Tag Archives: echo

Start up: Apple Watch battery life, Amazon Echo reviewed, 3D lightning, dark web buying, Google MVNO only data?, and more

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It’s fine, they’re all micro-USB. Photo by practicalowl on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Slippery when wet. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Apple targets for Apple Watch battery life revealed, A5-caliber CPU inside » 9to5Mac

Mark Gurman (who has a good track record):

According to our sources, Apple opted to use a relatively powerful processor and high-quality screen for the Apple Watch, both of which contribute to significant power drain. Running a stripped-down version of iOS codenamed SkiHill, the Apple S1 chip inside the Apple Watch is surprisingly close in performance to the version of Apple’s A5 processor found inside the current-generation iPod touch, while the Retina-class color display is capable of updating at a fluid 60 frames per second.

Apple initially wanted the Apple Watch battery to provide roughly one full day of usage, mixing a comparatively small amount of active use with a larger amount of passive use. As of 2014, Apple wanted the Watch to provide roughly 2.5 to 4 hours of active application use versus 19 hours of combined active/passive use, 3 days of pure standby time, or 4 days if left in a sleeping mode.

Umm. 19 hours is.. 7am to 2am of the next day. That could work if you’re really prepared to recharge it daily. Begins to sound like work, though. In September I reckoned that “a watch that needs constant recharging isn’t a watch, it’s a burden”.

Amazon Echo review: listen up » The Verge

David Pierce:

Other than a blue-green light that flashes around the top of the canister, Alexa offers no real feedback while she works. So when a command fails to register, it just… fails. Sometimes she doesn’t hear me; sometimes she doesn’t know quite what I’m saying. In either case, she ignores me and just keeps on playing the 30-second preview of “Uptown Funk.” (This, by the way, is the one place where the Echo can actually buy things for you: just say “Buy that song,” and it’ll get added to your Prime library.)

The hardest thing about using the Echo is that I can’t get a firm grip on its limitations. If I knew not to ask it certain questions, or to always phrase questions certain ways, that would be fine. But I can’t explain why Alexa knows Andrew Jackson is the proper response to “Who was the seventh president of the United States?” but can’t tell me Thomas Jefferson was the third. I can stand right next to it, and it hears me fine… until it doesn’t.

For $200, hard to see the point. A phone can do much the same, and more besides. A Bluetooth speaker is cheaper. Was this a Bezos idea too?

3D lightning » Calculated Images

Richard Wheeler:

Reddit is a great website, where the ability to share and discuss things on the web gives some great little discoveries. Things that would otherwise seem impossibly unlikely, like two people in completely different places getting a photo of the same lightning bolt, suddenly pop up all the time.

And once you have that, you can do some maths and use a couple of assumptions, and draw what the bolt of lightning looked like in 3D space. Oh yes you can. (And again a year later.)

(The rest of the blog is quite fun too, apart from the entry about Elvish script. Not wanted on voyage.)

Apple, marketing, and black culture » Haywire

It isn’t discussed often, and maybe it’s marketing, too — but there’s a pattern here, and a clever one at that. Apple is using powerful images, quotes, videos, and other forms of media created by black artists and orators. And, while it’s great PR, I also believe it’s quite genuine and surely consistent. The company is obviously intentional with how it interacts with the public at large. Many companies may try this kind of PR, but they wouldn’t be able to pull it off. When you step back and look at the language in the letters, the imagery and messages on their site, the cultural strategy in acquiring Beats, and the 2014 holiday video spot, the threads tie together tastefully to portray a different side of Apple not often covered in the tech blogs.

I was really struck by this when I appeared as a guest on Channel 4 News with Lethal Bizzle (look him up if you don’t) to talk about the Beats acquisition. Quietly, yet effectively, Apple is positioning itself to appeal to urban, not just black, culture. Beats is a big part of that.

Ordnance Survey change in operating model: Written statement » UK Parliament

From Matthew Hancock, of the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills:

Ordnance Survey exists in a fast moving and developing global market. There has been rapid technology change in the capture and provision of mapping data, and increasingly sophisticated demands from customers who require data and associated services – including from government. To operate effectively, Ordnance Survey needs to function in an increasingly agile and flexible manner to continue to provide the high level of data provision and services to all customers in the UK and abroad, in a cost effective way, open and free where possible. Company status will provide that.

Mapping data and services are critical in underpinning many business and public sector functions as well as being increasingly used by individuals in new technology. Ordnance Survey sits at the heart of the UK’s geospatial sector. Under the new model, the quality, integrity and open availability of data will be fully maintained, and in future, improved. Existing customers, partners and suppliers will benefit from working with an improved organisation more aligned to their commercial, technological and business needs.

Hmm. Ordnance Survey was a “trading fund” – basically, a little company unto itself inside the government, although making some map data free in 2010 meant it got a straightforward subsidy from government to fund that.

It’s not clear why it should need to change from “trading fund” to “Government Company” (nor even what the difference actually is). Unless – as some fear – it’s a prelude to privatisation.

Deep web marketplaces » Joel Monegro

Monegro bought a pair of boots for his girlfriend to find out more about how these places – accessible only via Tor – work:

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been frequenting the deep web marketplaces most famously used for buying drugs online with Bitcoin.

I wanted to see if there was anything we could learn about how these illicit marketplaces work that could be applied to improve the legal marketplaces we invest in at [venture capital company] USV.

As part of my research, I purchased an item on Evolution (no, not drugs – a pair of furry boots) in an effort to understand the dynamics of these marketplaces, from trust and safety to flow of funds. This is what I learned in the process. 

It’s fascinating, and Tor and bitcoin underlie it all. The manoeuvres taken by those who ship from or to physical addresses is hugely inventive too. It’s solving the question of “how do you carry out transactions requiring trust when you don’t, and can’t, trust anyone?”

Google reportedly on the verge of launching ‘Nova,’ a cellular phone service to compete with big four carriers » Android Police

Jacob Long:

The report, first published by The Wall Street Journal, mentions that the program has been codenamed “Nova” internally. That sounded familiar to us, because we had been tipped about a similar program called “Nova” last year. We had not been able to get more info and did not report on it – until now.

Our tipster told us that Google Voice (now, that would probably be Hangouts) would be the backbone of the Google plans, which would be data-only. With access to mobile data and possession of a Voice number, the experience would theoretically be nearly equivalent to a conventional phone plus data plan. The tipster also told us that the plans would offer unlimited data, while leaning on WiFi where available.

Android Police has excellent sources in (or around) Google, and this would make a lot of sense. You’d be pretty screwed for voice call quality if you couldn’t get a 3G signal, though, and as Google is looking to MVNO using Sprint and/or T-Mobile (one is GSM, one is CDMA), their 2G networks aren’t compatible. So you’d need 3G to make a call. And those two networks are smaller than AT&T or Verizon. So you’d be geographically limited.

Looks like Google is banking on people wanting smartphones only for data. In which case you might as well get a tablet..?

Microsoft’s Windows RT isn’t dead…yet » CNET

Shara Tibken:

All of the major device makers working with Windows RT scrapped their products either before they hit the market (such as HP and Toshiba) or following dismal sales once the products were released (in the case of Dell). To say interest in the software was – and remains – low is an understatement. Even the ARM chipmakers who were to benefit from the operating system, including Nvidia and Qualcomm, largely threw in the towel, focusing their investments and efforts elsewhere.

The only device to really utilize the software has been Microsoft’s own Surface tablet. The company released the first generation of its Windows RT-based Surface in late 2012 but revealed in July 2013 that it lost $900m on the device.It released Surface 2 later that year but hasn’t created any more Windows RT tablets since then. At the same time, Microsoft has released three generations of the Surface Pro lines of tablets that run Intel chips, and it continues to heavily advertise the devices.

Would love to know how many Windows RT installs there are, and what percentage are Surfaces. I’d wager it’s around 80% or higher.

Net Neutrality: no on reclassification, yes on adding content & app providers » Inside BlackBerry

John Chen:

Unfortunately, not all content and applications providers have embraced openness and neutrality. Unlike BlackBerry, which allows iPhone users to download and use our BBM service, Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service. Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.

Therefore, neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet.

Epic trolling by Chen, in this extract from a letter sent to a Senate committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Net neutrality, of course, is a debate about whether a network allows bits to flow regardless of origin or destination – not who writes bit-wrangling programs for one endpoint or another.

More briefly, net neutrality is an argument about bridgekeepers and tolls; Chen is trying to make it about “who tries to get across the bridges and to which destination”. It doesn’t take much reflection to see that you can legislate the former for positive net (ha) outcome, but that legislating the latter turns you into a controlled economy. Is John Chen really a secret Marxist?

(Even the people on the Crackberry forums, usually the most loyal of the loyal, don’t back him.)

San Francisco woman pulled out of car at gunpoint because of license plate reader error » American Civil Liberties Union

On March 30, 2009, Denise Green, a 47 year-old black woman, was pulled over by multiple SFPD squad cars. Between four and six officers pointed their guns at her—one had a shotgun, she says—and told her to raise her hands above her head and exit her car. She was ordered to kneel, and she was handcuffed. Green, who suffered from knee problems, complied with all of their orders. Four officers kept their guns trained on her as she stood handcuffed, she says. Officers then searched her car and her person, finding nothing derogatory. After about 20 minutes, the police let her go.

It turns out that Denise Green was stopped because police, acting on a tip from a controversial piece of law enforcement surveillance technology, mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen car. A license plate reader had misread her plate and alerted officers that her car, a Lexus, was stolen.

The reader “saw” a 7 instead of the 3 that was actually there. Equally, there seems to have been plenty of human error in the system too – ignoring Dispatch saying the stolen vehicle was a grey truck, not the burgundy Lexus Green was driving.

Automated face recognition next, of course. All you humans look the same.

Start up: Uber debated, iPhone ruining Christmas?, Amazon Echo reviewed, (more) Android clipboard malware

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Uber driver parked in the bike lane. Photo from Flickr.

A selection of 11 links for you. Use them wisely.

How to get away with Uber >> Matter on Medium

Bobbie Johnson (with whom I used to work, long ago, at The Guardian):

Raw, pure, unbridled ambition is an uncomfortable thing to look at. It’s not that it’s ugly, necessarily. It’s just brutally, shockingly honest. Uber does not pretend to have a glorious philosophy—it wants to make transport easy, but there is no aspiration as lofty as “organize the world’s information” or “make the world more open and connected.” And perhaps that’s the way it should be. After all, would it be more offensive if Uber had a mission beyond itself? It certainly feels like less of a betrayal to know that it just wants to be as big, as powerful, as necessary, as it can be.

He argues that Uber is as greedy to have everything as Amazon – which feels right. (Worth noting: Johnson’s success came from Matter, a Kickstarter-ed project, which was then bought by Medium. So he has experience of being a startup.)

Nothing found for Rides Of Glory >> Uber

Oh, how interesting. Uber has removed the blogpost about tracking peoples’ one-night stands and categorising them by city. Concerned that it revealed invasion of privacy? Concerned about bad publicity?

It’s still in the Wayback Machine if you want it though. Originally put up in August; removed, abruptly, some time after 18 November.

Will Apple’s iPhone 6 ruin Christmas for retailers? >> MarketWatch

Brett Arends:

“We estimate iPhone 6 upgrades and purchases will equate to $4 billion in retail sales in November and December,” warns Canaccord analyst Camilo Lyon in a new research paper. That, he says, equates to “approximately 16% of the $24.3 billion in incremental dollar growth expected this holiday season.”

Or, to put it another way, while Apple is likely to see a sales boom, the rest of the mall will be left with a much more modest increase in sales of around 3.3%, says Canaccord.

Different analysts may play with different numbers for sales of iPhone 6s. And the amount consumers spend will depend to some extent on whether they get subsidized iPhones now, and pay higher mobile fees each month over the next two years, or pay the full cost of the iPhone upfront and then shop around for a cheaper mobile deal.

But even though different people will quibble about the numbers, the analysis is surely “directionally correct,” as we used to say at McKinsey & Co.

Don’t buy a Chromebook just for the 1TB Google Drive storage offer >> Forbes

Tony Bradley:

when Microsoft raised the amount of OneDrive storage it provides for free accounts earlier this year, it also shared an interesting factoid about the data storage habits of the average user. “Our data tells us that 3 out of 4 people have less than 15 GB of files stored on their PC. Factoring in what they may also have stored on other devices, we believe providing 15 GB for free right out of the gate – with no hoops to jump through – will make it much easier for people to have their documents, videos, and photos available in one place.”

Both Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive provide users with 15GB of storage for free. Even if you’re part of the 1 out of 4 users that exceeds 15GB, unless you’re an uber power user with an archive of HD movies to store in the cloud, you most likely won’t exceed 100GB. Both Google and Microsoft offer a 100GB plan for $2 per month. All of this works out to mean that 75% of the users have less than 15GB of data and will get no value out of the Chromebook promotion, while most of the remaining 25% could get by with 100GB of Drive storage, so the actual value of the Chromebook deal is more like $48.

Also, if you do need that much storage, the free offer will run out – and then you’ll be paying $10 per month.

Amazon Echo review: a perfect 10 >> ZDNet

James Kendrick:

I set the Echo on my desk which is toward the middle of my loft apartment. This room is big (approximately 40 x 30 feet) and has poor acoustics due to the concrete celings, hardwood floors, and exposed ventwork.

Having long worked with speech recognition and voice input, I am extremely impressed with how accurately it works on the Echo. The Echo can hear voice commands from over 30 feet away and it does so even with music playing. The microphone array is very, very good.

Alexa handles multiple speakers well. I invited some friends over to see what they thought of the Amazon Echo and had them all give Alexa commands or ask questions from all over the apartment. My friends were as impressed as I was, as Alexa heard each one without fail, and did the bidding of each. I suspect most, if not all, of them will buy an Echo when they are readily available.

Well well – Amazon knocks it out of the park.

Using a password manager on Android? It may be wide open to sniffing attacks >> Ars Technica

Dan Goodin:

In early 2013, researchers exposed some unsettling risks stemming from Android-based password managers. In a paper titled “Hey, You, Get Off of My Clipboard,” they documented how passwords managed by 21 of the most popular such apps could be accessed by any other app on an Android device, even those with extremely low-level privileges. They suggested several measures to help fix the problem.

Almost two years later, the threat remains viable in at least some, if not all, of the apps originally analyzed. An app recently made available on Google Play, for instance, has no trouble divining the passwords managed by LastPass, one of the leading managers on the market, as well as the lesser-known KeePassDroid. With additional work, it’s likely that the proof-of-concept ClipCaster app would work seamlessly against many other managers, too, said Xiao Bao Clark, the Australia-based programmer who developed it.

Password manager companies blame Android’s clipboard function, which is available to any app and has no interface securing it.

Keep an eye on what matters >> CamioCam

Turn any tablet, computer, or smartphone into a home monitoring camera that lets you see what’s happening at home when you’re away… CamioCam records and uploads to the cloud only when motion is detected. Then image analysis and machine learning algorithms identify the most important events that were recorded. CamioCam learns what you care about from the way you use it, so it gets smarter over time.

One device for monitoring is free; each extra one is $9 per month. It’s encrypted (“No one, including CamioCam engineers, can ever see what you’ve recorded unless you choose to share it explicitly”) and claims to use very little upstream bandwidth – 33.3kbps.

Worth trying? For iOS and Android. (I’ve downloaded it, but haven’t yet tried it.)

How to make streaming royalties fair(er) >> Medium

Sharky Laguna:

It sounds perfectly fair and reasonable: if an artist wants to make more money all they need to do is get more plays. But there’s a major disconnect in this economic model that has not been discussed widely: Spotify doesn’t make money from plays. They make money from subscriptions*.

So how is that a disconnect?

Let’s say I am a huge fan of death metal*. And nothing pumps me up more than listening to my favorite death metal band Butchers Of The Final Frontier. So I sign up for Spotify in order to listen to their track “Mung Party”. I listen to the track once, and then I decide Spotify isn’t for me. OK, So who got the benefit of the $10 I paid in subscription fees?

Suggested solution: pay royalties in proportion to the amount that artists are played by subscribers. Interesting idea – it’s almost like paying the artists directly. As if you were buying their content. Uh..

OpenBR >> Openbiometrics

A communal biometrics framework supporting the development of open algorithms and reproducible evaluations.

In other words, face detection and matching, in open source. This stuff is now becoming available to anyone, not just governments. How soon before it’s in apps on phones? Why isn’t it already in apps on phones?

App-pocalypse Now >> Coding Horror

Jeff Atwood:

Nothing terrifies me more than an app with no moral conscience in the desperate pursuit of revenue that has full access to everything on my phone: contacts, address book, pictures, email, auth tokens, you name it. I’m not excited by the prospect of installing an app on my phone these days. It’s more like a vague sense of impending dread, with my finger shakily hovering over the uninstall button the whole time. All I can think is what shitty thing is this “free” app going to do to me so they can satisfy their investors?

His argument is that the low price of apps is inevitable, and that you’re paying with your time. Also, apps are in a mess.

Initiating coverage of SanDisk with Buy and $123 target >> BTIG Research

Part of our bullish thesis on SanDisk is based on the assumption that the NAND industry will behave differently than it has in the past when it comes to increasing supply, whether it be from technological change or the investment decisions of the key participants. This view will likely result in derision from those who have far longer experience than us in evaluating the historical volatility in the memory market, which may prove to be well deserved. However, we think our outlook has merit based on five key factors;

• Moore’s Law is over. The densification of memory cells has reached its limit
• New technologies like 3D [transistors] are costlier and taking longer to deploy
• The drop in price per bit calls into question the value of investing in more capacity
• NAND competitors have different strategic and investment priorities
• There is a sustained strong level of demand

As newcomers to this sector of the ecosystem, we will have to continue to test our thesis but we think investors should, at a minimum, be second-guessing their established views on how the industry works.

Basically, BTIG sees a decline so continuous in pricing that it thinks it’s uneconomic to invest in new capacity. This hasn’t happened in the past, so let’s see how that pans out.