr928.pdf (pdf) which posits a number of theoretical situations in which law enforcement might find the need for some kind of automobile kill switch:

“The police officer directing traffic in the intersection could see the car barreling toward him and the occupant looking down at his smartphone. Officer Rodriguez gestured for the car to stop, and the self-driving vehicle rolled to a halt behind the crosswalk.

Commissioned by the National Institute of Justice, the RAND report is filled with benign theoreticals like this, and while it briefly discusses some of the obvious problems created by giving law enforcement (and by proxy intelligence agencies) this type of power over vehicle systems and data, it doesn’t offer many solutions.

That’s quite a question. Then again, would you try to make a getaway in an SDC?
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Intelligent machines: Making AI work in the real world » BBC News

Eric Schmidt – you know, the Google guy – wrote a piece for the BBC’s machine learning week. Most of it is blah. Then there’s this bit:

In the next generation of software, machine learning won’t just be an add-on that improves performance a few percentage points; it will really replace traditional approaches.

To give just one example: a decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite tastemakers to pick the hottest new music.

Today, you’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world – what actual listeners are most likely to like next – and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be.

As a bonus, it’s a much less elitist taste-making process – much more democratic – allowing everyone to discover the next big star through our own collective tastes and not through the individual preferences of a select few.

This is being taken as a dig at Apple Music with its human-curated lists. Well, sure, but the “radio” function in Apple Music isn’t human-curated. And music choice “democratic”? Isn’t that how it already works?
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iOS dev: why Apple TV is game over for Xbox One and PS4 » Forbes

Dave Thier:

It’s hard to imagine an immediate threat to Microsoft MSFT -0.93% Xbox One and Sony PS4 running games like Halo and Uncharted. But I talked to Jeff Smith, CEO of the popular Karaoke app Smule , and a developer who’s been with the iOS platform since the beginning. He says that Xbox One and PS4 fans shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the Apple TV as a serious gaming contender. The key, he says, is that Apple is a developer-friendly platform, and that means more content, and, as iOS has shown, more quality content as well.

“We think it’s significant if you consider the console market today: it’s been a market where there have been high barriers of entry to get into that market,” Smith says. “You have to get Sony and Microsoft or Nintendo to get you on to the platform, you have to have a custom deal, and they’re all proprietary platforms. With Apple bringing tvOS, which is a subset of iOS, onto a console-like platform, we think it lowers the barrier of entry. And I think you’ll see a lot more developers on the console market than ever before.”

Suitably overdone headline, but it’s certainly a mistake to dismiss the Apple TV out of hand. It has an install base of 25m, which isn’t much (the PS3 and Xbox 360 are at about 70m, the PS4 and Xbox One rather less so far), but the next version will attract a lot more people. And you don’t need to pay to put a game on iOS.
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Tracking a Bluetooth skimmer gang in Mexico » Krebs on Security

Brian Krebs:

“–Sept. 9, 12:30 p.m. CT, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico: Halfway down the southbound four-lane highway from Cancun to the ancient ruins in Tulum, traffic inexplicably slowed to a halt. There was some sort of checkpoint ahead by the Mexican Federal Police. I began to wonder whether it was a good idea to have brought along the ATM skimmer instead of leaving it in the hotel safe. If the cops searched my stuff, how could I explain having ultra-sophisticated Bluetooth ATM skimmer components in my backpack?”

The above paragraph is an excerpt that I pulled from the body of Part II in this series of articles and video essays stemming from a recent four-day trip to Mexico. During that trip, I found at least 19 different ATMs that all apparently had been hacked from the inside and retrofitted with tiny, sophisticated devices that store and transmit stolen card data and PINs wirelessly.

In June 2015, I heard from a source at an ATM firm who wanted advice and help in reaching out to the right people about what he described as an ongoing ATM fraud campaign of unprecedented sophistication, organization and breadth. Given my focus on ATM skimming technology and innovations, I was immediately interested.

Krebs gets up to some amazing jaunts.
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Google found guilty of ‘abusing dominant market position’ in Russia » WSJ

Olga Razumovskaya and Alistair Barr:

Google has been found guilty in a rapid Russian antitrust probe, a spokesperson for the country’s antitrust regulator told The Wall Street Journal.

In February, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service opened a probe into Google for alleged anticompetitive practices related to how the company bundles apps with its Android mobile operating system.

The company was found guilty of “abusing its dominant market position,” but not of “unfair competition practices,” the regulator told The Wall Street Journal.

The Russian agency will have 10 business days to issue its ruling on the case in full. “We haven’t yet received the ruling,“ Google’s Russia spokeswoman said. “When we do, we will study it and determine our next steps.”

Form an orderly queue behind the EC, Canada and the rest, please, Russia. Also, how do you have dominance abuse but not unfair competition?
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Cortana on Cyanogen: CEO Kirt McMaster on building the next great smartphone OS » IB Times

David Gilbert:

Cyanogen has not announced any partnerships with hardware manufacturers beyond what is already on the market, but to really reach the masses, it will have to partner with a well-known name – and for companies like Sony, HTC and LG, all struggling to make Android work, Cyanogen could be an enticing option.

Of course, with Microsoft’s Lumia range failing to capture any significant market share since the company bought Nokia’s mobile phone division, it, too, could be on the lookout for something new.

While McMaster tells it like it is about Microsoft’s smartphone woes, he says Microsoft is still a great company and builds great services, one of which is going to be key in building the next version of Cyanogen – and that is Cortana.

Microsoft’s digital personal assistant has grown significantly since it began life on the company’s smartphones and this summer had its biggest update to date when it was deeply integrated into Windows 10 and Microsoft’s Edge browser.

McMaster revealed that Cyanogen is working with Microsoft to deeply integrate Cortana into the next version of Cyanogen OS. This is key to catapulting Cyanogen into the mass market, he asserts: Cortana is currently available as an app on Android, but in order for it to make a real difference, it needs to be able to be integrated at the OS level so that its full potential can be leveraged.

So how would that work in a phone running Google services? Wouldn’t Cortana and ‘OK Google’ fight like cats in a sack?
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Next up: iPhone preorder sales data » BTIG Research

Walter Piecyk:

The focus of investors is squarely on the number of phones that can be sold over the next three and a half months. Our estimate is that it can sell 80 million units in the December quarter versus a consensus view that expects little to no growth this year. We believe 3D touch is a much bigger deal that many think and wrote about that and our hands-on experience with all of Apple’s new products. (Link). Of course the bigger issue is that 70% of existing iPhone users are carrying 5s or older models, of which the 6 and 6S models are big upgrades. As we have discussed in the past, the lower hurdles to upgrade those phones in the United States could be a key driver of sales.

Last year at this time Apple shipped 74.5m phones; only Samsung has previously shipped 80m or more smartphones in a quarter (which it’s done four times).

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Hands on with three iOS 9 content blockers: 1Blocker, Blockr and Crystal » TechCrunch

Sarah Perez:

ahead of iOS 9’s release, a number of companies and indie developers have been building content blockers of their own and testing them out with iOS 9’s sizable group of beta testers.

While many consumers will likely gravitate toward AdBlock Plus because of their familiarity with the brand’s name and reputation, there will be a good handful of new apps on the horizon as well, which are also worth a look.

As she says, you can choose from super-twiddly, a bit twiddly, and simple. I’d bet that simple will actually be the one people pick.

Meanwhile…
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Advertisers complain about format & approval obstacles with iOS 9’s News app » Apple Insider

Roger Fingas:

Although publishers like CNN, Time, and Vox are making most of their content available in the app, some are said to be planning to offer a few dozen stories a day at most. Standouts in that sense include companies that depend on paid subscription models, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Some ad executives have complained that common tools like real-time placement bidding aren’t in place for the News launch, and that Apple is requiring 48 hours notice before approving a campaign. The company is also allegedly demanding that pre-roll ads before video segments get their own approval.

Apple is moreover refusing to support Google’s DoubleClick ad platform. Edward Kim, a member of the online marketing company SimpleReach, argued to the Post that Apple is attempting to use News to build up iAd. That platform has struggled to gain ground in a market dominated by Google — whereas Google ads can reach virtually any device, iAd is unusable in some key spaces, like Android.

“Real-time placement bidding” is what quickly leads to malware and “bounce you out to App Store install” ads.
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Google reveals plans to increase production of self-driving cars » The Guardian

Mark Harris (who has done so much great original reporting on this topic):

[Sarah] Hunter [head of Google X] also shared new details about how the existing driverless prototypes work. “All [the car] has is a ‘go’ button, a ‘please slow down and stop’ button and a ‘stop pretty quickly’ button,” she said. “The intention is that the passenger gets in the vehicle, says into microphone, take me to Safeway, and the car does the entire journey.”

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Google’s self-driving cars currently require highly detailed maps of the areas they’re operating in, with centimetre accuracy of road features like lanes, roundabouts and traffic lights. They are also limited to 25mph so that Google could get them on to public roads without expensive and time-consuming crash tests. Even more importantly, they need safety drivers able to take control back in an instant if the system malfunctions. California is slowly working on regulations that will pave the way for the operation of completely driverless vehicles by the public.

All of this means that Google is unlikely to move its self-driving technology into full production any time soon. “We haven’t decided yet how we’re going to bring this to market,” admitted Hunter. “Right now, our engineers are trying to figure out … how to make a car genuinely drive itself. Once we figure that out, we’ll figure out how to bring it to market and in which way. Is it something that we manufacture at scale for sale to individuals? Or is it something that we own and operate as a service?”

Is it a taxi, a bus or an owned device? Seems trivial; actually gets to the heart of what a “car” is.
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Start up: Tim Cook’s stock question, Samsung’s pen trouble, bending the iPhone 6S, and more

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Yeah, Sanford Wallace probably preceded you here. Photo by epSos.de on Flickr.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook got 280,000 Apple shares the day of the market rout » Fortune

Philip Elmer DeWitt:

By coincidence or design, Tim Cook was scheduled to receive a boatload of Apple stock the same day he stopped a market rout.

Apple disputes it, but the note Tim Cook sent CNBC’s Jim Cramer Monday, could, in theory, have personally saved him millions of dollars in unvested Apple shares.

Here’s the background.

In August 2011, when Tim Cook was tapped to replace the ailing Steve Jobs, Apple’s board of directors awarded him 1 million restricted stock units (RSUs), half to vest in five years, the rest in 10. At the time they were awarded, the shares were worth $323 million.

At Cook’s request, the terms by which those shares are distributed were changed two years later; the shares now vest on a yearly basis by a complicated formula that includes a performance incentive tied to the company’s performance.

It’s complicated. Cook had better have got that email read by a lawyer before he hit send (some time between 0500 and 0600 – by which time he’d have been up for a couple of hours already). Else things could get ugly. Credit to Daniel Tello who first brought this up.

Update: Tello says that “the latest info on [the] Cook stock reveals he actually picked the only day he could NOT benefit, instead makes a rebound worse for him.” Storm over, looks like. (Though there will doubtless be some more back and forth over revealing details about mid-quarter performance to a journalist who also holds some stock.)

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Facebook ‘Spam King’ guilty for sending 27 million messages » Bloomberg Business

Joel Rosenblatt:

A Las Vegas man pleaded guilty to sending more than 27 million unsolicited messages through Facebook Inc. servers after gaining access to about 500,000 accounts on the social network, according to prosecutors.

Sanford Wallace, 47, known as the “Spam King,” admitted to his mass spamming in 2008 and 2009 while pleading guilty Monday to fraud and criminal contempt, San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag said in a statement.

Oh, but that’s not nearly enough context. Sanford Wallace has been a spammer for absolutely ages; he goes back to the neolithic age of the web. Read the Wikipedia entry. And reflect: once a spammer, always a spammer.
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Meet Wileyfox, an ‘edgy’ new mobile brand powered by Cyanogen » CNET

Rich Trenholm:

Among the new features offered by Cyanogen are security features that will appeal to consumers worried about their privacy. The unlock screen can scramble the numbers to make it harder for snoops to spy on your PIN. And if you’re alarmed by apps like Spotify that ask for access to unexpected parts of your phone, you can turn on and off individual app permissions. So for example, you can permit an app access to your camera but not your contacts, or require the app to ask each time it wants to use a different part of your phone. It also shows you the last time an app dipped into the further reaches of your phone, which is bound to be an eye-opening experience.

As a new brand, the company needs to carve attention from phone fans. “It’s an edgy brand,” says industry analyst Ben Wood of CCS Insight, “but it needs to be so it whips up a frenzy of social media interest. That’s the lifeblood for brands like this.”

Pretty standard phone (though it has dual SIM – unusual in western Europe). Cyanogen makes it more unusual: it’s not clear from the screenshots whether this is running Google Mobile Services (GMS) or not. Seems not, to my eye (but take a look for yourself).
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Nigerian network operators deactivate 10.7m SIM cards » Techpoint Nigeria

Yemi Johnson:

Dr. Tony Ojobo, Director of Public Affairs, NCC, speaking yesterday on Channels TV about the current SIM card deactivation being witnessed by network subscribers across the country said that about 10.7 million lines in the country have been barred from all GSM networks by the operators.

According to Ojobo, the commission had returned 18.6 million SIM cards data to MTN; 7.4 million to Airtel; 2.2 million to Globacom and 10.4 million to Etisalat for corrections back in September 2014, stressing that the returned SIM cards had one challenge or the other, including some that were pre-registered and others without the required biometric information. Yet, the Telcos failed to respond to the NCC’s warning to get those lines properly registered, even in ensuing meetings until now.

The call to deactivate unregistered lines however, came from the NCC, after its meeting with the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Department of State Security (DSS), the network operators. The parties present at the meeting had pointed attention to crimes committed in the country via unregistered telephone lines across various networks.

Odd: is this to do with Boko Haram, or something else?
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Aluminum and strength » All this

Dr Drang watches a video in which “Lew” tries to bend what seems to be the new iPhone 6S case, and then has it analysed by professionals:

While it’s obvious that zinc is the primary alloying element, which means the alloy is in the 7xxx series, the software didn’t find a good match in its database. Lew didn’t say anything about this in the video, but you can see it in the area I’ve circled at the top of the report.

I did a little looking around in my aluminum references, and I didn’t find a match, either. What’s weird is the tungsten (W) at 0.106%. I don’t have any aluminum specifications that call for tungsten, and in the 7xxx specs I’ve seen, “other” elements are limited to 0.05%.

In the video, Lew finesses this unknown by calling the new material “7000 series,” which is certainly true, but it’s not the whole truth. To me, the fact that the aluminum in the new shell doesn’t meet a standard specification is one of the most interesting findings. It suggests that Apple has developed its own proprietary aluminum alloy.

It wouldn’t be the first time Apple’s done this. The Apple Watch Sport uses a proprietary 7xxx alloy, which is mentioned on both the “Craftsmanship” page and in Jony Ive’s “Aluminium” video, which is where I got that splashy image.

The natural question is “Is this new iPhone aluminum alloy the same as the Apple Watch Sport alloy, or was it developed specifically for the iPhone?” Since I haven’t seen the chemistry of the Sport alloy, I have no idea what the answer is.

Is there any other company for which you’d get a lab involved for a leak of a shell of a phone? (That said, this stuff is so educational. Do read on for what he says about the difference heat treatment makes to aluminium strength.)
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Mobile ads: Media companies are losing the battle » Fortune

Mathew Ingram:

Is piggy-backing on Facebook’s platform the only way publishers can make mobile work? Perhaps. Entering into that kind of relationship also involves a significant transfer of power from the media outlet to the giant social network, something that has long-term risks. But for most publishers—and even for the New York Times—subscriptions aren’t generating enough revenue, and few people are paying for their apps.

For many companies that are watching the mobile chasm grow ever larger, in other words, there may be no other option. Their revenues are already so anemic that they can’t afford to build or buy anything that is going to move the needle. They can either play ball with Facebook and hope that will get them where they need to be, or they can stay on the sidelines and ultimately fade away.

The next year or two is going to be truly fascinating. Possibly ugly too.
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Reluctant licence fee payers don’t like life without the BBC after all » The Guardian

Roy Greenslade:

What would it be like to live without the BBC? How would people react to losing the chance to see the corporation’s TV channels, hear its radio programming or access its online output?

The BBC commissioned research to find out how people might cope (or not cope) without the broadcaster. So 70 families in 15 locations across the UK agreed to the blocking of all BBC services for nine days. Of those, 48 had previously said they were either in favour of not paying the £145.50 [US$227] annual licence fee (and doing without the BBC) or paying only a reduced fee.

According to the study, carried out on the BBC’s behalf by research agency MTM, by the end of the period of deprivation two thirds had changed their minds.

Those nine days “saved” them £3.60 (US$5.63). The BBC is a bloody bargain – especially after you get exposed to the repeatedly fresh hell that is US TV, which has the attention span of a gnat. (There are no ad breaks on the BBC.) As with mobile phones and medical bills, the US doesn’t know how badly off it is when it comes to TV in comparison to the UK.
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I Don’t Own, I Uber » Medium

Megan Quinn:

the move [from San Francisco to London, UK] meant [the car] had to go, and so it was sold for next-to-nothing to a really nice dad with two kids.

While I may have been sad to see my car go, I wasn’t concerned about being car-less because — when not on strike — public transportation is pretty good in Europe, and Uber is nearly ubiquitous in major cities. I knew Uber was more expensive in London, but everything was more expensive in London and I had factored that into my decision to move in the first place.

What I didn’t expect was that depending on Uber (UberX specifically) would actually be cheaper than owning and driving a car. Much cheaper. Yes, the company says this, but I didn’t think it was realistic yet.

Well, it is. At least for me.

About half the price, even allowing for the fact that petrol costs virtually nothing in the US compared to the UK. And that’s before amortisation of the car’s value. Mark this: it’s significant.
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Probable Note 5 design flaw can cause S Pen to break pen detection when inserted backward, or get hopelessly stuck » Android Police

David Ruddock:

On the Note 5, inserting the S Pen the wrong way provides exactly as much resistance as inserting it the right way. Which is to say: basically none at all. Once you insert the pen far enough in the wrong direction (again, which causes no strange resistance or feel than putting it in the right way), it will get stuck. It doesn’t even have to “click” in. At this point, of course, you will panic. And you will try to get it out – and most likely, you’ll succeed. The problem is that if you do succeed, there’s a very real possibility you’ll break whatever mechanism the device uses to detect whether the pen is attached or detached from the phone. Which is exactly what happened to our review unit.

Yes, seriously. Watch the video.

We’re really not sure how this made it past testing at Samsung – it seems like such an obvious thing to design into the S Pen slot, especially when Samsung has full reason to know that inserting the pen the wrong way can damage the direction-sensitive detection mechanism in the slot.

Android Police was the site that discovered this flaw (not “probable flaw” – it is, no question; and Ruddock does call it that in the comments.) It’s really quite a doozy. (“Antennagate” was easily solved with a bumper, and “Bendgate” seems to have been more about care of larger phones than anything.) Samsung’s response, reported by The Verge: “We highly recommend our Galaxy Note5 users follow the instructions in the user guide to ensure they do not experience such an unexpected scenario caused by reinserting the S pen in the other way around.” Recommendations don’t come much higher.
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A week without the Apple Watch » waitingtoDOWNLOAD

Lee Peterson survived:

I’ve missed notifications, workout tracking and the ability to control what’s playing on my iPhone the most – I miss the connivence of it.  Could I do without it, well yes and no – I mean yes I can live without it but now it’s opened up a whole new world I don’t think I could go without it.  It’s kept me in the moment more, stopped me from checking social media so much and for the first time I’m able to see how active (or inactive) I am allowing me to do something about it.

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Start up: Apple v Samsung, Microsoft + Cyanogen, how three bits can end your privacy, and more

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You think you’re anonymous, but with three points of data you’re probably not. Photo by mripp on Flickr.

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Microsoft to invest in rogue Android startup Cyanogen » WSJ

Rolfe Winkler and Shira Ovide say it’s going to be a minority investor in a $70m round:

Google has frustrated manufacturers in recent years by requiring them to feature Google apps and set Google search as the default for users, in exchange for access to the search engine, YouTube, or the millions of apps in its Play Store.

Such restrictions make it harder for apps that compete with Google’s to win distribution on Android devices. For Microsoft, that means less exposure for its Bing search engine, which is up against Google search. It also could limit growth of other Microsoft software products.

Cyanogen offers an alternate version of the Android mobile operating system free of such restrictions. The 80-person company claims to have a volunteer army of 9,000 software developers working on its own version of Android.

“We’re going to take Android away from Google,” said Kirt McMaster, Cyanogen’s chief executive, in a brief interview last week. The next day, at an industry event sponsored by tech news service The Information, McMaster said Cyanogen had raised $100 million to date. Previously the company had disclosed that it raised $30 million of funding. The company spokeswoman declined to make McMaster available for this story.

McMaster said more than 50 million people use a version of the Cyanogen Android operating system, most of whom have installed it in place of their phone’s initial operating system.

Nokia X didn’t do it; might Cyanogen be the route for Microsoft to get its services onto AOSP?

Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata » Science

Science magazine has a special this week on data and privacy. Here, it looks at how many data points are needed to identify someone uniquely:

To provide a quantitative assessment of the likelihood of identification from financial data, we used a data set D of 3 months of credit card transactions for 1.1 million users in 10,000 shops in an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development country (Fig. 1). The data set was simply anonymized, which means that it did not contain any names, account numbers, or obvious identifiers. Each transaction was time-stamped with a resolution of 1 day and associated with one shop. Shops are distributed throughout the country, and the number of shops in a district scales with population density (r2 = 0.51, P < 0.001) (fig. S1).

How many data points for identification? Three.

In a near tie, Apple closes the gap on Samsung in the fourth quarter as worldwide smartphone shipments top 1.3bn for 2014 » IDC

Ryan Reith:

“First, at a time when average selling prices (ASPs) for smartphone are rapidly declining, Apple managed to increase its reported ASPs in the fourth quarter due to higher-cost new models. Second, the growth of iPhone sales in both the U.S., which is considered a saturated market, and China, which presents the dual challenges of strong local competitors and serious price sensitivity, were remarkable. Sustaining this growth and higher ASPs a year from now could prove challenging, but right now there is no question that Apple is leading the way.”

In 2013 IDC talked about the smartphone industry topping the 1 billion unit milestone, and while year-over-year growth did slow from 40.5% in 2013 to 27.6% in 2014, the market clearly still has legs. This past year volumes surpassed 1.3 billion units and the vendor scenario has witnessed continued shakeups. Growth is forecast to decline to the mid-teens in 2015, but opportunity exists as much of the world’s population is either not a wireless subscriber or has yet to move to a smartphone.

“That the worldwide smartphone market grew by 27.6% in 2014 is noteworthy, but it also represents a significant slowdown compared to 2013,” said Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team. “Mature markets have become increasingly dependent on replacement purchases rather than first-time buyers, which has contributed to slower growth. In emerging markets, first-time buyers continue to provide a lot of market momentum, but the focus has shifted toward low-cost devices, creating a different dynamic for both global and local vendors.

IDC reckons Apple was 0.6m behind Samsung. Strategy Analytics reckons Samsung was ahead. Counterpoint reckons Apple was ahead. Samsung, in its results call, said it sold (maybe “shipped”) 95m handsets (including featurephones) in Q4, of which “71m to 76m” were smartphones.

You have to love the intentional inaccuracy in Samsung’s statement. It knows how many it shipped.

Samsung’s mobile profits plunge 64.2% after Apple’s iPhone 6 devastates premium Galaxy sales » Apple Insider

Yeah yeah, but this is one of the more interesting points:

Apple’s overall operating profits for the quarter were $24.2bn, up 36.9% over the year-ago quarter. That means Samsung Mobile is now earning less than 7.5% of Apple’s profits while still shipping more phone units.

Apple’s net (after tax) profits were $18bn for the quarter, provisioning $6.4 billion for tax payments. Samsung reported just $230m in income taxes, an effective tax rate of 4.5%.

Apple’s effective tax rate is 26.4%.

Strange, especially given Apple’s tax shenanigans (profits earned abroad sit in an American company offshore in Ireland: the US won’t tax them because they’re offshore, the Irish won’t tax them because they’re American) that Samsung is able to go so much lower.

Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job » Medium

Andy Baio:

Two months ago, Larry Page said the company’s outgrown its 14-year-old mission statement. Its ambitions have grown, and its priorities have shifted.

Google in 2015 is focused on the present and future. Its social and mobile efforts, experiments with robotics and artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and fiberoptics.

As it turns out, organizing the world’s information isn’t always profitable. Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care.

The desire to preserve the past died along with 20% time, Google Labs, and the spirit of haphazard experimentation.

Google may have dropped the ball on the past, but fortunately, someone was there to pick it up.

The Internet Archive stands at least alongside Wikipedia (and perhaps ahead of it?) as one of the great efforts of the internet.

Visa Europe to spend €200m on digital payment technologies » Finextra

Nicolas Huss, chief executive officer of Visa Europe, bills 2015 as a defining year for digital payments.

“We will further eat away at the 70% of transactions that are still settled in cash in Europe,” he says. “We will make use of the abundance of digital technology that now surrounds us to enable new digital payment solutions. And, most importantly, we will deliver an even better quality of service to retailers and consumers alike by making payment simpler, smarter and more secure than ever before.”

One could interpret that to mean that Visa is going to be a partner with Apple in introducing ApplePay in Europe in 2015.

Huawei to focus on higher-end smartphones » WSJ

“If we sold more low-end phones, we could even double our shipments…but in the low-end market there is no margin,” said Richard Yu, who heads Huawei’s consumer business group, at a briefing at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen Tuesday.

Huawei expects more than 30% of its consumer devices shipped this year will be priced above 2,000 yuan ($320), up from 18% last year.

Competition in the global smartphone market is intensifying and while Apple Inc. dominates the high-end segment globally, most vendors selling smartphones that use Google Inc.’s Android operating system are struggling to set themselves apart from rivals.

Mr. Yu said most low-cost vendors from China will likely disappear in three to five years because their business models aren’t sustainable. “There are too many brands in this industry,” he said.

Huawei is developing a habit of telling it like it is. Recall that it said there was no money to be made selling Windows Phone either.

Qualcomm falls 9% on China competition, implies lost Samsung business » Barrons.com

Qualcomm implied its chip has, indeed, missed the initial shipments of Samsung’s “Galaxy S6” flagship phone, expected out next month, which has been rumored in the last couple of weeks, without Qualcomm actually mentioning Samsung:

A shift in share among OEMs at the premium tier, which has reduced our near-term opportunity for sales of our integrated Snapdragon™ processors and has skewed our product mix towards more modem chipsets in this tier; Expectations that our Snapdragon 810 processor will not be in the upcoming design cycle of a large customer’s flagship device; and Heightened competition in China.

It feels – taken together with Samsung’s results – as though Samsung is aiming to use its own Exynos processors, in order to get the maximum use (and so profit) from its chip factories; if LG can get the 810 into a phone without trouble, as seems to be the case, Samsung probably can.

The other Chinese competition is principally from TSMC and Mediatek.

At least 30% of China-based white-box tablet vendors exit market, says report » Digitimes

As the average gross margin for China-based white-box tablet vendors/makers dropped below 5% in 2014, at least 30% of them have withdrawn from the market and shifted production to mobile power supplies, driving recorders and mobile device accessories, according to China-based National Business Daily (NBD).

White-box tablet production is concentrated in Shenzhen, southern China, and retail prices for such tablets mostly range from CNY299 (US$48.4) to CNY399, NBD said.

That’s pretty thin pickings, but suggests the low end of the market is getting cleared out.

One week of harassment on Twitter » Feminist Frequency

Anita Sarkeesian:

Ever since I began my Tropes vs Women in Video Games project, two and a half years ago, I’ve been harassed on a daily basis by irate gamers angry at my critiques of sexism in video games. It can sometimes be difficult to effectively communicate just how bad this sustained intimidation campaign really is. So I’ve taken the liberty of collecting a week’s worth of hateful messages sent to me on Twitter. The following tweets were directed at my @femfreq account between 1/20/15 and 1/26/15.

I’d really like to see an analysis that looks at when the abusive accounts were created, and what sort of use they are put to if they aren’t being abusive. There are two competing hypotheses: one, that it’s the work of a small and super-determined coterie who create abusive accounts; two, that it’s a large group of real people who are all just jerks. Hard to figure out which would be worse.

Start up: Chromebooks beat iPads, Netscape’s growing pains, OnePlus’s India problem, Nexus 9 before and after, and more

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The inside of Peter Morgan’s eye.

A selection of 12 links for you. Clean regularly. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter – observations and links welcome. (Note: I’ve tweaked – I hope – the font size on each link entry. If the spacing seems off, suggest a better CSS for it. I’m all ears, having twiddled with it to little satisfaction.)

Google overtakes Apple in the US classroom >> FT.com

 

Apple has lost its longstanding lead over Google in US schools, with Chromebook laptop computers overtaking iPads for the first time as the most popular new device for education authorities purchasing in bulk for students.

Google shipped 715,500 of the low-cost laptops into US schools in the third quarter, compared with 702,000 iPads, according to IDC, the market research firm. Chromebooks, which sell for as little as $199, have gone from a standing start two years ago to more than a quarter of the market.

It marks the first time Google has outsold its rival and consolidates a lead it opened up over Apple this year in the broader education market, which includes higher education establishments, as it closes in on Microsoft Windows, the market leader.

The multibillion-dollar education market has become a battleground for hardware makers trying to win the loyalties of the next generation of consumers. It has traditionally been dominated by Windows devices, which have a decades-long head start on iPads and Chromebooks, but schools are increasingly turning to lower-cost alternatives.

A $500m schools contract in Los Angeles was going to be all-iPad – and then the deal hit the rocks, and LA went for Chromebooks instead.

Peek Retina >> Indiegogo

What is Peek Retina?
It’s a clip-on camera adapter that gives high quality images of the back of the eye and the retina. This helps us to diagnose cataracts, glaucoma and many other eye diseases, ready for treatment.

It has been developed by an award-winning team of experts in eye care, engineering and technology.

Peek Retina combines both a traditional ophthalmoscope and a retinal camera in a mobile phone, providing a portable, affordable and easy way to carry out comprehensive examinations.

It sits neatly over the top of the device allowing a healthcare worker to easily take high-quality images of the back of the eye. It feels much less intrusive for the patient too.

The aim is to bring it to the millions of people who need affordable eye care in poorer regions. A donation would make a great Christmas gift. Or buy one for yourself.

A letter to our Indian users >> OnePlus Blog

This week, we announced that the OnePlus One will finally launch in India on December 2, 2014. This has been a long time coming both for our Indian fans, who have been incredibly patient, and everyone behind the scenes who have been working towards this moment since June.

OnePlus and all of our partners, including Cyanogen, have put countless hours of work into making this launch a success. Just last month, on October 7, Cyanogen released the 38R OTA update which included SAR values inside phone settings to comply with Indian regulations. Therefore, it was surprising and disappointing to hear from Cyanogen on November 26 that they had granted exclusive rights in India over the Cyanogen system to another company. Prior to this, OnePlus and Cyanogen have successfully cooperated to release the OnePlus One or carry out commercial operations in 17 countries and regions (including India). It is truly unfortunate that a commitment we both made to our Indian users will now not be upheld.

Cyanogen’s exclusive partner in India: home-grown Micromax. OnePlus’s solution: set up physical places where it will flash peoples’ OnePlus phones to the newest system. That’s going to be expensive.

Smartphones to commoditise like PCs; margins to contract >> Fitch Ratings

The margins of Asian smartphone makers are likely to contract in the medium term amid heightened competition and product commoditisation, says Fitch Ratings. The slowing pace of hardware development, and more manufacturers achieving a threshold level of build quality and functionality, means that the rapid growth of lower-cost smartphone producers will challenge market-leading incumbents and reduce profitability.

The smartphone industry runs the risk of following the cycle seen in PCs, where device-makers’ share of the value chain was squeezed by competition and where operating systems and applications software have become more important to consumers than hardware from a specific manufacturer. The dominance of Microsoft’s operating systems and applications enabled this trend in PCs. In smartphones, this trend may be facilitated by the Android operating system and the open environment for third-party application developers…

…Fitch expects that Samsung’s credit profile will remain solid, given its technology leadership, integrated structure and wider product range. Apple too is relatively well positioned owing to its strong brand value and ecosystem. Outside the big two, established brands such as LG Electronics, Sony, HTC and Nokia, will face stiffer competition from low-cost Chinese vendors.

It’s the value trap all over again.

Uber Josh Mohrer: New York’s general manager is facing disciplinary action over privacy violations >> Slate

Uber said Friday that it has concluded an investigation of New York City general manager Josh Mohrer for alleged privacy violations and has “taken disciplinary actions” against him.

Uber began looking into Mohrer 10 days ago after BuzzFeed’s Johana Bhuiyan reported that Mohrer had accessed her Uber travel data without her permission on multiple occasions. In one instance earlier this month, Bhuiyan arrived for a meeting with Mohrer at Uber’s New York headquarters in Long Island City to find him waiting for her. “There you are,” she recalled him telling her. “I was tracking you.”

Reached Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for Uber declined to comment on any specifics of the “disciplinary actions” or discuss what might have prompted them other than the BuzzFeed report.

Somehow unsurprising that Uber would go for undisclosed self-regulation on this.

The best travel gear of 2014 >> Co.Design

If you need an unusual present for someone who’s always in and out of airports, or rides a bike, or needs an umbrella, here you go. Some great ideas in here.

Is Monument Valley overpriced? Yes. >> Terence Eden’s Blog

We live in times of desperate austerity. When you say “well, it’s only the price of a cup of coffee!” you utterly fail to realise that for many people Starbucks represents an unobtainable level of decadent spending.
People have hard lives. After working two jobs, slumped on an endless night bus home, they want relief from the pain and tedium of the working day. Pulling out an old phone – perhaps a hand-me-down, or one bought in happier times – they want to spend what little disposable income they have wisely. Something that gives them bang for their buck.

Renting a movie, like Transformers, works out at £1.30 per hour of enjoyment. Twice as cheap as Monument Valley.

Reading a book, knitting, chatting on the phone with a friend – all cheaper.

As the reviewer [quoted earlier in the post] said – there are many games which are just as good looking as Monument Valley, with far longer play times. Often for free.

This is a classic “functional pricing” argument, which I find is much more widely made (especially over PCs and smartphones and tablets, where “measurement” seems superficially easy – x GHz processor, y RAM, z hard drive storage). It’s also meaningless. I wouldn’t rent Transformers; you could offer it to me free and I wouldn’t watch it. Why? Because in my view it’s crap. Therefore no (non-negative) price is sufficiently low for me.

By contrast, I find Monument Valley to be fascinating, clever, unexpected, memorable – all those things that for me Transformers is not. As for other games that have longer play times and are free – sure, but is Doodle Jump or Angry Birds as memorable as Monument Valley?

I don’t often disagree with Eden, but this seems to me a classic case of mistaking price and value. Equally, it’s one that lots of people make when it comes to apps – which is the problem app makers face.

An Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

From the teeny tiny to the gianty–… anyway. Terrific way to feel small. (Via Jake Davis.)

The BlackBerry Passport enigma: TCOB-machine or “worst designed thing, ever” >> Ars Technica

Sean Gallagher:

When viewed in the right light, the Passport ends up looking pretty. It was unexpectedly the best smartphone we’ve ever used from the perspective of taking care of business. Yes, it benchmarks somewhat below phones in its price range on the tests that would run in the BlackBerry 10 OS. And there’s still a significant “app gap” between the Passport and competing devices. But that’s all background noise when you use the Passport as it’s intended—as an information and communications machine, designed for people who still live and die by the e-mail inbox rather than iMessages and Hangouts and Snapchats.

Unlike this one, most reviews of the Passport miss its point – it’s not a general-purpose smartphone. It’s a BlackBerry.

The baffling and beautiful wormhole between branches of math >> WIRED

Lee Simmons, capitalising on the fact that “wormhole” is a key phrase at the moment (because of Interstellar) and hey, maybe this is new! But it isn’t. If you don’t know Euler’s identity equation, you’re in for a treat though:

the weirdest thing about Euler’s formula — given that it relies on imaginary numbers — is that it’s so immensely useful in the real world. By translating one type of motion into another, it lets engineers convert messy trig problems (you know, sines, secants, and so on) into more tractable algebra—like a wormhole between separate branches of math. It’s the secret sauce in Fourier transforms used to digitize music, and it tames all manner of wavy things in quantum mechanics, electron ics, and signal processing; without it, computers might not exist.

Nexus 9 made on Thursday vs before launch buttons comparison >> Nexus9

Poster “Sebianoti” posted a picture of his old and new Nexus 9 tablets, and commented:

Today my new Nexus 9 arrived, it was manufactured last week, it was shipped to me on Friday from Taiwan and it arrived today. It’s my replacement to my faulty one with extreme light bleed and buttons that are almost impossible to press, as you can see that’s one issue that’s been fixed. This may be the first Nexus 9 in white that has the buttons fixed, at least that’s what HTC’s AVP told me. Light bleed is still present however it’s nowhere near as bad as before.

Seems like damning with faint praise. The LTE version has apparently been delayed. HTC isn’t covering the Nexus name with glory here (and replacements aren’t going to help its bottom line).

Excerpts from my diary of early days at Netscape >> Jamie Zawinski

Here are some excerpts from my diary during the first few months of the existence of Netscape Communications (All Praise the Company), back when we were still called Mosaic. Back when there were only 20 or 30 of us, instead of however-many thousands of people there are today. Back before we had any middle managers.

This is the time period that is traditionally referred to as “the good old days”, but time always softens the pain and makes things look like more fun than they really were. But who said everything has to be fun? Pain builds character. (Sometimes it builds products, too.)

So you want to go work for a startup? Perhaps this will serve as a cautionary tale…

The first one starts at 4am. SGI hardware, Irix 5.3… but the same frustration that will be recognisable to many startups. It starts in July. By September:

We’re doomed.

We’ve finally announced a public beta to the net, and there are loads of bugs, and they’re hard bugs, sucky, hardware-dependent ones. Some of our private beta testers crash at startup on some SunOS 4.1.3 systems, and I’ve got what seems like an identical system here and it doesn’t crash. And scrolling text doesn’t work with the OpenWindows X server, though it works fine elsewhere.

(Via Steve Werby.)