Tag Archives: fbi

Start up: goodbye Phorm!, the empty iPhone 5C, why we aren’t sharing now, the trouble with specs, and more

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Canada’s police – and the UK and US spy agencies? – have had BlackBerry’s global encryption key for some years. Photo by portalgda on Flickr.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Pre-packed for freshness. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

What children learned from the shared family phone » WSJ

Sue Shellenbarger:

»“My dad can’t come to the phone right now. May I take a message?” It is an expression we hear less and less as the shared family phone disappears.

Nearly half of U.S. households no longer have landlines and instead rely on their cellphones, up from about 27% five years ago, the National Center for Health Statistics says. Among young adults ages 25 through 34, fewer than one-third have landlines. Even at homes with landlines, the phone rings mainly with telemarketers and poll-takers.

Few miss being tethered by a cord to a three-pound telephone. But family landlines had their pluses. Small children had an opportunity to learn telephone manners, siblings had to share, and parents had to set boundaries governing its use. Now, the shared hub of family communication has given way to solo pursuits on mobile devices.

«

Looked at from this distance, they aren’t such gigantic pluses, are they?

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Exclusive: Canadian police obtained BlackBerry’s global decryption key » VICE News

Justin Ling and Jordan Pearson:

»A high-level surveillance probe of Montreal’s criminal underworld shows that Canada’s federal policing agency has had a global encryption key for BlackBerry devices since 2010.

The revelations are contained in a stack of court documents that were made public after members of a Montreal crime syndicate pleaded guilty to their role in a 2011 gangland murder. The documents shed light on the extent to which the smartphone manufacturer, as well as telecommunications giant Rogers, cooperated with investigators.

According to technical reports by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that were filed in court, law enforcement intercepted and decrypted roughly one million PIN-to-PIN BlackBerry messages in connection with the probe. The report doesn’t disclose exactly where the key — effectively a piece of code that could break the encryption on virtually any BlackBerry message sent from one device to another — came from. But, as one police officer put it, it was a key that could unlock millions of doors.

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This would be akin to the backdoor to the iPhone 5C that Apple didn’t want to offer. The story of how the key’s ownership came to be known is pretty remarkable too – gangland killings and all. And what’s the betting that the key has been widely shared among the “Five Eyes” nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US)?
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Aim-listed online ads company Phorm goes bust leaving investors £200m out of pocket » Daily Telegraph

Christopher Williams:

»Phorm, an Aim-listed online advertising technology specialist that once boasted deals with Britain’s biggest broadband providers before it was engulfed by a privacy scandal, is to cease trading with investors due to lose every penny of the £201m sunk into it.

The directors said they were pulling the plug “in light of the company’s uncertain financial position, lack of trading activities and absence of any suitable funding”.

Shareholders will get nothing from any administration or liquidation, they added. After by repeatedly tapping investors for cash while accumulating total losses of around £250m, Phorm was forced to turn to high interest loans to stay afloat. Those have also now been spent, leaving the company without a website because it is unable to pay the hosting bills.

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Phorm was offering to do DPI (deep packet inspection) and target ads based on what you were browsing, replacing web banners on sites with its own. ISPs and publishers would reap the benefits. Also, Phorm.

People detested the idea of DPI and targeted ads. Phorm never recovered from a storm of bad PR in 2007-8.
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Source: Nothing significant found on San Bernardino iPhone so far » CBS News

»A law enforcement source tells CBS News that so far nothing of real significance has been found on the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, which was unlocked by the FBI last month without the help of Apple.

It was stressed that the FBI continues to analyze the information on the cellphone seized in the investigation, senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports.

«

No surprise there. This is the employer-supplied, mobile-device-managed phone that Farook left in his car, back at home with his mother who was looking after his child while he and his wife went and shot people. Two other phones were found destroyed in a dumpster.
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Context collapse and context restoration » ROUGH TYPE

The ever-readable Nick Carr on Facebook’s struggle with fewer people offering up their own life details for “sharing”:

»Before social media came along, your social life played out in different and largely separate spheres. You had your friends in one sphere, your family members in another sphere, your coworkers in still another sphere, and so on. The spheres overlapped, but they remained distinct. The self you presented to your family was not the same self you presented to your friends, and the self you presented to your friends was not the one you presented to the people you worked with or went to school with. With a social network like Facebook, all these spheres merge into a single sphere. Everybody sees what you’re doing. Context collapses.

When Mark Zuckerberg infamously said, “You have one identity; the days of you having a different image for your work friends or your co-workers and for the people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly,” he was celebrating context collapse. Context collapse is a wonderful thing for a company like Facebook because a uniform self, a self without context, is easy to package as a commodity. The protean self is a fly in the Facebook ointment.

Facebook’s problem now is not context collapse but its opposite: context restoration. When people start backing away from broadcasting intimate details about themselves, it’s a sign that they’re looking to reestablish some boundaries in their social lives, to mend the walls that social media has broken. It’s an acknowledgment that the collapse of multiple social contexts into a single one-size-fits-all context circumscribes a person’s freedom.

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Chinese phone companies are speaking my language » The Verge

Vlad Savov:

»I think we lose something (maybe not entirely tangible) when we adapt the presentation of technological products to the lowest-common-denominator audience. Apple obviously doesn’t agree, and it set the tone for simplifying technology and making it seem less daunting — but maybe we’ve overcorrected. At the same Mobile World Congress where Xiaomi made me grin with joy at its no-nonsense deep dives into things like Deep Trench Isolation, LG was conducting a slow-motion car crash of an event for its new G5 flagship. The Korean company had hired a distinctly unlikeable actor to demonstrate all the various features of its new phone in a series of video skits. I was left scratching my head as to whether it was a form of self-parody or truly unintentional comedy of awkwardness. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

I’m not intimately familiar with the priorities of Chinese consumers, but judging by the devices fashioned out by their local manufacturers, high specs remain highly desirable (along with the rising importance of distinctive and attractive design). Maybe it’s easier for Meizu and Xiaomi to market themselves with a straightforward message to their national audience because that audience isn’t yet jaded and cynical about technological advancements. But I still firmly believe that the message of real technological progress is a universally appealing one.

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Usually I agree with Savov’s evaluations, but on this I don’t. Most people really don’t care about, and truly don’t understand, technological numbers or concepts. For example, Deep Trench Isolation (which I think did get a mention in Apple’s iPhone 6S launch) is so abstruse that barely anyone can properly understand it; the word for such not-understood-but-used-to-impress phrases is “jargon”.

What people do react to is outcomes – or solutions if you prefer. Does the phone take great pictures? Do things happen quickly? When you scroll, is the scrolling smooth? Those details aren’t determined by hardware numbers alone, which is why “feeds and speeds” don’t tell the story of a device. A deca-core smartphone won’t necessarily do more, or do it faster, than a dual-core one like the iPhone 6S, and understanding why that’s so is important for the journalist (and, arguably, the reader who might spend money).
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The digital media bloodbath: hundreds of jobs lost » BuzzFeed News

Matthew Zeitlin:

»For media companies chasing the biggest possible audiences, it’s hard to resist the lure of a story blowing up on Facebook. When the social network’s algorithms smile upon a particularly shareable post, it can put it in front of millions of people — sometimes tens of millions. That has led many ambitious media companies to pursue Facebook traffic relentlessly — a pursuit some believe will be fatal to all but the biggest players.

“The cracks are beginning to show, the dependence on platforms has meant they are losing their core identity,” said Rafat Ali, the founder and editor-in-chief of Skift, a news site focused on the travel industry. “If you are just a brand in the feed, as opposed to a brand that users come to, that will catch up to you sometime.”

Mashable, for example, started out as a narrowly focused publication targeting the social media business and then, engorged with venture capital, chased scale. Ali pointed to sites like Mic and Refinery29 that started out small and are trying to ride viral success to become something larger. “The reality is that scale for scale’s sake will catch up with people.”

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The biggest number of jobs lost is at Al-Jazeera US, where 700 have gone. The others are generally fewer than 100 (excepting the Guardian, which intends to lay off around 250). The feeling that it’s venture-funded sites that are struggling is tempting, but not quite proven: both AJA and The Guardian have entirely different funding models.
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University of California at Davis spent thousands to scrub pepper-spray references from internet » The Sacramento Bee

Sam Stanton and Diana Lambert:

»UC Davis contracted with consultants for at least $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative online postings following the November 2011 pepper-spraying of students and to improve the reputations of both the university and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, newly released documents show.

The payments were made as the university was trying to boost its image online and were among several contracts issued following the pepper-spray incident.

Some payments were made in hopes of improving the results computer users obtained when searching for information about the university or Katehi, results that one consultant labeled “venomous rhetoric about UC Davis and the chancellor.”

Others sought to improve the school’s use of social media and to devise a new plan for the UC Davis strategic communications office, which has seen its budget rise substantially since Katehi took the chancellor’s post in 2009. Figures released by UC Davis show the strategic communications budget increased from $2.93m in 2009 to $5.47m in 2015.

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The “right to be forgotten for enough money”. (It’s done by stuffing the web with “favourable” content about the organisation, and/or seeking to get the other content removed.)
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Google removes links on celebrity injunction couple » The Guardian

Jasper Jackson:

»Google has removed links to articles about the celebrity couple at the centre of a injunction in response to legal requests.

Searches for the names of either person return notices at the bottom of the page saying results have been removed.

Removed entries on both sets of searches are linked to the same legal requests. However, links to a database which records takedown notices go to pages without any information.

The Daily Mail reported that an online privacy firm claiming to be acting on behalf of the couple had complained about more than 150 links on the search engine.

The removal notices are more normally used for taking down links to copyrighted information. They are different to the messages Google posts when it removes links under EU “right to be forgotten” rules.

Google declined to comment.

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Well, of course Google wouldn’t comment; how is it going to balance its visceral hate of the “right to be forgotten” with its insistence that it’s “organising the world’s information” while also freeing the oppressed from the yoke of censorship? There’s no way to square that circle. (Is Facebook doing the same?)
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Start up: the chat bots are here!, what Windows Phone?, Spotify’s IPO debt sprint, fixing iOS 9.3, and more

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Compaq’s engineers (in Houston, Texas) discovered they needed a new strategy when low-cost rivals arrived in force. Photo by lungstruck on Flickr.

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Land Registry: sell it off or open it up? » Shared Assets

»At Shared Assets we believe that privatisation is the wrong approach and is inconsistent with the Government’s stated commitment to ‘open data’. The Land Registry is currently fit for purpose, generates a surplus, and is trusted to fulfil its role underpinning over £4tn worth of property ownership across England and Wales. The Government is selling off a critical, well functioning, national statutory service that we are all obliged to use, primarily to raise funds.

We believe the potential impacts of creating a private sector monopoly on transparency and access to this critical data set are unacceptable, and that a more imaginative, and beneficial, approach would be to open up public land registry data for the common good.

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I wrote on this topic too.
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Microsoft: Windows Phone isn’t our focus this year » The Verge

Tom Warren:

»A single demo of Skype running on a Windows Phone was the only time a phone running Windows 10 Mobile appeared for longer than a few seconds, and it felt like Microsoft was more focused on Windows 10 for Xbox and HoloLens. I got the chance to speak to Windows chief Terry Myerson briefly after today’s keynote, and it’s clear Microsoft focus isn’t on phones this year.

“We’re fully committed to that 4-inch screen, there will be a time for it to be our focus, but right now it’s part of the family but it’s not the core of where I hope to generate developer interest over the next year,” explains Myerson. “There’s no lack of recognition to realize how important that form factor is, but for Microsoft with Windows and for our platform it’s the wrong place for us to lead.”

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The day everything changed at Compaq » LinkedIn

Sean Burke was there as a product manager in September 1991, and saw that Compaq – which was expecting hardware gross margins of 40% – was getting walloped by IBM at the high price end and by Dell and others at the low-cost end. So he told Ben Rosen, the chairman, of his plan for a low-cost PC:

»I told Ben that it was absolutely possible for Compaq to create products that were low cost.  I mentioned that I already started working on a next generation low cost product concept, but it was not yet approved – either as an actual project or as a project that I would be assigned to.  He was interested and asked me to confidentially work on it and update him on the status.  He also told me, surprisingly, not to tell anyone about the project, including my management, but to just report back to him.

Obviously, a Product Marketing person can’t develop a product alone so I did what came natural and got the best engineering manager I could trust and rely on technically.   I had been working for the last year and a half with Jon Thompson, the Engineering Program Manager for the DESKPRO/M, and in the process we became good friends.  We began to work on this new project after normal business hours and weekends by contacting suppliers and other technology companies.  We created a story to tell these suppliers that we were going to leave Compaq and start our own PC Company.  It was amazing how many suppliers approached us and offered help.  The extent of the ideas and the pricing they offered us was even more amazing.

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The internal politics turns out to be even more amazing, and Burke the naif used as a pawn. Recommended.
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Spotify raises $1bn in debt financing » WSJ

Scoop by Douglas Macmilland, Matt Jarzemsky and Maureen Farrell:

»By raising debt instead of equity, Spotify adds to its war chest without the possibility of setting a lower price for its stock, which can sap momentum and hamper recruiting.

In June 2015, Spotify was valued at $8.5bn.

In return for the financing, Spotify promised its new investors strict guarantees tied to an IPO. If Spotify holds a public offering in the next year, TPG and Dragoneer will be able to convert the debt into equity at a 20% discount to the share price of the public offering, according to two people briefed on the deal. After a year, that discount increases by 2.5 percentage points every six months, the people said.

Spotify also agreed to pay annual interest on the debt that starts at 5% and increases by 1 percentage point every six months until the company goes public, or until it hits 10%, the people said. This interest—also called a “coupon” and in this case paid in the form of additional debt, rather than cash—is commonly used in private-equity deals but rarely seen in venture funding.

In addition, TPG and Dragoneer are permitted to cash out their shares as soon as 90 days after an IPO, instead of the 180-day period “lockup” employees and other shareholders are forced to wait before selling shares, the people said.

«

Debt like this is dangerous. First, it can be recalled – which kills a company. Second, as here, it comes with many strings, principally financial. In the first year, Spotify will have to pay out $25m (first six months, 5% of $1bn) + $30m (6%) = $55m.

In the second year, $35m (7%) + $40m (8%) = $75m. In the third year, $95m, and after that, $100m per year. It had $600m cash before this debt, so that’s $1.6bn in cash reserves; it can pay out for a while, but the real damage is to its profitability. It isn’t making money now (as far as anyone knows) and this will put that further out of reach. I think it’s safe to say that with this debt deal, Spotify can never make an operating profit if the debt payment is included.

This therefore is a financing deal aimed at getting Spotify over the IPO finish line as soon as possible so it can get a giant cash injection. Then its future losses become the public shareholders’ problem, rather than those of the venture capitalists or music labels that have funded it so far.
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Amazon, Alibaba and an Indian Illusion » Bloomberg Gadfly

Andy Mukherjee:

»How can opening the door mean the exact opposite? The devil is in details of the policy, which says e-commerce platforms will only provide a marketplace and not influence the sale price of merchandise. In other words, while foreigners can facilitate retail, they will not really be retailers, burning their deep-pocketed investors’ money to drive myriad mom-and-pop stores out of business.Goldman Sachs believes the rules “could spell an end” to discount-led competition among e-tailers. While that might be a welcome path to eventual profitability for an industry surviving on bragging rights about how much merchandise it handles, what’s good for the collective may be bad news for individual companies. Late last year, the lobby group of traditional Indian retailers kicked up a fuss when Amazon gave out measly 200 rupee ($3) gift cards to consumers, because this purportedly showed Amazon acting as a retailer when it was only allowed to be a technology platform.If the new rules do nothing but extend the “essential continuity” of the old rules, that might please Sir Humphrey — but Jeff Bezos is certainly going to mind.

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Seems that the new regulations will bring online retailing to heel in India. Not good – but smartphones will probably provide a way around it.
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Clippy’s back: the future of Microsoft is chatbots » Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Dina Bass:

»Whether you think bots are exciting or alarming, a lot of people are already using them. Microsoft’s Chinese version of Tay, called Xiaoice, has been available for 18 months and has 40 million users. Conversations with Xiaoice (pronounced shao-ice) average about 23 exchanges per session. Few users chat that long with Siri. Facebook is working on an assistant named M and already has bots operating on its Messenger app that let users book a haircut or send flowers. The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Google is working on a bot-based app that will answer users’ questions. Amazon has its best-reviewed product in years in the Echo, a voice-controlled black cylinder that sits in customers’ kitchens and performs a fast-growing list of tasks—it can look up recipes, order groceries, turn on the news, play songs, and read e-books aloud. Slack, the corporate messaging service, has bots that can manage your expenses and order the office beer.

On March 30, at Microsoft’s annual Build conference for software developers in San Francisco, Nadella will try to undo the damage from Tay and unveil his vision, which he calls “conversation as a platform.” Microsoft will show off several different bots and programs that manage tasks via discussion. Some you’ll be able to text with, like Tay; others are just concepts cooked up for the show to spark developers’ imaginations.

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The question is whether, as with Tay, the corpus (that it learns from) is already poisoned. Humans learn not to do certain things in social situations; Tay and its brethren are being thrown into situations where learning is almost impossible because the barriers between good and bad behaviour are surprisingly narrow. “Hitler could have done a better job” can be said ironically, or flatly; its meaning to the listener depends on a lot of pre-knowledge.
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MOTOBOT ver.1｜Tokyo Motor Show 2015 – Event YAMAHA MOTOR CO., LTD.

»What makes the MOTOBOT project unique is its approach to completely automated operation. Unlike the current methods used for automobile self-driving systems, which have progressed in recent years, the aim is for a humanoid robot to operate a vehicle unmodified for autonomous use. Based on data for vehicle speed, engine rpm, machine attitude, etc., MOTOBOT will control its six actuators* to autonomously operate the vehicle. Going forward, technology for machine position recognition (high-precision GPS, various sensors, etc.) and machine learning will be utilized to enable MOTOBOT to make its own decisions regarding the best lines to take around a racetrack and the limits of the motorcycle’s performance, so that it can improve its lap times with successive laps of the track.

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First they came to conquer the chess players, but I didn’t play chess. Then they came to conquer the Go players, but I’d never heard of Go. Then they said they were going to beat the motorbike riders… by 2020.. which is only four years away.
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Google also has been ordered to help unlock phones, records show » WSJ

Devlin Barrett:

»Google has been repeatedly ordered to help federal agents open cellphones, according to court records in seven states that show Apple Inc. isn’t the only company facing government demands at the center of a fierce debate over privacy and security.

The American Civil Liberties Union found 63 instances where the government sought a court order under a 1789 law called the All Writs Act to compel Apple and Google to help them access data on locked phones.

The outcome of those cases aren’t clear. However, federal prosecutors have said until late last year, when Apple began resisting such efforts, it was routine for judges to approve such requests from federal prosecutors. And those requests aren’t a new phenomenon—the cases stretch back to 2008.

A Google spokesman said: “…we’ve never received an All Writs Act order like the one Apple recently fought that demands we build new tools that actively compromise our products’ security…. We would strongly object to such an order.”

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This isn’t surprising – neither Google’s cooperation (Apple cooperated too where it could) nor the fact that the AWA hasn’t been needed; the number of Android phones out there with full disk encryption enabled must be tiny compared to the number of iPhones.
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How to fix iOS 9.3’s broken Safari, Mail and Messages links » Ben Collier

»If you’ve been hit by the iOS 9.3 broken links you can follow these steps to fix the issue whilst we wait for a full update from Apple. Unfortunately you’ll need to hook your iPhone or iPad up to your computer and sync with iTunes.

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It’s a 13-step process, which is only one more than you need to make your way back from alcoholism. So far it’s only Booking.com, but I feel sure that malware will try to exploit this in future.
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In snub to Google, AT&T looks to sell alternative Android phone » The Information

Amir Efrati on AT&T’s plan to sell a Cyanogen-based phone:

»Cyanogen wants to let any phone maker, wireless carrier or app developer integrate their services more deeply with its alternative form of Android, in ways that they can’t do with the official Google version. Microsoft, for instance, is integrating Skype, its Internet calling service, and Cortana, its virtual assistant, into Cyanogen. The end result is that people will be able access and interact with their Skype contacts directly from the phone’s built-in dialer app, and they will be able to summon apps like Spotify by speaking to Cortana. Such scenarios are not available on Google’s version of Android.

While Cyanogen can control many aspects of devices it powers, they all come preloaded with Google services like search, the Google Play app store and Google Maps (because Cyanogen knows that consumers need them). In exchange for having those Google services, the devices must comport with certain Google rules, such as displaying those apps prominently on the home screen. For its part, Cyanogen is able send messages to phone users to help them customize the devices so that integrations with non-Google apps will be more prominently displayed on, say, the home screen, instead of Google’s apps.

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So, basically, it’s Just Another Skinned Google Android Phone. Ron Amadeo has a succinct two-paragraph rant on the oversell of Cyanogen.
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Facebook’s Messenger lands first airline as chat app pushes into commerce » USA Today

Jessica Guynn:

» KLM Royal Dutch Airlines passengers will soon be able to check in, get flight updates, make travel changes and talk to customer service reps straight from Facebook’s Messenger chat app.

KLM is the first airline and the first major European partner for Messenger, which is used by 800 million people around the globe.

Facebook sees customer service as a natural extension of chat apps which were built for, well, chatting. The giant social network launched Messenger for Business one year ago to pursue “conversational commerce,” the notion that we will all soon be talking to — and eventually transacting with — businesses over messaging apps.

Since then, businesses in a growing number of industries have tried out the service to chat with customers, among them hotel chain Hyatt and retailers Walmart and Everlane. In a hint of the kind of commercial transactions to come, users of Uber and Lyft can hail a ride by tapping a new transportation option inside Messenger and share the details with friends.

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The app becomes the platform..
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With Galaxy S7, Samsung seen rediscovering its mobile mojo | Reuters

Se Yong Lee:

»several brokerages on Wednesday upgraded first-quarter forecasts for what is still the world’s top smartphone maker, citing a strong start for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge premium phones that were launched earlier this month.

Samsung likely shipped 9.5m S7 phones in the first quarter, significantly more than the initial estimate for 7m, Jay Yoo, industry analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, wrote in a report.

“It looks like the sell-in numbers have been pretty good and analysts are raising their sales forecasts for the S7 this year,” noted HDC Asset Management fund manager Park Jung-hoon.

“The firm is pushing up volume in the mid-to-low tier to protect market share. Starting S7 sales about a month earlier than the S6 to take advantage of Apple not having new products out yet was also a good move.”

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Among iPhone launches, the SE is indeed Small Edition – but it’s bringing new consumers to iPhone » Slice Intelligence

»Early data from Slice Intelligence indicates that the SE may help Apple grow its maturing iPhone consumer base. Only 35% of iPhone SE buyers purchased an iPhone online in the past two years, and 16% of them were previously Android users. By comparison, 49% of iPhone 6S buyers upgraded from a previous iPhone, and 10% replaced an Android device they bought online within the past two years.

Buyers of the SE look much different than the Apple fanboy audience typically queuing up to buy the latest from Cupertino. They’re older, less educated, and surprisingly, more male. More than one fifth of SE buyers are in the 45-54 age demographic, versus 18% for all iPhone buyers; and 77% of SE buyers are men, versus 69%.

«

Conversation inside Apple HQ: Analyst 1: “Huh? Male, aged 45-54? Less educated?”

Analyst 2: “OH DEAR GOD. We’ve invented the TRUMP PHONE.”
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Start up: the iPhone crackers, tick-tock dies, the Instagram trojan returns, Microsoft’s AI bot, and more

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Life was simpler in some ways when you could just feed these to get your parking time. Photo by PeterJBellis on Flickr.

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Israeli mobile forensics firm helping FBI unlock seized iPhone, report says » Ars Technica UK

David Kravets:

»On Sunday [as it also withdrew its court request against Apple], according to public records, the FBI committed to a $15,278 “action obligation” with Cellebrite. An “action obligation” is the lowest amount the government has agreed to pay. No other details of the contract were available, and the Justice Department declined comment. Cellebrite, however, has reportedly assisted US authorities in accessing an iPhone.

For now, US-based security experts believe that Cellebrite does have the wherewithal to perform the task.

“I’m really not at liberty to confirm the third party, but based on the techniques I’ve described in my blog on the subject, I think Cellebrite, as well as many large forensics firms like it, have the capability to perform such tasks,” forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski told Ars in an e-mail. “DriveSavers, for example, has released statements yesterday suggesting they’re almost there. I think the techniques are pretty straight forward for firms like these now that the tech community has had a chance to comment.”

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They made him a moron » The Baffler

Evgeny Morozov was invited to the State Department in October 2009 to meet Alec Ross, then innovation adviser to Hillary Clinton:

»Out of courtesy, I did share some thoughts with Ross, but it wasn’t long before our paths diverged.[*] I soon became a critic of the U.S. government’s “Internet freedom agenda,” while Ross and his colleague and friend Jared Cohen (then on the policy planning staff of the State Department and now the head of Google Ideas) embarked on adventures so reckless and ridiculous, so obsequious to the interests of Silicon Valley and offensive to anyone well-versed in the diplomatic trade, that some career staffers at the State Department began to ridicule, anonymously, of course, their cluelessness on social media.

Ross’s tenure at the State Department was, by and large, a failure. His efforts to promote “twenty-first-century statecraft”—Clinton’s lofty vision for American power that would put “Internet freedom” and digital technologies at its core—floundered after the State Department was confronted by Cablegate, the release of a massive library of leaked diplomatic cables that began in late 2010 and was coordinated by WikiLeaks. Ross, who claimed the twenty-first-century-statecraft concept as his own and hoped that it would become “a major part of [Clinton’s] legacy,” was suddenly forced into damage control. Few would find his pronouncements on “Internet freedom” credible after the State Department’s reaction to WikiLeaks.

«

Morozov reviews Ross’s book “The Industries of the Future”: it’s like watching a master sushi chef at work. And the footnote attached to that [*] above is worth the clickthrough on its own.

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Notes on Apple’s refresh – cheaper iPhones and iPads for real work » Benedict Evans

His observation:

»what Apple has really done is moved from selling older models at discounts with the ‘proper’ iPhone starting at $600, to starting the iPhone range at $400 and scaling up on screen size and price.

There are a bunch of interesting second-order implications for this. By launching six months after the actual iPhone 6S Apple smooths out the supply chain and reduces cannibalization from people who really want the ‘newest one’, and probably gets better component prices. But it’s still selling premium components instead of 2-year-old components at $400 instead of $600, so I’d expect a long discussion of margin implications at the next quarterly call. And this also points to how misguided it is to poke around in earnings releases from Apple’s supply chain to work out iPhone sales. One can also wonder what happens in the next product cycle – presumably the iPhone 6 disappears, the 6S goes to $500 and the SE is refreshed, perhaps without a new name. Or does it go to $300? Certainly it’ll be on the second-hand market at $200.

But the key thing is that after 8 years, the iPhone range really now starts at $400, not $600 or more.

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​Cashless parking was meant to make life easier for drivers but our phones are awash with competing apps » The Independent

Rhodri Marsden:

»When I was prompted by a roadside sign to download yet another cashless parking app, my patience finally snapped. I now had four of them on my phone – PayByPhone, RingGo, Parkmobile and ParkRight, all of which required me to undergo a laborious sign-up procedure, keying credit-card details and registration numbers into my phone while I sat on the bonnet, accruing parking charges.

The competitive marketplace for cashless parking has resulted in a fragmented and rather irritating experience for motorists who don’t have a handy stash of pound coins; as well as the aforementioned apps, there are others such as Phoneandpay, MiPermit and Whoosh, all promising to liberate us from the tyranny of the parking meter but ignoring the fact that we don’t care who we pay: we just want to park.

«

85% of cashless parking controlled by two apps, the other 15% by a sprawl of others. Really good research by Marsden, but there’s no solution in sight. One point he didn’t make, but which I notice: paying by app is often more expensive than paying for a physical ticket.
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Intel officially kills “tick-tock” » The Motley Fool

Ashraf Eassa:

»back in mid-2015, Intel admitted that its 10-nanometer technology was in rough shape and wouldn’t go into production at the end of the year as expected. In the company’s most recent form 10-K filing, it went ahead and officially declared “Tick-Tock” [by which it reduces the die size in one year, and in the next year improves the microarchitecture] dead.

Intel’s wording in the form 10-K filing is as following:

“We expect to lengthen the amount of time we will utilize out 14 [nanometer] and out next-generation 10 [nanometer] process technologies, further optimizing out products and process technologies while meeting the yearly market cadence for product introductions.”

The company even includes an interesting visual aid to contrast the differences between the previous methodology and the current one:

Intel says that its third 14-nanometer product, known as Kaby Lake, will have “key performance advancements as compared to [its] 6th generation Core processor family.” The extent of these enhancements is clear, but leaks to the Web suggest enhancements to graphics and media.

«

Along with Moore’s Law fading, this is an epochal moment. And the other one is…
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Andy Grove and the iPhone SE » Stratechery

A terrific piece on Andy Grove, the legendary Intel chief executive, by Ben Thompson; rather than just a recap, he puts Grove’s contribution into useful perspective:

»Beyond Grove’s personal background, the importance of Intel to the technology industry — and, by extension, to the world — cannot be overstated. While Moore is immortalized for having created “Moore’s Law”, the truth is that the word “Law” is a misnomer: the fact that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years is the result of a choice made first and foremost by Intel to spend the amount of time and money necessary to make Moore’s Law a reality. This choice, by extension, made everything else in technology possible: the PC, the Internet, the mobile phone. And, the person most responsible for making this choice was Grove (and, I’d add, his presence in management was the biggest differentiator between Intel and its predecessors, both of which included Noyce and Moore).

That wasn’t Intel and Grove’s only contribution to Silicon Valley, either: Grove created a culture predicated on a lack of hierarchy, vigorous debate, and buy-in to the cause (compensated with stock). In other words, Intel not only made future tech companies possible, it also provided the template for how they should be run, and how knowledge workers broadly should be managed.

«

Thompson’s daily Stratechery newsletter is well worth the (inexpensive) subscription. Talking of which..
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Blendle launches its ‘iTunes for News’ in the US » Fortune

Mathew Ingram interviewed Alexander Klopping of the “pay-for-articles-you-read” service:

»Q: Why would someone sign up for Blendle?

Klopping: Whenever you ask people “would you like to pay for journalism?” most people shrug. Why would they? But then most people responded the same way 10 years ago when asked about paying for music. I never thought I would pay $10 a month for Spotify, but I do. It’s not just about access to music, but also the app is really nice, my friends are on it, it helps me find music with Discover. When you think about journalism, having one account for everything, a service that helps you find and pay for the best stuff—that doesn’t exist. And it didn’t exist for music, but then it happened.

Fortune: So it’s not just about payment, but also curation?

Klopping: Yes. We hire editors, and those editors read everything on the platform, and they figure out staff picks. They choose the most interesting stories and they also choose stories that fit into categories or sections, and when a user shows interest in articles from a section we show them more. So there’s human curation plus a layer on top that is algorithmic. And on top of that there’s a social graph, so when your Twitter friends have shared an article that’s a good indication you might like it.

«

The point about whether hard news monetises well (it doesn’t) is notable. My question is, does paying free you from seeing ads?
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Password-stealing Instagram app ‘InstaAgent’ reappears in App Store under new name » Mac Rumors

Juli Clover:

»Last November, a malicious app called InstaAgent was caught storing the usernames and passwords of Instagram users, sending them to a suspicious remote server. After the app’s activities came to light, Apple removed it from the App Store, but it now appears Turker Bayram, the developer behind the app has managed to get two new apps approved by Apple, (and Google) both of which are stealing Instagram account info.

Peppersoft developer David L-R, who discovered the insidious password-sniffing feature in the first InstaAgent app, last week wrote a post outlining new password stealing apps created by Bayram. Called “Who Cares With Me – InstaDetector” and “InstaCare – Who Cares With Me,” the apps are available on Android and iOS devices.

The original InstaAgent app attracted Instagram users by promising to track the people who visited their Instagram account, and the two new apps make similar promises. Both apps say they display a list of users who interact most often with an Instagram account, asking users to log in with an Instagram username and password.

David L-R investigated Bayram’s new apps and discovered a suspicious HTTPS packet, leading him to uncover a complex encryption process used to covertly send usernames and passwords to a third-party server and hide the evidence.

«

OK, this is bad; but as a user, why would you trust a third-party app from a no-name developer with your login details? Or is that too obvious a question?
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Meet Tay – Microsoft A.I. chatbot with zero chill » Microsoft

»Tay is an artificial intelligent chat bot developed by Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams to experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding. Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation. The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you.

Tay is targeted at 18 to 24 year old in the US.

Tay may use the data that you provide to search on your behalf. Tay may also use information you share with her to create a simple profile to personalize your experience. Data and conversations you provide to Tay are anonymized and may be retained for up to one year to help improve the service.

«

The bath continues to warm.
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“Just have a look at this graph…” – BBC Newsnight » YouTube

How Newsnight bills it: “The Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan, on the Conservative welfare row after the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, resigns.”

What it really is: a Tory (right-wing) minister who was the only one willing to go on TV programmes to defend the government’s budget. She’s ambushed by a data visualisation showing the impact of the planned tax changes on the incomes of the different population deciles. (You can find the original graph on page 4 of this Institute of Fiscal Studies publication. The IFS is generally regarded as politically central/neutral.)

(Via Andy Cotgreave of dataviz company Tableau.)
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Google is making a keyboard for the iPhone » The Verge

A veritable scoop from Casey Newton:

»The Google keyboard incorporates a number of features meant to distinguish it from the stock iOS keyboard. Like its Android counterpart, the Google keyboard for iOS employs gesture-based typing, so you can slide your finger from one letter to the next and let Google guess your intended word. Tap the Google logo and you can access traditional web search. It also appears to have distinct buttons for pictures and GIF searches, both presumably powered by Google image search. The keyboard is visually distinct from the standard Android keyboard, which incorporates voice search but no text or image-based searching.

The keyboard, which has been in circulation among employees for months, is designed to boost the number of Google searches on iOS. While the company all but holds a monopoly on the global search market, there’s evidence that mobile search is proving much less lucrative for Google than the desktop. Using publicly available numbers, journalist Charles Arthur argued in October that half of smartphone users perform zero searches per day. (Using the same math, Arthur said desktop users perform an average of 1.23 searches per day.)… The problem for Google — and for Alphabet, its parent company — is that search is where Google shows users its most expensive ads. Any sign of decline in search would be an existential threat to the company.

«

Logically, I’d expect that searches begun from this keyboard don’t count as part of the Google-Apple Safari search deal (reckoned to be very lucrative for Apple). Apple pares away at Google’s income in one place, Google drags it back in another. However, I’d expect this to be a comparatively small number, though. It’s not as if this is Maps, after all.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: the ad deception, why your Wi-Fi is lousy, will Android OEMs follow the iPhone SE?, and more

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1

Maybe this is the way that you crack an iPhone passcode. Graphic by inju on Flickr.

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

My take on FBI’s “alternative” method » Zdziarski’s Blog of Things

Jonathan Zdziarski:

»Many firms have outright denied that they are the one, however there are at least a few firms that are not denying it, or not talking at all. The one that is the most tight lipped is, of course, the one people are paying the most attention to. I’m not at liberty to specify who, but you can count on reporters to be banging on doors in the middle of the night for this kind of information.

Speaking of middle-of-the-night, the brief was dated for Sunday, suggesting perhaps it was put together Sunday night. No forensics companies in the US are likely up and working at that hour, which seems to at least hint that it’s possible this company may be based overseas, where it would’ve been Monday morning. This is speculation, however worth investigating as a number of such DOJ contractors are based overseas.

We also know, based on the submitted court brief today, that FBI believes two weeks will be sufficient time for them to test and verify the soundness of this alternative technique. This tells us two things: 1. Whatever technique is being used likely isn’t highly experimental (or it’d take more time), and 2. Chances are the technique has been developed over the past several weeks that this case has been going on.

So what technology could be developed and reliably tested within say, roughly a month?

«

Quite a complicated but potentially effective one, it turns out.
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How Spotify solved for the ‘paradox of choice’ » Medium

John McDermott:

»Discover Weekly creates playlists by analyzing a user’s listening behavior and comparing it to that of other like-minded users. Let’s say you’ve been listening to lots of Gary Clark, Jr. lately, for instance. Discover will find other Gary Clark, Jr. fans and identify the songs and artists they’ve recently added to their personal playlists (e.g. The Black Keys, “Them Shoes,” Heartless Bastards). Discover filters out the artists you’ve already heard, reducing the list to 30 songs (about two hours worth of music).

Perhaps the biggest key to Discover Weekly’s success has been this limited selection. “[30 songs] felt like a very digestible amount of music and that really made a difference,” Ogle says. “We also decided that it should feel special — kind of like a gift someone made for you.”

Discover is in stark contrast to Pandora’s exhaustive taxonomy process (known as the Music Genome Project): Each song is ascribed up to 450 distinct musical characteristics — such as “electric rock instrumentation,” “punk influences” and “minor key tonality” — and Pandora recommends songs that share characteristics. But Spotify’s relies on the hivemind of its users rather than a thorough dissection of each song’s elements.

«

I thought that Apple would take this approach in Apple Music; it has so much data already from the Genius system.
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PC World’s cloudy backup failed when exposed to ransomware » The Register

John Leyden:

»The shortcomings of consumer-grade backup services in protecting against the scourge of ransomware have been exposed by the experiences of a UK businesswoman.

Amy W, who runs a small business in the Newbury, Berkshire area, was convinced that the KnowHow cloud was the only backup technology she’d ever need1 when she bought a laptop from PC World.

Eight months later, however, in the aftermath of a ransomware infection, Amy discovered that the KnowHow cloud backed up all her newly encrypted files and didn’t keep any revisions, leaving her unable to restore files from a historic clean backup.

PC World told El Reg that 30 days of historic backups should have been available through KnowHow cloud but this is contradicted by the victim herself, who said only two backup points, each from the same day she was infected with the CryptoWall ransomware, were available.

«

Oops.
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This is Android N’s freeform window mode » Ars Technica

Ron Amadeo:

»We’ll get to the instructions, but first let’s talk about what’s actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It’s a dead ringer for Remix OS—multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system. It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you’ll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the “X” button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a square shape—the same ugly placeholder art Google used for the split screen mode in the Android M Developer Preview.

Press the square symbol for an app and you’ll be whisked away to a screen showing that app in a floating window that sits on top of your home screen wallpaper. The windows aren’t floating above the Android desktop; the background is just a blank wallpaper without any of your icons or widgets. The floating apps all have title bars like in Recent Apps. You can drag the apps around by the title bars or use the “close” and “maximize” buttons. Apps can be resized exactly how you would expect—press or hold on the edge and move your finger, and you’ll see the app change shape.

«

The picture accompanying this article perfectly fits ex-Microsoft manager (and now Microsoft analyst) Wes Miller’s description: “Every mobile operating system evolves to the point that it looks like Windows 3.1”.
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Deception funds your online news » Medium

Rob Leathern:

»The aforementioned [junk] ad I saw was distributed by a company called Revcontent, on the news website International Business Times (ibtimes.com). You’d never fall for this clearly-fake site. But someone would, and does, otherwise this tactic wouldn’t still be showing up, 9+ months later after (presumably) someone else got shut down trying it. This deception increases conversion rates on these offers, and helps companies like Revcontent pay publishers “between $3 and $40 RPMs” (Revenue per thousand impressions). Sad to say, these numbers are a good return for websites’ online advertising in today’s climate. Buying online ads is far too easy, it seems.

I wouldn’t fall for it, so why should I care?

The most vulnerable among us are falling for these offers. They’re the ones spending hours on the phone in endless phone trees or with credit card companies trying to reverse a ‘free-trial’ that became an $87-a-month recurring charge.

In essence, these people are paying for the free news and content you consume. Every time you don’t become the victim of one of these fraudulent ads, you’re benefiting from someone else who isn’t as lucky. Lucky? I mean smart — they’re just not as smart as you knowing to avoid these things, right? Hmmmm. As a society, we should care.

«

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Why your home Wi-Fi is lousy » WSJ

Christopher Mims notes that home Wi-Fi networks increasingly have to struggle with the “noise” from others, and growing demands from streaming and more devices:

»One solution would be to add more antennas, or nodes, throughout your home. Unfortunately, Eero’s units currently cost $200 a pop.

A new competitor announcing itself on Monday, called Plume, has gathered wireless-industry veterans to create what it claims is a new kind of Wi-Fi, protected by 14 patents. The company calls it “adaptive Wi-Fi.”

Fahri Diner, CEO of Plume and a veteran executive of Siemens and Qtera, says Plume’s system will consist of many cheap, “dumb” antennas, enough for every room of a house, for a total cost of about $100.

If Plume can do that, it would be enough to make a wireless-networking geek swoon. But we won’t know for a while, because the company doesn’t plan to unveil its product or partners until the third quarter of this year.

Essentially, Plume and most of its rivals aim to take the technology behind expensive, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi systems for offices and make it cheap enough to use in your home.

«

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The absolute horror of WiFi light switches » Terence Eden’s Blog

Eden bought a cheap Wi-Fi light switch originating in China which runs, of course, on Android and has an Android app which, let’s see, wants to take pictures, directly call phone numbers, read your contacts, record audio, read your texts, read your USB storage..

»Those are some ridiculously scary permissions! I can understand wanting microphone access (voice control) and maybe GPS (turn lights on when I get home) – but why does this want to send SMS or place calls? Why does it need my contacts and the ability to take photos?

A quick virus scan showed nothing overtly malicious – but I decided to offer up a sacrificial tablet to run the app on. No way am I risking my main device with this software!

The software is of the usual sub-standard quality I’ve come to expect from cheap electronics. No set-up wizard, just dumped into a complicated screen.

«

Oh, did we mention that it also connects to a fixed IP in China and sends the light switch’s ID number to it, listening for.. something? Eden concludes:

»I’m guessing, with a small amount of effort, you could toggle strangers’ lights to your heart’s content.

«

This probably reminds you of those Android hotel light switches from last week.
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August 1997: how UK TV covered the death of Diana, Princess of Wales » MHP Redux

“VM_Phil“:

»As most of the world now knows, Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash in Paris in the early hours of Sunday, 31st August 1997. This page shows highlights of how the British television and radio services covered the immediate news that Sunday, with particular emphasis on the BBC TV news coverage.

«

What makes this worth looking at, on the day after the Brussels killings, is the way that TV and radio were effectively the only way for this news to spread. And it was for the most part really accurate.

Now imagine what it would be like today: all over social media, photos from the crash, all manner of craziness. I was working on The Independent at the time; everyone who could came in on the Sunday to work on a special. (I used the search engine AltaVista to find an expert in survivability of car crashes if you are and are not wearing a seatbelt in the back; there was no Google then. He lived in the US. I was the first to tell him the news.)

Now wonder how 9/11 would have been covered if today’s social media and connectivity were available. Different, yes, but better? Worse?
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Editorial: The iPhone SE is the good small phone that could finally create good small Android phones » Android Police

David Ruddock:

»When it comes to Android smartphones, you don’t have much shopping around to do if you even want a device under 5″ at the moment. In the US, I can think of a single Android phone under 5″ that is officially distributed here that I’d want – the Moto E is a bit old at this point, and the Idol 3 is stuck on Android 5.0, probably forever. Samsung’s A-series isn’t sold here, and so Sony’s Z5 Compact ($429.99 on Amazon at the moment!) is literally the only viable option I’d have.

And along comes the iPhone SE. There had been some suspicion this would just be a slightly upgraded iPhone 5S – things would be changed where necessary to keep the device modern. Nope. It’s basically an iPhone 6s stuffed into a 5S chassis. Which is exactly what so many people on the internet seem to be absolutely screaming for Android OEMs to make: a flagship phone, downsized. Dramatically. The iPhone SE has the same processor as the 6s, the same camera (downgraded FFC, though), Touch ID, Apple Pay, the same sensors, and Apple even estimates it gets substantially better battery life than the standard 6s, likely owed to a reduced display resolution (granted, no 3D touch and reduced contrast ratio are trade-offs). For $399, that doesn’t sound like a bad deal. And the iPhone SE really has no direct analogs in current Android phones, just phones that are sold at a similar price.

«

Sony tried, but simply didn’t get the uptake for its 4″ phones. I doubt whether anyone but Apple can make it work, and even Apple is going to struggle to make this an expanding market – the number of 4″ phones sold shrank in the past year.
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Apple in “advanced talks” to acquire Imagination Technologies for PowerVR GPU » Ars Technica UK

Sebastian Anthony:

»Apple is in “advanced talks” to acquire British chip design company Imagination Technologies, according to a source with knowledge of the discussions. When Ars sought comment, Imagination Technologies refused to deny any such planned takeover.

«

Apple, however, did say later in the day that it was not planning to buy Imagination “at this time”. (Imagination’s customers for its PowerVR chips include Samsung and Intel, both key suppliers to Apple.)
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Start up: US parties v internet, see UK power flow!, Twitter’s broken park, decrypting Samsung, and more

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Reply

What if Google makes Android proprietary and closes it off? Photo by romainguy on Flickr.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Count them if you dare repeat a machine’s work. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Amazon is recalling power adapters bundled with the UK version of the Fire 7 and Fire 7 Kids edition due to risk of electric shock » Android Police

Jeff Beck (not that Jeff Beck):

» If you live in the UK or Ireland and own one of Amazon’s affordable 7in tablets, then you need to request a new charger. Amazon has noted that a small quantity of the chargers bundled with these devices have had their housing detach when being removed from the wall, creating a risk of electric shock (no, they are not a fire hazard).

The recall applies to all Fire 7 and Fire 7 Kid’s Edition tablets sold in the UK and Ireland since September 2015. The faulty chargers have the model number FABK7B, which is found on the charger’s face as indicated in the image below.

Amazon is offering a free exchange to affected customers through a voluntary recall. If you own one of these devices you can visit this page to find instructions on the exchange process.

«

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The voters decide » Stratechery

Ben Thompson analyses the US election not from the standpoint of politics or policies, but asking how the internet has changed – and is changing – how it works:

»step back to the world as it was: the one where newspapers (and TV stations, etc.) were gatekeepers thanks to their ownership of production and distribution. In this world any viable political campaign had to play nicely with those who ran the press in the hopes of gaining positive earned media, endorsements, etc. Just as important, though, was the need to buy advertising, as that was the only way to reach voters at scale. And advertising required lots of money, which meant donors. And then, once the actual election rolled around, a campaign needed an effective GOTV effort, which took not only money but also the sort of manpower that could only be rustled up by organizations like labor unions, churches, etc.

It is all these disparate pieces: partisan media members, advertisers, donors, large associations, plus consultants and specialists to manage them that, along with traditional politicians, made up the “party” in the The Party Decides.…

…What is critical to understand when it comes to this more broad-based definition of a “party” is that its goals are not necessarily aligned with a majority of voters.

«

It’s the same misalignment that one sees repeatedly in the technology industry. And now the Republican machinery – and to a lesser extent the Democrats – are paying the price. Definitely one to read, and consider, in full.
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Adblocking is a ‘modern-day protection racket’, says culture secretary » The Guardian

Jane Martinson:

»Adblocking companies acting as a “modern-day protection racket” have been slammed by culture secretary John Whittingdale, who offered government support to those such as newspaper websites hit by the technology.

In a speech at the Oxford Media Convention, the culture secretary said the fast-growing use of software that blocked advertising presented an existential threat to the newspaper and music industries.

He vowed to set up a round table involving major publishers, social media groups and adblocking companies in the coming weeks to do something about the problem.

“Quite simply – if people don’t pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist,” he said. “And that’s as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse.”

“Ten years ago, the music and film industries faced a threat to their very existence from online copyright infringement by illegal file-sharing or pirate sites,” he added.

He said that in the current climate, adblocking potentially posed a “similar threat”.

«

Important difference: unlike file-sharing or using pirate sites, adblocking is not illicit. And that round table has already happened: Eyeo, which controls AdBlock Plus, had one in February. Notice also that the proposed round table is missing representation from one key group: the users who are blocking ads.
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What if the San Bernardino shooters had been using a Samsung Galaxy phone? » The Washington Post

Hayley Tsukayama and Andrea Peterson:

»According to a Samsung spokeswoman, the encryption option is turned on by default for the Galaxy S6 — and the forthcoming Marshmallow-powered Galaxy S7 — so it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

The government would be unlikely to go to Google for help getting into a phone, said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. Not only is the Android landscape complicated, but manufacturers, not Google, are in charge of signing the security certificates that prove their software is authentic, he said.

And Google wouldn’t be able to get past security measures on other company’s devices. According to Google, it generally can’t update the firmware — code that controls a phone’s chips, processors and other hardware — on phones it doesn’t make, meaning it can’t modify a phone to accept new software…

… because Android is set up the way it is, law enforcement may have a few more avenues of entry, said Tyler Shields, vice president for strategy at web application security firm Signal Sciences. He said that “the update chain ends up going from Android, to the hardware provider and to the service provider — everyone has their hand in the process.” And that means, in theory, the government may be able to turn to more than one actor in that chain if they wanted to deliver software changes to a device – which the government wants Apple to do in the case of the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

But with Apple, the options are limited.

«

Samsung says in a statement that it’s against backdoors.
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The demise of user research? » Medium

Nalini Kotamraju:

»“In a few short years, user research will no longer exist!”

I declared boldly — if, in retrospect, a bit riskily — during my job interview for Salesforce last year. Despite my prediction (or maybe because of it?), Salesforce hired me to lead user research for Salesforce’s CoreUX team. My blunt statement was not, of course, a repudiation of user research; I believe that user research is essential for any company to create great experiences for its customers and users. User research, is however, at a transitional moment, as fellow user researchers at other companies have also noted.

«

I wonder how this prediction – which leans heavily on growing use of automated tools to measure user experience “directly”, and quantitative analysis – looks when you weigh it against the direct experience of the user in the link below.
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Twitter has become a park filled with bats and perverts » NY Mag

Julieanne Smolinski, a journalist and TV writer, is taking a break from Twitter after being harassed by multiple multiple-account-creating jerks, who Twitter says are “not breaching terms of service”:

»Let me try to explain how I see it. Twitter is like a beloved public park that used to be nice, but now has a rusty jungle gym, dozens of really persistent masturbators, and a nighttime bat problem. Eventually the Parks Department might rip up the jungle gym, and make some noise about fixing the other problems, because that’s what invisible administrators like Twitter staff and municipal recreation departments tend to do. But if the perverts and the bats got to be bad enough with no recourse, you’d probably just eventually stop going.

(Additionally frustrating is that everybody is complaining about the safety issues at the park, and instead of addressing them, the city installs a crazy new slide. What? Nobody was calling for that. What about the perverts? What about the bats?)

I support public parks, and I support free speech. But getting bombarded with epithets and graphic images does not a love for humanity foster. I don’t know where these beardos got the idea that the First Amendment says, “Do whatever the fuck you want, it’s spring break, bitches.” Why do the laws of order and decency not apply to spaces where other people can’t tell you through basic social cues, or, barring that, Tasing, that you’re being a real asshole?

Technology has essentially ziplined past all the difficult social contract and legal infrastructure and face-to-face accountability that led us to negotiate limits on day-to-day expression. And instead of building any of that stuff, instead of addressing basic concerns of safety and gestalt and culture, our most popular platforms seem more concerned with “Haha”-face buttons and silly new engagement models.

I’d like to shift priorities. I want to elevate the need to address that people (particularly women) are being freely terrorized above whether or not a heart or a star is a more fun shape. And until that happens I can take walks and have picnics somewhere else.

«

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Google – closed source » Radio Free Mobile

Richard Windsor:

»Android L (5.0) is currently on just 34.1% of Google’s Android devices despite having been available for around 18 months which corresponds to the penetration one would expect with virtually no updates being made.

This is a massive problem because it means that any innovations that Google makes to Android to compete against iOS, Windows or China will take 4 years to fully penetrate into its user base.
In my opinion this renders the innovation worse than useless as it will be fully visible to the competition who can copy it and get it into the market long before Google can.

This is why I think that Google has to take complete control of Android culminating in the migration of the Android Run Time (ART) from the Android Open Source Package (AOSP) into Google’s own proprietary Google Mobile Services (GMS). Its recent [court] loss in its war with Oracle has given Google the perfect excuse to close down its version of Android and blame Oracle when developers complain.

I don’t think that this is likely to happen this year, but in 2017, I see the possibility for Android to follow its little brothers Android Auto and Android Wear in becoming fully closed and proprietary. This would allow Google to roll everything up into a single release and distribute it through Google Play, thereby fixing the endemic fragmentation and distribution problems in one go.

«

Windsor’s point that the penetration of each version of Android is no more than you’d expect from simple sales is well made. And if it does become a sort of Windows, bypassing OEMs for updates, that would allow it to monetise (through the newer features of later releases) more effectively.

Might be a tough one for the “Android is open, open wins” crowd to explain, though. (Some of them are inside Google.)
link to this extract

 

G. B. National Grid status » Templar

Ooh! It’s the UK’s national grid activity from moment to moment. With dials so you can pretend you’re actually running it. (Shout into a microphone if it will make you feel more important.) Damn renewables need to pull their weight, though. Coal, nuclear and CCGT (combined cycle gas turbines) generating pretty much everything; wind just 12%. (Via Kate Craig-Wood)
link to this extract

 

Facebook executive jailed in Brazil set to be released Wednesday » Reuters

Brad Haynes:

»A senior Facebook Inc executive arrested in Brazil is likely to be released after spending nearly 24 hours in jail due to a dispute over a court order demanding data from the company’s WhatsApp messaging service in a drug-trafficking investigation.

A press representative for the court in Sergipe state that is handling the case said Diego Dzodan, who is Facebook vice president for Latin America, would likely be released in Sao Paulo on Wednesday morning after a judge overturned a lower court decision.

Law enforcement officials withheld further information about the nature of their request to the messaging service that Facebook Inc acquired in 2014, saying that doing so could compromise an ongoing criminal investigation.

«

Just a warning, then.
link to this extract

 

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: Facebook’s real origin, Apple’s political underspend, Samsung’s unbranding, the electric oil crisis, and more

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Nintendo’s 3DS: not propping up sales so well as in the past. Photo by Ian Muttoo on Flickr.

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Cratering portable sales can’t prop up Nintendo’s business anymore » Ars Technica

Kyle Orland:

»A new revision to Nintendo’s projected earnings, released [on Friday], sees Nintendo reducing its expectations of Nintendo 3DS sales for the full fiscal year, which ends in March. Nintendo now expects to sell 6.6m 3DS units during the 12-month period, a 13% drop from previous projections and a 24% decline from the year before. That drop (and the accompanying drop in 3DS software sales projections) is a big reason why Nintendo is now also saying that its annual profits will be 50% lower than it had projected, though the company blames some of that decline on the weakening Japanese yen.

You might think this kind of decline is natural for a system like the 3DS, which is, after all, approaching its fifth birthday. But previous Nintendo handhelds have looked much more robust at this point in their lifecycles. The Nintendo DS was still near the peak of its hardware sales dominance in its fifth and sixth years, selling a whopping 31.18m units in the 2009 fiscal year (and a healthy 27.11m the next year). Game Boy Advance sales were still near a steady peak in the 2005-2006 period, bouncing up and down in the 15m to 18m annual sales range, thanks in part to the successful Game Boy Advance SP hardware refresh.

The 3DS, on the other hand, seems to have peaked earlier and lower than other Nintendo handhelds.

«

In short, Nintendo is predicting that its revenues in FY2016 will be lower than its profits in FY09. It’s taken a while, but smartphones are beginning to undermine it. (Might it be that those who had a Nintendo handheld in 2009 are now updating with a smartphone?)
link to this extract

 

The true story of how Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook » Business Insider

Biz Carson:

»In the Hollywood-stylized version, a Harvard student needed a tool to date girls.

The real version couldn’t be further from the truth, Mark Zuckerberg told Mathias Döpfner in an interview with “Die Welt am Sonntag.”

At the time, he already had a girlfriend — Priscilla Chan, now his wife — and he was obsessed with the internet. Google was great for searching for news and Wikipedia was great for searching for reference material, but there was a gap.

“There was no tool where you could go and learn about other people. I didn’t know how to build that so instead I started building little tools,” Zuckerberg told Döpfner.

He built a small tool called Coursematch where people could list what classes they were taking. He did build the Facematch tool, as seen in “The Social Network,” but that was just a prank, he says.

«

Rewrite of an interview with Die Welt am Sonntag (The World On Sunday).
link to this extract

 

Here’s how electric cars will cause the next oil crisis » Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Tom Randall:

»In the next few years, Tesla, Chevy, and Nissan plan to start selling long-range electric cars in the $30,000 range. Other carmakers and tech companies are investing billions on dozens of new models. By 2020, some of these will cost less and perform better than their gasoline counterparts. The aim would be to match the success of Tesla’s Model S, which now outsells its competitors in the large luxury class in the U.S. The question then is how much oil demand will these cars displace? And when will the reduced demand be enough to tip the scales and cause the next oil crisis?

«

A crisis in the form of a glut.
link to this extract

 

When the “Apple Encryption Issue” reached Piers Morgan » mobilephonesecurity

David Rogers does mobile phone forensics and teachers a mobile systems security course. Piers Morgan (who used to edit the Daily Mirror, which has apologised to some people for phone hacking) did however claim that he could take the FBI/Farook iPhone “to Tottenham Court Road [an electronics mecca in London) and they’d get into it” – suggesting that he might have confused carrier unlocking with PIN unlocking. Here’s Rogers on the tricky rapids to be navigated in deciding if we can force companies to unlock encrypted devices:

»Remember, someone who has actually committed a crime is probably going to say they didn’t do it. The phone data itself is usually more reliable than witnesses and defendant testimony in telling the story of what actually happened and criminals know that. I’ve been involved with digital forensics for mobile devices in the past and have seen first-hand the conviction of criminals who continually denied having committed a serious crime, despite their phone data stating otherwise. This has brought redress to their victim’s families and brought justice for someone who can no longer speak.

On the other side of course, we’re carrying these objects around with us every day and the information can be intensely private. We don’t want criminals or strangers to steal that information. The counter-argument is that the mechanisms and methods to facilitate access to encrypted material would fall into the hands of the bad guys. And this is the challenge we face – there is absolutely no easy answer to this. People are also worried that authoritarian regimes will use the same tools to help further oppress their citizens and make it easier for the state to set people up. Sadly I think that is going to happen anyway in some of those places, with or without this issue being in play…

…This is the same battle that my colleagues in the mobile world fight on a daily basis – a hole is found and exploited and we fix it; a continual technological arms race to see who can do the better job. Piers Morgan has a point, just badly put – given enough time, effort and money the San Bernadino device and encryption could be broken into – it will just be a hell of a lot. It won’t be broken by a guy in a shop on Tottenham Court Road (see my talk on the history of mobile phone hacking to understand this a bit more).

«

link to this extract

 

Apple’s $120M jury verdict against Samsung destroyed on appeal » Ars Technica

Joe Mullin:

»Apple’s second high-profile patent win against Samsung was appealed, just as the first was. And in an opinion (PDF) published today, a panel of appeals judges entirely wiped out Apple’s victory and its $120 million verdict.

The new decision found that out of three different patents Apple became famous for winning with, one wasn’t infringed and two of them are invalid.

The ‘647 patent described how to turn phone numbers and other software “structures” into links, allowing users to take actions like calling a number with one “click” rather than copying and pasting. The jury awarded Apple $98.7 million based on that patent, but the appeals judges today held that the patent wasn’t infringed at all. They held that “Apple failed to prove, as a matter of law, that the accused Samsung products use an ‘analyzer server’ as we have previously construed that term.”

Appeals judges also invalidated one of Apple’s most consistently ridiculed patents, the ‘721 “slide to unlock” patent. Jurors awarded $3 million based on infringement of that patent, but the appeals panel said the patent is invalid because of prior art.

«

This whole patent thing ends up as Bobby in the shower. “Patent trials? What patent trials?”
link to this extract

 

Six Hot Media Startups to Watch in 2016 » Al Jazeera America

Sadly this piece by @ProfJeffJarvis (in reality Rurik Bradbury) was deleted by Al Jazeera, which either didn’t recognise its satirical slant ahead of publication, or did and then got cold feet. But it’s still here at the Internet Archive, with gems like this:

»

The New Republic

The oldest startup here, it went through a significant reboot with its March 2012 purchase by Chris Hughes, tech mogul and co-founder of Facebook. It has since innovated so quickly that it is about to be re-rebooting under even newer ownership (name TBD), a great example of the rapid iteration that is characteristic of the best startups.

Instead of the old questions about subjective, qualitative measures, Chris Hughes brought in Yahoo! wartime consigliere Guy Vidra to ask fresh questions, such as: How well did this piece travel? And does this meme even lift our metrics?

I’m excited to see the New New The New Republic, and hope they re-embrace Walter Lippmann’s original mission of nextifying the bewildered herd using hot takes.

«

Nextify your thinkfluencing.
link to this extract

 

(UPDATE: China, too!) Korean Galaxy S7 to go without Samsung branding on front » AndroidAuthority

Matthew Benson:

»Carrier branding is arguably the bread-and-butter of free promotion: crudely referred to by some as a so-called “tramp stamp” these images tend to irritate customers who would prefer their devices to be free of all superfluous clutter. Even so, manufacturer branding tends to crop up most everywhere, be it the infamous HTC “black bezel bar” or the ever-visible under-the-earpiece location that companies like Samsung opt for.

Strange then, that Samsung’s South Korean website has pictures of its new Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge…devoid of such a front-facing claim to fame. Take a look:

The front Samsung logo is clearly missing from the image. In fact, it’s missing from all the renders pictured, yet the rear logo is clearly present, as can be seen above.

«

Subtle messaging: Samsung really does seem to be getting rid of the visible “Samsung” name on the front of the device in China, Japan and Korea. In the first two, it has struggled recently to keep sales up in the face of competition. But why Korea? And is this an evolution of its branding (more confident) or is it concern?
link to this extract

 

Invisible porn-clicking trojans invade Android’s Google Play store » Tripwire

Graham Cluley:

»many bogus versions of a wide range of apps (ranging from Toy Truck Rally to Subway Surfers 2 to GTA San Andreas and Tinder) have been distributed by fraudsters who wish to use your bandwidth to earn themselves affiliate income by clicking on adverts for pornographic websites.

Of course, if the apps popped up a copy of the Chrome browser to click on the X-rated ads then chances are that you would notice something unusual was afoot. Criminals have learnt from experience that announcing their presence so obviously only hinders their money-making plans.

So, in the case of “Porn Clicker”, the apps spin up an invisible browser window – meaning that any ad-clicking is invisible to the naked eye. And then, a minute or so later, it clicks again.

The money soon begins to earn cash for the criminals – which is a truth especially evident when you consider that some of the bogus apps have been downloaded thousands of times.

«

Android is following exactly the same malware growth path as Windows did on the desktop.
link to this extract

 

Android phones are easier for police to crack than iPhones » CNN

Jose Pagliery:

»A Google spokesman said that encryption is now required for all “high-performing devices” – like the Galaxy S7 – running the latest version of Android, Marshmallow. But only 1.2% of Android phones even have that version, according to Google.

By comparison, most Apple products are uniformly secure: 94% of iPhones run iOS 8 or 9, which encrypt all data. Apple makes its devices, designs the software, and retains full control of the phone’s operating system.

“If a person walks into a Best Buy and walks out with an iPhone, it’s encrypted by default. If they walk out with an Android phone, it’s largely vulnerable to to surveillance,” said Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.

New York City’s top prosecutor, Cyrus Vance, has noted that Android phones have been easier to crack in the past, especially because Google can reset passcodes on older models.

Android is running on 105 million Americans’ smartphones — slightly more than the number of iPhones in the United States, according to industry trackers at comScore.

But there are ways in which an Android phone could actually be made more secure than an iPhone.

Android software can be tweaked to add all sorts of security features, like a password for a particular messaging app.

Google’s operating system also starts up only after the phone’s owner enters a passcode. That’s not true for the iPhone, which starts up as soon as you hit the power button. That’s an important detail: When confronted with a locked iPhone, police can take it to a trusted Wi-Fi connection and potentially copy the phone’s contents to iCloud on Apple’s computer servers, where investigators can then comb through the data.

Android phones won’t back up to the cloud until they’re unlocked.

«

link to this extract

 

Has Apple been neglecting politics? » tofias dot net

Michael Tofias:

»To understand Apple’s efforts at persuading legislators of various issues, I compiled a measure of political footprint which combines a company’s own federally registered lobbying expenditures from 2015 with the campaign contributions they made during the 2013-14 election cycle from their corporate PAC as well as any employees who made campaign campaign contributions (and listed their employer). This data comes from the Center for Responsive Politics.

In 2015, Apple spent $4.48m on lobbying efforts and while they don’t maintain a PAC for campaign contributions, Apple employees gave a combined $130,579 in FEC-regulated campaign contributions. This adds up to a $4.61m political footprint.

In contrast, Apple’s main rival in the market for smartphones, Google, spent $16.7m on lobbying in 2015, gave $1.65m in campaign contributions via its PAC, and another $2.25m via employees during the 2013–14 election cycle for a combined $20.5m political footprint – over four times the size of Apple’s.

Apple’s political footprint is also on the small side when compared to other large companies (as measured by market capitalization on on December 31, 2015 as reported by YCharts).

«

link to this extract

 

Platforms, postcodes and pushing services live: a year in the life of our platforms team » UK Ministry of Justice Digital

»Many of our services need info about postcodes, such as what addresses they cover, where they are on the map and what admin areas they fall under.

A year ago each team had used a different commercial solution, with different charging models, so our first platform was a postcode lookup service.

This combines Ordnance Survey and government data to provide one authoritative way for our applications to look up information for any postcode.

«

Astonishing. This already exists in the outside world, with APIs so you don’t have to laboriously enter things by hand. And this was thought a good use of anyone’s time?
link to this extract

 

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none specified.

Start up: VR porn!, privacy and the FBI, Baidu’s data grab, why Trump?, and more

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A Nissan Leaf charging. But you’d know that if you were to plug its VIN into a public API. Photo by Janitors on Flickr.

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Controlling vehicle features of Nissan LEAFs across the globe via vulnerable APIs » Troy Hunt

Someone in one of Hunt’s classes discovered how to find out the battery status of Nissan’s popular electric car – and also turn its air conditioning on or off. For any LEAF. Without authorisation. Via API. From anywhere. And Nissan didn’t listen, and four different groups have discovered it independently:

»Nissan need to fix this. It’s a different class of vulnerability to the Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek Jeep hacking shenanigans of last year, but in both good and bad ways. Good in that it doesn’t impact the driving controls of the vehicle, yet bad in that the ease of gaining access to vehicle controls in this fashion doesn’t get much easier – it’s profoundly trivial. As car manufacturers rush towards joining in on the “internet of things” craze, security cannot be an afterthought nor something we’re told they take seriously after realising that they didn’t take it seriously enough in the first place. Imagine getting it as wrong as Nissan has for something like Volvo’s “digital key” initiative where you unlock your car with your phone.

By pure coincidence, this week Nissan unveiled a revised LEAF at the GSMA Mobile World Congress. Clearly, like many car makers, their future involves a strong push for greater connectivity in their vehicles:

»

In a fully connected, fully mobile world, in-vehicle connectivity is an absolute must for today’s drivers.

«

«

Perhaps not an “absolute must”, actually.
link to this extract

 

I got hacked mid-air while writing an Apple-FBI story » USAToday

Steven Petrow works for USA Today, and was writing and sending emails via Gogo Wi-Fi on a flight to Raleigh, Virginia. On touchdown, the guy in the seat behind him explained that he had hacked him, and “most people on the flight”:

»“That’s how I know you’re interested in the Apple story,” he continued. “Imagine if you had been doing a financial transaction. What if you were making a date to see a whore?” My mind raced: What about my health records? My legal documents? My Facebook messages?

And then the kicker:

“That’s why this story is so important to everyone,” he told me. “It’s about everyone’s privacy.”

Then he headed down the escalator and I headed out the front door. I may have been wearing my jacket, but I felt as exposed as if I’d been stark naked…

…[He then called Alex Abdo, a civil rights lawyer]: who is in actual danger here? The answer, apparently, is pretty much all of us. “Anyone who relies on the security of their devices,” Abdo told me.

It should be up to each of us to decide what to make public, and what to keep private, he continued. For me, I felt as though the stranger on the plane had robbed me of my privacy — as was explicitly his intent. He took the decision of what to share out of my hands. He went in through the back door of the GoGo connection.

«

link to this extract

 

Microsoft has acquired Xamarin » Petri

Brad Sams:

»Xamarin is one of the leading platforms for mobile app development and provides a robust platform that helps developers build mobile apps using C# and deliver fully native mobile app experiences to all major devices, including iOS, Android, and Windows. Seeing as Microsoft is a productivity focused company whose Visual Studio product is used by millions around the globe, this acquisition will fit nicely into their portfolio of products.

With more than 15,000 customers in 120 countries, of which 100 are Fortune 500 firms, Xamarin has become a leader in this space. Companies like Alaska Airlines, Coca-Cola Bottling, Thermo Fisher, Honeywell and JetBlue all use the software to develop their apps.

«

Apparently MSDN devs want to know if they’ll get it for free.
link to this extract

 

Solid support for Apple in iPhone encryption fight: poll » Reuters

Jim Finkle:

»Nearly half of Americans support Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) decision to oppose a federal court order demanding that it unlock a smartphone used by San Bernardino shooter Rizwan Farook, according to a national online Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Forty-six percent of respondents said they agreed with Apple’s position, 35 percent said they disagreed and 20 percent said they did not know, according to poll results released on Wednesday.

Other questions in the poll showed that a majority of Americans do not want the government to have access to their phone and Internet communications, even if it is done in the name of stopping terror attacks.

«

Wait, I thought half supported the FBI? Oh god I’m so confused. As are the people being asked subtly different questions about the same topic.
link to this extract

 

Apple-FBI fight asks: is code protected as free speech? » Bloomberg Business

Adam Satriano:

»There’s some precedent for arguing that code is protected legal speech. In the 1990s, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley wrote an encryption program for his own research that he wanted to make public. Under federal regulations, a coder must get a license to publish cryptography tools, and the government denied the student’s license. In 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled for the first time that source code was protected as speech, and the student, Dan Bernstein, who is now an instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was allowed to share the code freely.

The case, Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice, has been highlighted by those who favor less regulation of the Internet. But judges have also ruled that free speech protections don’t apply to code. Courts have been especially skeptical in cases involving piracy of music and movies.
The law “is murky in this area,” said Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami — and that’s why Apple’s case could break new ground.

«

link to this extract

 

I tried VR porn, and I liked it » Ars Technica UK

Sebastian Anthony:

»You will probably be unsurprised to hear that VR porn is awesome. It’s like porn, but better. The porn I was sampling—made by Naughty America—was essentially a standard first-person-perspective film, but with the ability to look around. Unlike some VR experiences that are just two-dimensional 360-degree panoramas, Naughty America’s porn is stereoscopic; stuff actually sticks out, or comes flying at you. You really do want to reach out and touch things.

I watched three different scenes as I sat there in the cafe. In all three of them, “I” (a male actor) was reclining on some kind of sofa, looking down at my muscular physique and giant appendage. In some scenes, other people did things to me—in other scenes, I was much more proactive.

To be honest, it was a bit weird, looking down and seeing someone else’s body. But, after a few minutes of watching, I began to feel a sense of agency; I began to feel that yes, those rippling muscles were mine; I began to feel that it was me being tended to by two other beautiful people.

And of course, just as I was starting to get into it, the demo ended and I found myself back in the real world, being grinned at by a couple of guys from Naughty America. “Pretty cool, eh?”

All I can do is nod. Why did the demo have to end so soon?

Right now Naughty America’s films only allow have a 180-degree field of view, primarily because a standard porn scene doesn’t require anything greater, but also because it’s technologically quite challenging as well. Different varieties of porn—orgies and the like—would require a 360-degree field of view, but it doesn’t seem that Naughty America is working on that just yet.

When I asked Ian Paul, the company’s CIO, about how they actually film the VR scenes, he refused to tell me anything. “I can’t give away anything right now.” Basically, according to Paul, it’s quite hard to shoot a 3D VR film from an actor’s perspective, and lots of porn studios are currently trying to find the optimal setup.

«

You think kids playing video games is a problem now? Wait until this stuff becomes easily available.
link to this extract

 

Trump shatters the Republican Party » Politico

Shane Goldmacher:

»While Cruz has tried to tap into frustrated voters via ideology, Rubio has been far more reticent to amplify the angriest voices, saying repeatedly, “It is not enough to simply nominate someone who is angry.”

In South Carolina last week, when a voter shouted out that Hillary Clinton was a “traitor,” Rubio interjected gently, “I wouldn’t go that far, sir.” And last month, in Iowa, when another voter worried about Islamic sharia law coming to America, Rubio rebutted, “Guys, that’s not going to happen.”

While Rubio dances around the electorate’s resentments, Trump revels in them. On primary night in South Carolina, he tapped into their nationalism as he whacked at Mexico and China. “They’ve taken out jobs, they’ve taken our money, they’ve taken our everything,” he declared.

The crowd cheered wildly. “I showed anger and the people of our country are very angry!” Trump later tweeted about his South Carolina victory.

Perkins, the evangelical leader, described the Trump phenomenon’s lack of ideology this way: “You can’t be fearful and thoughtful at the same time.”

«

I remain fascinated by Trump’s rise (from the relatively safe distance of a few thousand miles of ocean). What I don’t know, and nobody seems to be saying much, is: how does Trump play with the broader electorate? If it’s Trump v Clinton (as seems likely), how does that play out?
link to this extract

 

Huawei Watch: Android Wear burn-in prevention 4K lapse [N5X] » YouTube

»

Quick 4K time lapse of Android Wear burn in prevention on the Huawei Watch. Captured with Framelapse Pro using a Nexus 5X.

«

That moves around quite a bit. Which prompts the thought – how long will always-on screens survive before they’re burnt out? Something to consider with wearables.
link to this extract

 

Announcing Spotify Infrastructure’s Googley future » News

Nicholas Harteau:

»in a business growing quickly in users, markets and features, keeping pace with scaling demands requires ever increasing amounts of focus and effort. Like good, lazy engineers, we occasionally asked ourselves: do we really need to do all this stuff?

For a long time the answer was “yes.” Operating our own data-centers may be a pain, but the core cloud services were not at a level of quality, performance and cost that would make cloud a significantly better option for Spotify in the long run. As they say: better the devil you know…

Recently that balance has shifted. The storage, compute and network services available from cloud providers are as high quality, high performance and low cost as what the traditional approach provides. This makes the move to the cloud a no-brainer for us. Google, in our experience, has an edge here, but it’s a competitive space and we expect the big players to be battling it out for the foreseeable future.

«

Lots of people are interpreting this as the first step to Spotify’s entirely Googley (ie Google-owned) future, and it’s hard not to see this that way.
link to this extract

 

Thousands of apps running Baidu code collect, leak personal data: research » Reuters

Jeremy Wagstaff and Paul Carsten:

»Thousands of apps running code built by Chinese Internet giant Baidu have collected and transmitted users’ personal information to the company, much of it easily intercepted, researchers say.

The apps have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times.

The researchers at Canada-based Citizen Lab said they found the problems in an Android software development kit developed by Baidu. These affected Baidu’s mobile browser and apps developed by Baidu and other firms using the same kit. Baidu’s Windows browser was also affected, they said.

The same researchers last year highlighted similar problems with unsecured personal data in Alibaba’s UC Browser, another mobile browser widely used in the world’s biggest Internet market.

Alibaba fixed those vulnerabilities, and Baidu told Reuters it would be fixing the encryption holes in its kits, but would still collect data for commercial use, some of which it said it shares with third parties. Baidu said it “only provides what data is lawfully requested by duly constituted law enforcement agencies.”…

…”It’s either shoddy design or it’s surveillance by design,” said Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert.

«

Tricky choice.
link to this extract

 

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: yesterday’s web page headline briefly said that it was Acer’s routers, not Asus’s, which had been found to be full of holes by the FTC. This was wrong.

Start up: Asus’s router screwup, slower smartphones, Ek speaks, the FBI’s other iPhones, hi – it’s Sony, and more

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ASUS settles FTC charges that insecure home routers and “cloud” services put consumers’ privacy at risk » Federal Trade Commission

»Taiwan-based computer hardware maker ASUSTeK Computer, Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that critical security flaws in its routers put the home networks of hundreds of thousands of consumers at risk. The administrative complaint also charges that the routers’ insecure “cloud” services led to the compromise of thousands of consumers’ connected storage devices, exposing their sensitive personal information on the internet…

…ASUS marketed its routers as including numerous security features that the company claimed could “protect computers from any unauthorized access, hacking, and virus attacks” and “protect [the] local network against attacks from hackers.” Despite these claims, the FTC’s complaint alleges that ASUS didn’t take reasonable steps to secure the software on its routers.

For instance, according to the complaint, hackers could exploit pervasive security bugs in the router’s web-based control panel to change any of the router’s security settings without the consumer’s knowledge…

…In February 2014, hackers used readily available tools to locate vulnerable ASUS routers and exploited these security flaws to gain unauthorized access to over 12,900 consumers’ connected storage devices.

«

Swingeing fine? No – just “a comprehensive security program subject to independent audits for the next 20 years.” Pfft.
link to this extract

 

Session with Daniel Ek / Feb 16, 2016 » Quora

Lots of questions and answers from Spotify’s founder/chief. I found this one interesting:

»

Q: How will you compete as Amazon, Google (incl. YouTube), Apple, etc. strengthen and expand the scope of their respective lock-in?

A: I believe in focus. All of the companies you mention have music as a hobby, a very small part of their overall business. We do one thing and try to do it really well. This means we have a company 100% dedicated to finding the right content, personalizing it for you and serving it up with partners who are specialized in what they do. The big platform companies don’t generally like partnering. We do. This opens up lots of doors. To put it another way, we are really focused on delivering the best possible music experience you can find. I’m not saying we don’t think about the competition – of course we do, it would be crazy not to. But we think about them more in terms of how to make Spotfy so easy, so fun, and so relevant for our users that whether you wait on lines for every new Apple device, get your groceries from Amazon Prime, or use every Google mail and workplace app, you still want to listen to music on Spotify because it’s the best experience there is.

«

link to this extract

 

Pirated App Store client for iOS found on Apple’s App Store » HelpNet Security

Zeljka Zorz:

»The app hasn’t been flagged as potentially dangerous by Apple’s strict code reviewers, most likely because the app was made to look like a simple app for learning English if a reviewer (or user) accessed the app from anywhere outside China, and showed its true face only for those located in China.

Also, it’s coded in the Lua programming language, and this allows the developers to update the app remotely and repeatedly without triggering Apple’s app review process.

The app was available for download in the App Store for over three and a half months (since October 30, 2015 to the end of last week), but has now been removed.

The researchers haven’t discovered any actual malicious functionality in the app, but given its capabilities, it should definitely be considered risky to use. They dubbed it ZergHelper, and discovered over 50 enterprise-signed versions of the app being distributed in the wild through alternative channels.

«

Enterprise certificates are still the biggest weak point for getting apps onto iPhones. This one was clever too in using geolocation, and Lua.
link to this extract

 

Justice Department seeks to force Apple to extract data from about 12 other iPhones » WSJ

Devlin Barrett:

»The letter, written last week from an Apple lawyer to a federal judge, lists the locations of those phone cases: Four in Illinois, three in New York, two in California, two in Ohio, and one in Massachusetts.

The letter doesn’t describe the specific types of criminal investigations related to those phones, but people familiar with them said they don’t involve terrorism cases. The 12 cases remain in a kind of limbo amid the bigger, more confrontational legal duel between the government and the company over an iPhone seized in the terror case in California, these people said.

«

How surprising that the other cases where the Department wants to do exactly the same aren’t about a high-profile mass shooting that has been framed as “terrorism”.

On another note, this story has prompted some excellent reporting. Such as the next one…
link to this extract

 

Secret memo details US’s broader strategy to crack phones » Bloomberg Business

Terrific scoop by Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson:

»In a secret meeting convened by the White House around Thanksgiving, senior national security officials ordered agencies across the U.S. government to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, the marquee product of one of America’s most valuable companies, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The approach was formalized in a confidential National Security Council “decision memo,” tasking government agencies with developing encryption workarounds, estimating additional budgets and identifying laws that may need to be changed to counter what FBI Director James Comey calls the “going dark” problem: investigators being unable to access the contents of encrypted data stored on mobile devices or traveling across the Internet. Details of the memo reveal that, in private, the government was honing a sharper edge to its relationship with Silicon Valley alongside more public signs of rapprochement.

«

link to this extract

 

Bitcoin miners back proposed timeline for 2017 hard fork » CoinDesk

Stan Higgins:

»A group of bitcoin miners constituting close to 80% of the network hashrate, as well representatives from exchanges, service providers and contributors to the Bitcoin Core development project, have proposed a development timeline for scaling the bitcoin network.

The statement’s release comes after a more than 18 hour-long meeting in Hong Kong that drew participants from China’s bitcoin mining community and members of the Bitcoin Core team.

Some of the letter’s signatories were party to a previous statement that voiced opposition to any “contentious hard fork” to the bitcoin network.

According the proposed timeline, Bitcoin Core contributors Matt Corallo, Luke Dashjr, Cory Fields, Johnson Lau and Peter Todd will produce and recommend code for a hard fork to the bitcoin network that would feature a block size increase. The code for this proposal is expected to be made available by July.

«

The picture accompanying the article shows that the group comprises 21 people. So much for bitcoin being decentralised: this group decides which way everything moves.
link to this extract

 

Punctuation in novels » Medium

Adam Calhoun:

»When we think of novels, of newspapers and blogs, we think of words. We easily forget the little suggestions pushed in between: the punctuation. But how can we be so cruel to such a fundamental part of writing?

Inspired by a series of posters, I wondered what did my favorite books look like without words.

Here’s Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (left) and Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.

«

A lovely idea. Hemingway turns out to be a radical.
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Sony worms way into Ear with Xperia headset-cum-virtual assistant » Ars Technica UK

Mark Walton:

»As it dawns on smartphone makers that—after years of healthy upgrades—consumers are perfectly happy with their existing phone, they’ve started to pile on the features instead. LG has its wacky upgradable G5, Samsung has its Gear VR headset, and Sony… well, it’s got the Xperia Ear, a Bluetooth headset-cum-virtual assistant that it hopes will take away the need for everyone to keep pulling their smartphones out of their pockets.

You can take calls with Xperia Ear, send messages, get the latest traffic updates, and it’ll even send you directions using GPS (via the phone it’s paired with). None of that is particularly innovative as such, but the Ear’s USP is the way its packaged up into a neat, and arguably more reliable package that your traditional virtual assistant along the lines of Siri or Google Now. For instance, when a call comes in and you pick up the Ear, it has a proximity sensor that automatically answers the call and flings it to your earlobe.

If you’re stuck for the perfect cupcake recipe or want to know who invented the Burrito (sorry, I have the MWC hunger), the Ear can find that stuff out too via voice activated Internet searches. Again, this is functionality most people already have access to via their phone, but Sony hopes that by removing the need to pull out their phones altogether, and instead reach for the Ear, people will won’t be quite as shut out from the outside world.

OK, so the concept is clearly a strange one, and there’s evidence to suggest that such devices—like the similar Motorola hint—have struggled to find a market.

«

Can’t imagine why. You make it sound so… useful.
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Google to shut down Google Compare products in US and UK on March 23 » Search Engine Land

Ginny Marvin:

»The company only recently began rebuilding the Compare product from the ashes of the Advisor program in the US. The single piece left standing from that initial effort was the credit card offering — savings accounts, CDs and mortgages had all discontinued. Compare for Auto Insurance launched just last March, starting in California. Then Google relaunched Compare for Mortgage quotes in November with Zillow and Lending Tree among the launch partners. Both of those relaunches had limited roll outs. In the UK, Google Compare has been running since 2012 for car insurance, mortgage rates, credit cards and travel insurance.

A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that while searches on these queries remained high, the product didn’t get the traction it hoped for and revenue was minimal. That’s in part due to the limited availability of the products in both the US and the UK.

«

Another one for the graveyard.
link to this extract

 

Double-digit smartphone market growth is over » Kantar Worldpanel

»Feature phone owners across markets are challenged in finding smartphones that offer what they consider a good value for money spent. They are unlikely to upgrade to a smartphone until they can no longer rely on their current device. While looking year over year might not be enough to see a clear trend, examining the past three years makes it clear that smartphone life cycles are getting longer.

In mature markets, the profitable high end of the market is saturated. In the US, the high-end segment, devices with an unsubsidized price of more than $500 represented 48% of sales in 2015, growing a mere 9% over 2014. In the EU5, where the high-end segment represented just 27% of sales, growth was commensurately lower than in the US, coming in at 6%.

What should the industry expect for 2016? According to Milanesi, 48% of smartphone owners in the EU5 are currently planning to upgrade their smartphone over the next 12 months. This number decreases to 46% in the US, and 28% in urban China. Consumer brand preference for their next device varies a little by region, but two brand names that remain prominent are Apple and Samsung.

«

link to this extract

 

Google + GSMA announcement on RCS is no gamechanger » Disruptive Wireless

Dean Bubley:

»From the announcement: “Operators have agreed to transition toward a common, universal profile based on the GSMA’s RCS specifications and an Android RCS client provided by Google.”

It’s belatedly throwing various independent RCS app providers under the bus, trying to make disparate RCS implementations actually work together. As with VoLTE, RCS has suffered a wide range of non-interoperable versions to date, which is rather embarrassing for an application that was mainly standardised for the purpose of interoperability, rather than user-utility.

That it’s failed to actually be interoperable, as well as failed to be useful & well-designed, is just another eaten brain in the 8-year zombie catastrophe of RCS.

What’s interesting is what’s not in the statement:

– No mention of messaging-as-a-platform, despite that being hinted at previously in RCS presentations I’ve seen. Given that WeChat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and others are shifting to commerce/advertising “streams”, that’s a surprising omission.
– No current usage numbers for RCS. There’s vague pronouncements about “towards a billion users”, but no baseline of current DAUs/MAUs for “proper” RCS usage, not just SMS-replacement texting.
– It doesn’t mention the new RCS client being made mandatory in future Android builds. It just says it’s available. The PR is very operator-centric, which doesn’t seem to suggest that all OEMs will automatically implement it in new devices, especially where they’re sold through open-market channels.
– No reference to whether the client will be appearing on WiFi-only tablets, or other Android devices (cars, watches, Chromebooks etc)
– No mention of AT&T or Verizon in the press release, although there’s an AT&T speaker at MWC on stage with them apparently (link)
– No clear timelines or wholehearted commitment by Google “an important step forward in bringing a better messaging experience for Android users everywhere”
– No mention of Samsung, which also happened to have Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook keynoting its big press conference yesterday. Given Google is trying to wrest back control of Android from its OEMs’ influence, that’s not a good sign for Samsung+RCS
– No reference to the South Korean operators ditching Joyn recently.

It’s also still unclear exactly what the future RCS business/revenue model might look like. Although it references the Jibe platform for MNOs, it doesn’t rule out my previous hypothesis of “Android iMessage” either.

«

link to this extract

 

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Start up: who backs the FBI?, Google gets RCS, LG goes modular, Linux Mint backdoored, and more

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Does the American public back Apple or the FBI in the fight over encryption? Photo by IceNineJon on Flickr.

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

After Jibe Mobile buy, Google to provide carriers with Android RCS client » TechCrunch

Natasha Lomas is very unimpressed by Google’s announcement with carriers at MWC:

»at the time of the acquisition of [RCS app maker] Jibe [in September 2015], telecoms analyst Dean Bubley suggested Mountain View’s move was actually aimed at building its own Android-to-Android iMessage competitor — a theory he’s still not ruling out, so perhaps Google still has some hopes on that front.

Albeit, Bubley couches Google’s latest RCS pronouncement as “very lukewarm”, noting it has not specified the client will be on all Android devices, for example, even if what is clearly carrier-written PR talks about reaching “all Android devices” — which would encompasses an awful lot of hardware these days, from phones to smart TVs, to smartwatches and more. (We’ve asked Google for some clarity here and will update this post with any response).

A Google spokeswoman said: “Once deployed, the Universal RCS Client will come standard for all Android devices globally, providing a more consistent experience with more advanced features.”  To be clear, that’s ‘standard’ in the sense of OEMs and carriers being able to choose to install it — so not universal, not mandated by Google and thus most certainly fragmented. (Also on fragmentation the spokeswoman confirmed that currently the client only works on phones and tablets, so not all Android devices by any means.)

There’s also no clear timeframe on when Google will be delivering the RCS client. (The spokeswoman had no concrete commitments to impart here, saying only that Google is “planning to launch later this year”.) And, as noted above, without ubiquity it’s going to mean fragmentation keeps RCS-powered messaging apps from building the sought for mass messaging momentum via the platform.

«

Expectations that Google would introduce a sort of iMessage-like app across all Android devices via Google Play seem overblown. It’s also not very private.
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October 2015: Android 6.0 re-implements mandatory storage encryption for new devices » Ars Technica

Andrew Cunningham in October 2015:

»Shortly after the announcement of iOS 8 in 2014, Google made headlines by saying that it would make full-device encryption mandatory for new Android devices running version 5.0. It then made more headlines several months later when we discovered that the company backed down, “strongly recommending” that Android device makers enable encryption but stopping short of actually requiring it.

Now Google has published an updated version of the Android Compatibility Definition Document (PDF) for Android 6.0, and it looks like mandatory encryption is back with a couple of exceptions. New devices that come with Marshmallow and have AES crypto performance above 50MiB-per-second need to support encryption of the private user data partition (/data) and the public data partition (/sdcard).

«

Still unclear which devices actually implement this. Is there a table or list anywhere?
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More support for Justice Department than for Apple in dispute over unlocking iPhone » Pew Research Center

»As the standoff between the Department of Justice and Apple Inc. continues over an iPhone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, 51% say Apple should unlock the iPhone to assist the ongoing FBI investigation. Fewer Americans (38%) say Apple should not unlock the phone to ensure the security of its other users’ information; 11% do not offer an opinion on the question.

News about a federal court ordering Apple to unlock the suspect’s iPhone has registered widely with the public: 75% say they have heard either a lot (39%) or a little (36%) about the situation.

«

Survey of 1,002 adults, so statistically valid (as you’d expect from Pew). The FBI, as we knew, has chosen its fight carefully.
link to this extract

 

Hacker explains how he put “backdoor” in hundreds of Linux Mint downloads » ZDNet

Zack Whittaker:

»The surprise announcement of the hack was made Saturday by project leader Clement Lefebvre, who confirmed the news.

Lefebvre said in a blog post that only downloads from Saturday were compromised, and subsequently pulled the site offline to prevent further downloads.

The hacker responsible, who goes by the name “Peace,” told me in an encrypted chat on Sunday that a “few hundred” Linux Mint installs were under their control [for a botnet] – a significant portion of the thousand-plus downloads during the day.

But that’s only half of the story.

Peace also claimed to have stolen an entire copy of the site’s forum twice — one from January 28, and most recently February 18, two days before the hack was confirmed.

The hacker shared a portion of the forum dump, which we verified contains some personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, birthdates, profile pictures, as well as scrambled passwords.

Those passwords might not stay that way for much longer. The hacker said that some passwords have already been cracked, with more on the way. (It’s understood that the site used PHPass to hash the passwords, which can be cracked.)

«

These days I operate on the default assumption that any site into which I put personal information will get hacked eventually. On that basis I’m parsimonious with such information.

Backdoors in Linux, though – not good. (Mint is reckoned to be the third most popular distro.)
link to this extract

 

LG’s G5 is a radical reinvention of the flagship Android smartphone » The Verge

Vlad Savov on the “Friends” additions for the LG G5:

»A small key on the side of the phone pops open its lower section, which can be pulled out along with the battery, then the battery is fitted into the next module and that straps back into the phone. The whole process sounds finicky, but there’s nothing flimsy about the way LG has constructed either the phone, its battery, or the extras, so everything can be done quickly and forcefully. And yes, it really does feel like loading a fresh clip into your gun.

The first plug-in module is the LG Cam Plus, which offers an enlarged camera grip for single-handed photography and also contains extra battery power. This Friend is decorated with a physical shutter button, a dedicated video recording key, an LED indicator, and a very satisfying jog dial to control zoom on the G5. You’re still using the two cameras built into the phone itself, but this extra part essentially reshapes the device and gives it extra juice to keep going for 6 to 8 hours longer, expanding the battery from 2,800mAh to 4,000mAh.

The LG Hi-Fi Plus is an external 32-bit DAC and amplifier combo unit, tuned in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. It supports native DSD playback and will come with a pair of H3 B&O Play earphones. Unlike the Cam Plus, this module doesn’t really affect the shape or ergonomics of the G5. It just makes it a little longer and breaks up its color synchronicity (the Hi-Fi Plus is a matte black, whereas the phones vary between silver, gold, pink, and a graphite shade that LG calls “titan”). Importantly, the Hi-Fi Plus will process and upsample content from any app producing sound on the phone, including YouTube clips.

Also making their debut today are the LG 360 Cam and LG 360 VR headset. The camera is a dual-sensor spherical camera that captures either 16-megapixel stills or up to 2K video and will have immediate support from YouTube 360 and Google Street View.

«

And there’s even a VR headset. Price? “Reasonable,” according to LG, not giving a price. I’m unsure that “Friends” will get enough traction unless they’re available on all LG’s smartphones – but in that case, why would you buy the G5? Modularity in the handset kills premium pricing even faster than OS modularity.
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Smartphone ownership and internet usage continues to climb in emerging economies » Pew Research Center

»For smartphone ownership, the digital divide between less advanced economies and developed economies is 31 points in 2015. But smartphone ownership rates in emerging and developing nations are rising at an extraordinary rate, climbing from a median of 21% in 2013 to 37% in 2015. And overwhelming majorities in almost every nation surveyed report owning some form of mobile device, even if they are not considered “smartphones.”

«

link to this extract

 

Telegraph suspends comment on relaunched online content » The Guardian

Mark Sweney:

»The Telegraph has suspended online comment on stories and features “until further notice” as part of a review of the way the newspaper engages with its audience.

As part of the relaunch of Telegraph.co.uk, the company is also researching whether to reinstate the facility. The print edition of the newspaper has recently been given a new look.

The roll-out of the new-look site is being done in stages with travel, TV, lifestyle and technology sections already live, but with comments turned off. The parts of the site that have not yet been included in the redesign still allow comments.

A spokesman for the Telegraph said: “In the process of migrating its site to a new online platform, the Telegraph has suspended the comment function in some areas under transition until further notice.

“It’s also undertaking research to understand the best way to support reader engagement, but in the meantime they can continue to comment on and share articles through Telegraph Facebook pages, or via Twitter, in the usual way.”

«

“In the usual way”? Anyway; another one onto the list. I should be totting these up.
link to this extract

 

In search of a business model: the future of journalism in an age of social media and dramatic declines in print revenue » Shorenstein Center

»Nicco Mele [former deputy publisher of the Los Angeles Times] described a deepening crisis in the newspaper industry: although some outlets are seeing the largest online audiences they have ever had, revenue is still shrinking. On a local level, preprint advertising (e.g. coupons) has seen a steep decline as retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy face challenges of their own. Paradoxically, print advertising still generates the vast majority of newspaper revenue – an undesirable situation, given the cost of printing.

“If the next three years look like the last three years, I think we’re going to look at the 50 largest metropolitan papers in the country and expect somewhere between a third to a half of them to go out of business,” said Mele.

Mele noted that newer entrants such as Buzzfeed, Vox and Vice rely in large part on venture capital. “None of them are yet true public companies with a clear sense of what their revenue equation looks like,” he said.

And although philanthropic and government funding could be options, Mele stressed the importance of news outlets remaining economically independent from large institutions to better fulfill their duty of holding power accountable.

What is clear is that diversity in revenue streams will be an essential part of the future, said Mele, and part of the mix could include two effective but “underappreciated” options: subscription revenue and native content.

«

The point about Buzzfeed, Vice and Vox is pretty keen: they’re still amped up on the sugar of VC money.
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A skeleton key of unknown strength » Dan Kaminsky’s Blog

Kaminsky is a security researcher of some renown; here is his take on the bug in glibc, a very widely used C library:

»Patch this bug.  You’ll have to reboot your servers.  It will be somewhat disruptive.  Patch this bug now, before the cache traversing attacks are discovered, because even the on-path attacks are concerning enough.  Patch.  And if patching is not a thing you know how to do, automatic patching needs to be something you demand from the infrastructure you deploy on your network.  If it might not be safe in six months, why are you paying for it today?

It’s important to realize that while this bug was just discovered, it’s not actually new.  CVE-2015-7547 has been around for eight years.  Literally, six weeks before I unveiled my own grand fix to DNS (July 2008), this catastrophic code was committed.

Nobody noticed.

The timing is a bit troublesome, but let’s be realistic:  there’s only so many months to go around.  The real issue is it took almost a decade to fix this new issue, right after it took a decade to fix my old one (DJB didn’t quite identify the bug, but he absolutely called the fix).  The Internet is not less important to global commerce than it was in 2008. Hacker latency continues to be a real problem.

What maybe has changed over the years is the strangely increasing amount of talk about how the Internet is perhaps too secure.  I don’t believe that, and I don’t believe anyone in business (or even with a credit card) does either.

«

Wonder whose commit it was.
link to this extract

 

Customer Letter – FAQ » Apple

Apple has added on some answers to its “Customer Letter” from last week:

»Q: The government says your objection appears to be based on concern for your business model and marketing strategy. Is that true?

A: Absolutely not. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is and always has been about our customers. We feel strongly that if we were to do what the government has asked of us — to create a backdoor to our products — not only is it unlawful, but it puts the vast majority of good and law abiding citizens, who rely on iPhone to protect their most personal and important data, at risk.

Q: Is there any other way you can help the FBI?
A: We have done everything that’s both within our power and within the law to help in this case. As we’ve said, we have no sympathy for terrorists.

We provided all the information about the phone that we possessed. We also proactively offered advice on obtaining additional information. Even since the government’s order was issued, we are providing further suggestions after learning new information from the Justice Department’s filings.

One of the strongest suggestions we offered was that they pair the phone to a previously joined network, which would allow them to back up the phone and get the data they are now asking for. Unfortunately, we learned that while the attacker’s iPhone was in FBI custody the Apple ID password associated with the phone was changed. Changing this password meant the phone could no longer access iCloud services.

«

“It’s not our fault they acted like bozos.”
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Can the government compel Apple to speak? » Lawfare

Andrew Keane Woods (assistant professor of law at the University of Kentucky College of Law, formerly at Stanford as a cybersecurity fellow) on the 1st Amendment implications of the Apple/FBI case:

»code can be a form of speech. The lock-swapping mechanism required in this case would require Apple’s engineers to sit down at a computer and start writing.  And that action, as courts recognized long ago, is speech. In Bernstein v. Department of Justice, the Electronic Frontier Foundation successfully argued that Daniel J. Bernstein, then a graduate student at Berkeley, had a constitutionally protected right to publish his source code, despite the government’s efforts to block it. (Fittingly enough, the code was for encryption software, which the government tried to suppress on the theory that encryption software is a munition subject to export controls.)

If code is speech, and the government is compelling Apple to code, then it looks an awful lot like the government is compelling speech. That does not resolve the issue, of course, but it opens up a new field for debate – one that has not receive enough attention. The government will respond to this claim by noting that Apple’s code is a far cry from the pledge of allegiance, and therefore does not raise the Establishment Clause concerns that applied in [the case of] Barnette [where schoolchildren were being required, against the constitution, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance]. Maybe. Apple will reply that their word is their most important asset, and that the federal government is compelling them to say something they do not believe.

«

This point hasn’t been much mentioned, but is sure to be brought up. The ramifications of this case really are fascinating.
link to this extract

 

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: Google adds ads, HTC nears Vive, Watch wrinkles and worries, FBI v Apple redux, and more

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It’s the Samsung Galaxy S7! Looks completely unlike previous ones, right? Photo by Janitors on Flickr.

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

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Four ads on top: the wait is over » Moz

Peter Meyers:

»For the past couple of months, Google has been testing SERPs with 4 ads at the top of the page (previously, the top ad block had 1-3 ads), leading to a ton of speculation in the PPC community. Across the MozCast data set, 4 ads accounted for only about 1% of SERPs with top ads (which matches testing protocol, historically). Then, as of yesterday, this happened:

Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve seen a gradual increase, but on the morning of February 18, the percentage of top ads blocks displaying 4 ads jumped to 18.9% (it’s 19.3% as of this morning). Of the 5,986 page-1 SERPs in our tracking data that displayed top ads this morning, here’s how the ad count currently breaks down:

As you can see, 4-ad blocks have overtaken 2-ad blocks and now account for almost one-fifth of all top ad blocks. Keep in mind that this situation is highly dynamic and will continue to change over time. At the 19% level, though, it’s unlikely that this is still in testing.

«

Google came up in a time when search engine results pages (SERPs) were stuffed with paid-for ads. Google’s clean results page was different. Now the other search engines have gone away. And SERPs are becoming stuffed with ads again.
link to this extract

 

Phone makers look to add-on gizmos to revitalize market » Reuters

Meanwhile, there’s that event called Mobile World Congress going on in Barcelona this week. Paul Sandle notes the pressures on “traditional” handset makers:

»while the competition [among handset makers] intensifies true innovation has not, with the Barcelona show expected to feature instead other products that connect to phones, like all-round cameras capable of producing immersive views, new wearable devices and electronic gadgets for the home or workplace that use smartphones as a processing hub.

As usual Apple will be absent, preferring to run its own events for new product launches.

“We will see a lot of stuff around 360-degree cameras and virtual reality headsets with a smartphone,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst with research firm IDC. “Commodities rather than innovation”, said Forester analyst Thomas Huston.

“I don’t expect true innovation, it’s going to be more about the specifications, the better processing power, the battery life,” he said.

“What’s the benefit for consumers? I think it will be very limited.”

«

link to this extract

 

Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge: curvier, faster, micro SD expansion — available March 11 » Ars Technica UK

Mark Walton:

»In a surprise move, those that pre-order in the UK and US will receive a free Galaxy Gear VR headset to go along with their shiny new phone.

At first glance—besides their larger screen sizes—both phones look largely identical to their predecessors, the S7 sporting a flat glass front, and the S7 Edge sporting a curved display that gently folds in at the edges to the meet the aluminium body. Both phones will be available in Black Onyx and Gold Platinum, with the S7 Edge also available in Silver Titanium. Unfortunately for fans of 4K, both the S7 and S7 Edge are rocking 2560×1440 pixel displays. The most noticeable design change comes to the rear of the phone, where the dreaded camera bump has been removed to to make the camera module flush with the body. Surprisingly, this hasn’t affected the thickness of the phones, which remain fairly svelte at 7.9mm for the S7 and 7.7mm for the S7 Edge. The regular S7 also gains a curved back like the Galaxy Note 5.

Perhaps more exciting is that the S7 and S7 Edge both feature a microSD card slot, a much requested feature that was removed from the S6. Both phones will ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which allows users to merge the SD card with the internal flash memory to create one large seamless pool of storage, making the SD card slot a welcome addition. Also back is water and dust resistance, which was previously found in the Galaxy S5 but was skipped over for the S6. The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are both rated IP68, which equates to “totally dust tight” and prolonged submersion in water (the S5 was IP67, which is only “temporary immersion”).

There’s nothing too surprising happening on the inside, aside from the bump up to 4GB of RAM.

«

Don’t think this will make the slightest difference to the general arc of smartphone sales. I doubt these will sell better than either the S5 or S6 or S6 Edge. Water/dust resistance didn’t help the S5; and the Edge feature didn’t change anything much in sales terms.
link to this extract

 

The consumer version of HTC’s Vive VR headset will arrive in April for $799 with two free games » Android Police

Michael Crider:

»The headset is nearing completion, and the company has announced that the final consumer model will ship in early April for the disappointing price of $799. For that price you get two motion-sensing controllers, two room scale sensors, and VR games Job Simulator: The 2050 Archives and Fantastic Contraption. Pre-orders begin next week on February 29th.

Unlike Google Cardboard, Samsung’s Gear VR, and other systems that rely on a smartphone as a slide-in display, the Vive is a fully contained unit with screens, optical lenses, sensors, a camera and microphone, and other electronics built into the device itself. Like the Oculus, it needs a standard PC (and a quite powerful one) to send video and process images for gaming and other applications. Early reports of the Vive have praised it as an impressive experience, particularly with games that have been developed specifically for the platform. However, the Vive will also be able to connect to at least some smartphones via Bluetooth for answering phone calls and viewing notifications, perhaps allowing HTC some synergy with its phone lines.

«

“The headset is nearing completion”? I’m hoping that’s just a loose version of “it’s nearly public”. If it isn’t complete yet, they’ve got some problems. (As for “synergy” – dream on.)
link to this extract

 

Watch apps worth making » David Smith

Smith has shipped 11 Watch apps over the past year:

»There seem to be only three kinds of apps that make sense given the current hardware and software on the Apple Watch.

1: Notifications — Not really an “app” in the traditional sense but getting real-time alerts of things that are important to me is great. Any iOS app that sends notifications should do the basic work to make sure they look and perform well on the Apple Watch.

2: Complications — Showing timely information at the raise of the wrist. These are probably the most practically useful apps on my watch. I typically have my watch show me the current temperature, my current step count, and battery percent. All of which present me with timely information that is useful to know now.

3: Sensors — The last kind of app that has actually stuck for me on the Apple Watch are apps that make use of the sensors on the watch. These apps are essentially impossible to re-create on an iPhone. The Apple Watch includes a heart rate monitor, accelerometer and microphone. I don’t think the range and variety of uses for these has been fully explored yet. Having these sensors persistently attached to your body is very different than any use you might come up with on an iPhone.

«

Completely agree. More sensors would be really useful (even sensors relaying stuff from the phone, as the weather is).

link to this extract

 

Exclusive: common mobile software could have opened San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone » Reuters

Jim Finkle:

»The legal showdown over U.S. demands that Apple Inc AAPL.O unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Rizwan Farook might have been avoided if his employer, which owns the device, had equipped it with special mobile phone software it issues to many workers.

San Bernardino County, which employed Farook as an environmental health inspector, requires some, but not all, of its workers to install mobile-device management software made by Silicon Valley-based MobileIron Inc MOBL.O on government-issued phones, according to county spokesman David Wert.

That software is designed to secure corporate data. It also allows information technology departments to remotely unlock phones, even without assistance of the phone’s users or access to the password needed to open the phone and unscramble the data.

“If that particular iPhone was using MobileIron, the county’s IT department could unlock it,” MobileIron Vice President Ojas Rege told Reuters.

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So there was huge confusion around this phone. Understandable: there’s a mass shooting, the fugitives escape surveillance, a phone is found. Perhaps it is bagged as evidence and its battery runs down, which means it can’t be forced to make an iCloud backup even on trusted Wi-Fi, and that you can’t ask Siri for details about phone calls. Then they reset the password (at the FBI’s request), which made things even worse.

A mess from start to finish – but given that Farook destroyed two other phones, how likely is it that this phone was used to communicate with anyone relevant? Answer: it’s extremely unlikely.
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Reconciling perspectives: new report reframes encryption debate » Berkman Center

»The Berklett Cybersecurity Project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to announce the publication of a new report entitled “Don’t Panic: Making Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate.” The report examines the high-profile debate around government access to encryption, and offers a new perspective gleaned from the discussion, debate, and analyses of an exceptional and diverse group of security and policy experts from academia, civil society, and the U.S. intelligence community.

“Many conversations on sensitive subjects of technology and security are productive because they’re among people who already agree,” said Prof. Jonathan Zittrain, faculty chair of the Berkman Center. “The aim of this project is to bring together people who come from very different starting points and roles, and who very rarely have a chance to speak frankly with one another. We want to come away with some common insights that could help push the discussion into some new territory.”

The report takes issue with the usual framing of the encryption debate and offers context and insights that widen the scope of the conversation to more accurately reflect the surveillance landscape both now and in the future.

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Thanks Seth Finkelstein for the link.
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Apple is selling you a phone, not civil liberties » Lawfare

Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes:

»First, the Going Dark skeptics [who say that it’s OK for phones to be encrypted beyond the capability of companies or law enforcement to decrypt them] demand, show us the cases in which the absence of extraordinary law enforcement access to encrypted data is actually posing a problem. And this demand seemed quite reasonable, in our view. If the FBI wants to take the position that it has a problem, it has to do more than cry wolf. Show us the wolf.

And in the last couple of weeks, the bureau has shown some serious wolf. Consider this excerpt from Director James Comey’s testimony before Congress last week: “A woman was murdered in Louisiana last summer, eight months pregnant, killed, no clue as to who did it, except her phone is there when she’s found killed. They couldn’t open it, still can’t open it. So the case remains unsolved.” (The discussion is available here starting at 31:00.)

Then came the filing in the San Bernardino case this week. Note that this is a case that has a potentially serious ISIS link. The FBI has been sitting on one of the shooter’s phones for more than two months, unable to open it. It wants Apple’s help to determine “who [the shooters] may have communicated with to plan and carry out the IRC shootings, where Farook and Malik may have traveled to and from before and after the incident, and other pertinent information that would provide more information about their and others’ involvement in the deadline shooting.”

This is, in other words, a law enforcement and intelligence interest of the highest order…

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That Comey testimony, in this extract, is pretty thin gruel; her phone contains the whole answer to the crime? No clues in any physical evidence at all? No clues from her telephone records (which are available from the mobile carrier)? Nothing in her personal computer, assuming she has one? Nothing on any social media profiles, perhaps linked to Tinder? That’s a pretty remarkable murder, and the implication that all the necessary clues are locked inside her phone feels even more remarkable.

But it’s important to read viewpoints like this to realise what the other side of the argument is, and how it carries the same steamroller-style momentum that you might think the privacy/security one does.
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No, Apple has not unlocked 70 iPhones for law enforcement » TechCrunch

Matthew Panzarino:

»I keep seeing reports that Apple has unlocked “70 iPhones” for the government. And those reports argue that Apple is now refusing to do for the FBI what it has done many times before. This meme is completely inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst.

There are two cases involving data requests by the government which are happening at the moment. There is a case in New York — in which Apple is trying really hard not to hand over customer information even though it has the tools to do so — and there is the case in California, where it is fighting an order from the FBI to intentionally weaken the security of a device to allow its passcode to be cracked by brute force. These are separate cases with separate things at stake.

The New York case involves an iPhone running iOS 7. On devices running iOS 7 and previous, Apple actually has the capability to extract data, including (at various stages in its encryption march) contacts, photos, calls and iMessages without unlocking the phones. That last bit is key, because in the previous cases where Apple has complied with legitimate government requests for information, this is the method it has used.

It has not unlocked these iPhones — it has extracted data that was accessible while they were still locked. The process for doing this is laid out in its white paper for law enforcement…

It’s worth noting that the government has some tools to unlock phones without Apple’s help, but those are hit and miss, and have nothing to do with Apple. It’s worth noting that in its statements to the court in the New York case, the government never says Apple unlocks devices, but rather that it bypasses the lock to extract the information.

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Just to clear that up.
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The colour of surveillance » Slate

Alvaro Bedoya:

»The FBI has a lead. A prominent religious leader and community advocate is in contact with a suspected sleeper agent of foreign radicals. The attorney general is briefed and personally approves wiretaps of his home and offices. The man was born in the United States, the son of a popular cleric. Even though he’s an American citizen, he’s placed on a watchlist to be summarily detained in the event of a national emergency. Of all similar suspects, the head of FBI domestic intelligence thinks he’s “the most dangerous,” at least “from the standpoint of … national security.”

Is this a lone wolf in league with foreign sponsors of terrorism? No: This was the life of Martin Luther King Jr. That FBI assessment was dated Aug. 30, 1963—two days after King told our country that he had a dream…

…Across our history and to this day, people of color have been the disproportionate victims of unjust surveillance; Hoover was no aberration. And while racism has played its ugly part, the justification for this monitoring was the same we hear today: national security.

The FBI’s violations against King were undeniably tinged by what historian David Garrow has called “an organizational culture of like-minded white men.” But as Garrow and others have shown, the FBI’s initial wiretap requests—and then–Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s approval of them—were driven by a suspected tie between King and the Communist Party. It wasn’t just King; Cesar Chavez, the labor and civil rights leader, was tracked for years as a result of vague, confidential tips about “a communist background,” as were many others.

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October 2010: What’s really wrong with BlackBerry (and what to do about it) » Mobile Opportunity

Michael Mace, on an old post which happens to hold some useful insights that are worth remembering:

»When I worked at Apple, I spent a lot of time studying failed computer platforms. I thought that if we understood the failures, we might be able to prevent the same thing from happening to us.

I looked at everything from videogame companies to the early PC pioneers (companies like Commodore and Atari), and I found an interesting pattern in their financial results. The early symptoms of decline in a computing platform were very subtle, and easy for a business executive to rationalize away. By the time the symptoms became obvious, it was usually too late to do anything about them.

The symptoms to watch closely are small declines in two metrics: the rate of growth of sales, and gross profit per unit sold (gross margins). Here’s why:

Every computing platform has a natural pool of customers. Some people need or want the platform, and some people don’t. Your product spreads through its pool of customers via the traditional “diffusion” process — early enthusiasts first, late adopters at the end.

It’s relatively easy to get good revenue from the early adopters. They seek out innovations like yours, and are willing to pay top dollar for it. As the market for a computer system matures, the early adopters get used up, and the company starts selling to middle adopters who are more price-sensitive. In response to this, the company cuts prices, which results in a big jump in sales. Total revenue goes up, and usually overall profits as well. Everybody in the company feels good…

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But trouble lies ahead.
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Global smartwatch shipments overtake Swiss watch shipments in Q4 2015 » Strategy Analytics

»According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1m units in Q4 2015, compared with 7.9m Swiss Watch shipments. It is the first time ever that smartwatches have outshipped Swiss watches on a global basis.

Cliff Raskind, director at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1m units in Q4 2015, rising a healthy 316% from 1.9m in Q4 2014. Smartwatches are growing rapidly in North America, Western Europe and Asia. Apple Watch captured an impressive 63% share of the global smartwatch market in Q4 2015, followed by Samsung with 16%. Apple and Samsung together account for a commanding 8 in 10 of all smartwatches shipped worldwide.”

Steven Waltzer, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, added, “We estimate global Swiss watch shipments reached 7.9m units in Q4 2015, falling 5% from 8.3m in Q4 2014. Global demand for Swiss watches is slowing down, and major players like Swatch are struggling to find growth.”

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The lost 0.4m units doesn’t seem like a big problem at first. But then, nothing bad seems like a big problem at first – as above.
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Peeling paint, website bugs: Ringing Bell’s ₹251 phone in a storm of controversies day after launch » Huffington Post

Ivan Mehta:

»It started on an off note after Manohar Parrikar, India’s defence minister, did not show up at the event hosted to launch the phone. The details given out about the phone’s specs were nothing if not vague. A Hindustan Times report suggested that when asked the policy behind the pricing of the phone, Ashok Chadha, an official from the company, said the real cost of the device was ₹2500, which will be recovered through a raft of measures like economies of scale, innovative marketing, reduction in duties and creating an e-commerce marketplace.

Pranav Dixit, Tech editor for the Hindustan Times also said in a Reddit AMA that he has received a letter from the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), written to telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, that estimates that the phone should cost at least USD 60 (Approx. ₹4100).

The phones handed over to the press all have an Adcom logo hidden behind a coat of white paint that easily peeled off. A report from Gadgets 360 suggested that phones handed out as review units were not the final products which will be shipped. That raises the question that who is building the final product? The report also says that Ringing Bells has not been registered at BIS, making their devices unsafe to use.

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Gets worse. So, $4? Probably more like $40 in reality.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: