Tag Archives: gamergate

Start up: Huawei’s ambition, HTC R+D layoffs, 3D copyright, Google’s odd war on app ads, and more

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But not with “Google Here”, thank you. Photo by x-ray delta one on Flickr.

A selection of 11 links for you. Still nothing about logos. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

FTC settles with Machinima for paying YouTube influencers to endorse Xbox One » GamesBeat | Games | by Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi:

According to the FTC’s complaint, Machinima and its influencers were part of an Xbox One marketing campaign managed by Microsoft’s advertising agency, Starcom MediaVest Group. Machinima guaranteed Starcom that the influencer videos receive at least 19 million times.

In a statement, Machinima said, “Machinima is actively and deeply committed to ensuring transparency with all of its social influencer campaigns.  Through collaboration with the FTC, we are pleased to have firmly resolved this matter, related to an incident that occurred in 2013, prior to Machinima’s change of management in March 2014. We hope and expect that the agreement we have reached today will set standards and best practices for the entire industry to follow to ensure the best consumer experience possible.”

In the first phase of the marketing campaign, a small group of influencers received access to prerelease versions of the Xbox One console and video games in order to produce and upload two endorsement videos each. According to the FTC, Machinima paid two of these endorsers $15,000 and $30,000 for producing You Tube videos that garnered 250,000 views and 730,000 views, respectively.

After that, Machinima promised to pay a larger group of influencers $1 for every 1,000 video views, up to a total of $25,000. Machinima did not require any of the influencers to disclose they were being paid for their endorsement.

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Huawei chips away at Samsung » WSJ

Juro Osawa:

For the past three years, Samsung Electronics Co. has been the world’s top seller of smartphones, but its global lead is now under attack from fast-growing Chinese rival Huawei Technologies Co.

Long known as a telecommunications-equipment supplier to global carriers, Huawei has already toppled Samsung in China, the world’s biggest market, where 425 million smartphones are expected to be shipped this year. Globally, the Shenzhen-based company became the third-largest smartphone maker in the second quarter, according to data from IDC. This is due, in part, to its ability to gain market share in the Middle East and Africa, where smartphone growth exceeds that of any other region.

With handset revenue up 87% in the first half of this year, Huawei expects profit from its smartphone business to more than double this year. If its pace of growth continues, Huawei hopes to challenge top competitors Samsung and Apple in the smartphone market.

Huawei doesn’t (yet?) break out its handset profits. It’s aiming to ship 109m smartphones this year – a weirdly precise figure – having shifted 47m in the first half, so 62m to go. Apple sold 192m phones in 2014, and 109m in the first half of this year, so the challenge might take a little while yet.

Cleverly, it introduced a phone with a “Force Touch”-style capability at IFA on Wednesday; it showed it estimating the weight of an orange resting on the screen. Not an apple?

The biggest challenge will be teaching non-Chinese how to say the name (Hoo-waa-way).
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Chinese mobe market suffers pre-pwned Android pandemic » The Register

G DATA found that more than two dozen phones from different manufacturers were already compromised straight out of the box.

Kit from manufacturers including Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi have pre-installed espionage functions in the firmware. G DATA suspects that middlemen modified the device software to steal user data and inject their own advertising to earn money.

Other possibilities include unintentional infection through compromised devices in the supply chain (a problem which affected Vodafone Spain back in 2010) or intentional interference by government spies. Many of the models implicated in the malfeasance sell well in China.

The pre-pwned device issue has become a perennial problem for privacy-conscious smartphone users. Sticking to the Play Store, avoiding dodgy websites and following common-sense security precautions are no help in such cases.

If the phones got to G DATA then it seems unlikely to have been the Chinese government, non? More like middlemen seeking cash for ads.
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HTC to lay off 600 employees working in Taiwan » Digitimes

Trevor Huang and Steve Shen:

About 400 out of the more than 9,000 employees currently at HTC’s headquarters in Taoyuan will be laid off, confirmed the Taoyuan City Government, which has received the layoff plan from HTC. The 400 employees include production line works, R&D and backup personnel.

The New Taipei City Government also confirmed that it had received a notification from HTC about discharging 200 workers at its Xindian plant by the end of October. Those who will lose their jobs at the Xindian plant, which has a total of 2,912 employees, are mostly R&D personnel.

Cutting R+D staff seems like an obvious thing to do when finances are tight, but tends to leave you with nothing to go forward with when – if – you emerge from the squeeze.
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Apple receiving G/G touch samples for 2016 iPhone » Digitimes

Siu Han and Alex Wolfgram:

Makers have already begun sending samples of fully laminated G/G technology to Apple and Corning along with Asahi Glass have also reportedly sent glass samples.

Market observers have recently noted that Apple is in discussions over whether to go back to G/G instead of in-cell technology for future iPhone devices as in-cell technology is currently struggling with various production bottlenecks that are preventing Apple from adding new features as well as increasing resolutions. As a result, touch panel makers are aiming to create G/G touch panels that would allow Apple to create smartphones similar in thickness to current iPhones equipped with in-cell touch panels.

G/G touch panels may also help Apple develop bezel-free smartphones as in-cell touch panels reportedly are struggling with touch sensitivity on the edges. Additionally, in-cell touch panels also make it difficult for vendors to pursue higher resolutions including Ultra HD (4K) due to current bottlenecks, the observers said.

Tells you something about what Apple might have planned for 2016. Incremental steps every time.
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What happened to the Readymake: Duchamp chess pieces? » Scott Kildall

Kildall and Bryan Cera had scanned these very rare pieces and uploaded the scanned files to Thingiverse, a site for sharing Makerbot 3D printing files:


The answer is that we ran into an unexpected copyright concern. The Marcel Duchamp Estate objected to the posting of our reconstructed 3D files on Thingiverse, claiming that our project was an infringement of French intellectual property law. Although the copyright claim never went to legal adjudication, we decided that it was in our best interests to remove the 3D-printable files from Thingiverse – both to avoid a legal conflict, and to respect the position of the estate.

Disputes like this might become commonplace if 3D printing really breaks through.
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Beautiful New Designs for Full-Screen In-App Ads » Inside Google AdWords blog

Pasha Nahass, product manager:

Nearly 60% of smartphone users expect their favorite apps to look visually appealing. We’ve always believed that in-app ads can enhance an app’s overall experience by being well designed. So today we’re announcing a completely new look for our interstitial in-app ad formats – also known as full-screen ads – that run on apps in the AdMob network and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Ah. So let’s walk through this.
• Full-screen interstitials for apps from mobile search results = bad, attracting search ranking penalties
• Full-screen AdWord ads inside existing apps = good. Especially if, as this post suggests, you use the full-screen interstitials for a mobile app install campaign.

On Twitter, this was described to me as “just don’t block the front door [from search] with an interstitial.” Which makes sense; if you’re already inside the app, you’re less likely to bounce away from a full-page ad.
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Silk Road case: US agent investigating dark web drug site admits to $800,000 Bitcoin theft » City A.M.

Clara Guiborg:

Former secret service agent Shaun Bridges has pleaded guilty to Bitcoin theft, admitting to sending over $800,000 worth of the digital currency to his personal account while he was investigating the dark web drug trafficking site.

Silk Road was shut down in the autumn of 2013, having netted Bitcoin sales of over $200m of drugs and other illegal items during its two years of operations. The site’s founder, Ross Ulbricht, who went by the alias “Dread Pirate Roberts”, was sentenced to life imprisonment during a highly-publicised case.

But the investigation itself led to further illicit uses of Bitcoin.

Bridges is the second US federal agent to have fallen foul of Bitcoin theft temptation during the investigation, after former agent Carl Force pleaded guilty to this just two months ago.

Did they think that bitcoins were untraceable? Strange.
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Almost no one sided with #GamerGate: a research paper on the internet’s reaction to last year’s mob » Superheroes in Racecars

Livio de la Cruz is a program manager at Microsoft, and has done an exhaustive study on coverage and reactions of Gamergate:

The Week compared GamerGate to a soccer team that has only ever managed to score on its own goal and responds with self-congratulatory remarks on a job well done. Their efforts to silence feminist and political critique of games actually ended up inspiring more of it. Their efforts to convince journalists to stop critiquing gamers for their sexist, bigoted behavior has only amplified people’s awareness of society’s misogyny problem. Their efforts to discredit Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu have led to them becoming some of the most respected voices in games, as more people are inspired by their work against abuse and their advancement of the medium itself. Their efforts to scare women out of the games industry actually led to more money, time, and talent being dedicated towards fixing tech’s diversity problem.

Before GamerGate, people might have had a rough idea of how diversity in teams was good for companies and how online harassment was maybe a problem that needed to be fixed. But now I suspect that people’s thought processes tend to go like this: Why do we need diversity in tech? Because of GamerGate. Why do need to fix online harassment? Because of GamerGate. Why is feminism so important? Because: GamerGate.

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Windows 10 first month worldwide usage well ahead of that recorded by Windows 8 » StatCounter Global Stats

In its first calendar month since launch, Windows 10 worldwide usage share far exceeds that of Windows 8 in the same time period, according to independent web analytics company StatCounter. Its analytics arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Windows 10 level of usage after one month also exceeds that recorded by Windows 7.

StatCounter conducted a special analysis of the take up of Edge by Windows 10 users. It found that Edge usage on Windows 10 peaked at 20.1% on 30th July, the day after the global launch, but fell back to 14.1% on the 31st August.

Easy to explain that dropoff: people went back to work on the August Monday (it wasn’t a holiday in the US), stopped using their Windows 10-updated machines at home, and used the old-OS machines at work. The peak in July is probably explained in the same way – people were on holiday.

Remarkable what happens when you force-upgrade peoples’ machines for free.
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Google shut down a secret Google Maps project called ‘Google Here’ » Fortune

Nice scoop by Erin Griffith:

The product was called Google Here, according to a document obtained by Fortune that describes the project’s specifications. The effort spanned multiple departments and was led by Dan Cath, a strategic partner manager, and the Google Maps team. The launch included partnerships with retailers, including Starbucks SBUX -2.03% . Had it launched, Google Here would have been available to more than 350 million Android users by early 2015, with plans to support iOS later in the year.

But people familiar with the project say it was shut down for two reasons: Google Here was potentially too invasive, and the company wasn’t sure if many retailers would want it. (Not helping matters, Nokia has used the name “Here” for its own mapping service.) A Google spokesman declined to comment.

Google Here worked by sending a notification to a smartphone user’s lock screen within five seconds of their entering a partner’s location. If the user clicked on the notification, a full screen HTLM5 “app” experience would launch. Google Here would know when to send the notification via Google Maps and beacons placed in the stores of participating partners. Google planned to supply the beacons to partners for the launch, according to the document. The experience could also be found by going to the Google Maps app.

Too invasive? Probably more likely retailers weren’t prepared to put the money in for an unclear return, since it would be permission-based (and hence isn’t really that invasive).
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Start up: tablets sink further, Indiegogo’s vaporware campaigns, pricing Apple Watch, and more

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Available in Lego before it reached Windows Phone. Photo by Ochre Jelly on Flickr. (See their photostream for how they achieved this “impossible” shot.)

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

Game of fear: the story behind GamerGate » Boston Magazine

Zachary Jason with a fabulously detailed yet clear recitation of what most of us know:

[Eron] Gjoni, a software engineer, had set out to construct a machine to destroy his ex. Every written word Quinn had ever entrusted with him—all of her flirtations, anxieties, professional grudges, and confessions about her family and sex life—would serve as his iron and ore. He scoured their entire text and email history, archiving and organizing Quinn’s private information on his laptop and cell phone. Then he typed it all in black and white — minus, of course, the tones in their voices, their laughter and tears, and any context whatsoever.

Of course, Gjoni could have just deleted the document, along with Quinn’s phone number and email address, and tried to woo one of the millions of other women on OkCupid or joined any of the roughly 5,000 other dating sites. He could have posted his thoughts on a blog and omitted her name. After several days, though, Gjoni decided to go through with it—after all, he was protected by the First Amendment, right?

Gjoni comes across as being somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Also, a real jerk.

For the second straight quarter the worldwide tablet market contracts amid competition from alternative devices » IDC

Apple still leads the overall market despite five consecutive quarters of negative annual shipment growth. Apple shipped 12.6m iPads in the first quarter, capturing 26.8% of the market in volume and declining -22.9% when compared to 1Q14. Samsung (19.1% share) maintained its second place in the market despite a -16.5% decline in shipments compared to the same period last year. Lenovo (5.3% share), Asus (3.8 %) and LG (3.1%) rounded out the top 5 positions. LG’s year-over-year growth was notable as it continues to benefit from US carriers’ strategy to bundle connected tablets with existing customers.

“Although the tablet market is in decline, 2-in-1s are certainly a bright spot,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. “While 2-in-1, or detachables, still account for a small portion of the overall market, growth in this space has been stunning as vendors like Asus, Acer, and E-FUN have been able to offer products at a fantastic value; and vendors like Microsoft have been able to drive growth at the high end with devices like the Surface Pro 3.”

The smallest figure that IDC splits out is 1.4m, for LG, which implies that the Surface shipped fewer. Tablets took off fast; now they’re awaiting the replacement cycle.

Windows will win your heart by not caring » Remotely Mobile

Benjamin Robbins on Microsoft’s BUILD announcements:

In short, Microsoft has clearly shown it doesn’t care; but in a good way. They don’t care which apps you want to use, they’ll support them. They don’t care which operating system you want to develop on, they’ll support it. They don’t care if you are on a phone or a PC, they just seamlessly switch between the two experiences.This is huge for all of us end users. Why? Because in the end we don’t really care either. We just want to be able to use the apps and services we think are best to get the task done and move on. I don’t want to fight the OS, app, or device. I just want to do my work and be done with it. This is where mobility is ultimately pushing us and it’s great to finally have someone not care either.

New Apple Watch has lowest ratio of hardware costs to retail price, IHS teardown reveals » Business Wire

The much-anticipated new Apple Watch has the lowest hardware costs compared to retail price of any Apple product IHS Technology has researched, according to a preliminary estimate by IHS and its Teardown Mobile Handsets Intelligence Service. The teardown of the Apple Watch Sport by IHS Technology estimates that the actual hardware costs are only about 24 percent of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP). Estimated hardware cost to MSRP ratios for other Apple products reviewed by IHS are in the range of 29 to 38%.

The teardown of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm by IHS Technology shows a bill of materials of $81.20 with the cost of production rising to $83.70 when the $2.50 manufacturing expense is added. The retail price of the Apple Watch Sport 38 mm is $349.00. The IHS Technology analysis does not include logistics, amortized capital expenses, overhead, SG&A, R&D, software, IP licensing and other variables throughout the supply chain such as the EMS provider.

That’s some low manufacturing expense for what the Watch looks like. And of course even if it’s right, that’s just the gross margin. Look at what it doesn’t include too.

Play Monument Valley on your Windows Phone today » Windows blog

Monument Valley: a fantasy world of impossible architecture and a beautiful, silent princess awaits you! Today we’re excited to share that Monument Valley is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.

Originally released on iOS just over a year ago. I wonder how many Windows Phone users have not heard of or played this on a friend’s phone. Or an iPad?

China is rewriting the rules of the mobile game, and Apple is still winning » The Verge

Vlad Savov:

The recognition of China’s importance is evident everywhere in the mobile industry. HTC is, for the first time, introducing two flagship smartphones this year, with the One M9+ being tailored to the needs and preferences of the Chinese market. In February, around the turn of the Chinese New Year, Lenovo brought Motorola back to China, setting it up as a sort of exotic alternative to local offerings, one where user customization is paramount.

But no one has benefited from China’s growing appetite for smartphones more than Apple. Even as the developed world was becoming saturated with iPhones, Apple kept expanding its sales with the help of China. The iPhone first became available in China in 2009, relatively early in its now gloried history, and has kept growing in line with the country’s expansion in disposable income and smartphone demand. This past quarter, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States, belying prognostications that the Chinese market wouldn’t be receptive to such a premium, high-margin device.

As I criticised The Verge yesterday for not seeking out points of view, I should point to this as exactly the opposite: Savov gets comments from analysts who know and understand the market to produce an insightful piece. (Though Nokia used to be HUGE in China, Vlad. Until Q1 of 2012, when its mobile revenue there halved, and halved again within a year.)

comScore ranks top UK digital media properties for March 2015 » comScore, Inc

More than 47.5 million UK unique visitors accessed the Internet in March 2015 across desktop and mobile (smartphone and tablet) platforms. 45.1 million visitors accessed the Internet via desktop while 36.4 million users browsed the web via mobile. 

According to comScore MMX Multi-Platform, which provides an unduplicated view of usage across desktop, smartphone and tablet, Google Sites ranked as the top property with nearly 46 million combined desktop and mobile Internet users. The majority of Google Sites’ audience visited from both desktop and mobile platforms (66%), while 28% visited exclusively from desktop and 5% were mobile-only users. BBC Sites was the second most popular online property with a multi-platform audience of 40.6 million, 36% of which were mobile-only.

There is so much to extract from the short table in the release. For instance: Google gets 96.7% of the total audience; Amazon gets 77% of it, and more people access Amazon mobile-only than desktop-only; Mail Online, Sky sites, Apple, Trinity Mirror, Twitter and LinkedIn get more visits via mobile-only (which is 5% of the total audience) than desktop; all the media groups get more visitors via mobile-only than desktop-only.

If you re-sort it by mobile-only, Sky actually comes top – and Google comes last.

One to really mull over. Can hardly accuse the news organisations of being behind the times.

[Update: Indiegogo Investigating] Indiegogo continues to have no standards, allows $50,000 flex-fund campaign for vaporware modular smartphone » Android Authority

David Ruddock:

While it has served as a legitimate platform for fans to support products and content they genuinely believe in and want to see become a reality, it is also ripe for scamming and incompetence. Case in point: Fonkraft, a $50,000 Indiegogo campaign that allegedly will culminate in the production of a Project Ara-style modular smartphone.

To date, the flex-funded (as in, even if it doesn’t reach the goal, the project still gets what money was raised) campaign has amassed over $25,000 from people who probably know no better, with over 130 phones funded by supporters. The team behind the campaign? Literally two people, neither of whom state where it is they previously worked (no LinkedIn profiles, either – or any easily locatable social media profiles – surprise!), what specific experience they have in the phone industry, or how they plan to build a phone with two people and $50,000…. or less, since it’s a flex-fund campaign. For the record, Ubuntu wouldn’t even build a regular phone for less than $32 million.

Also, these guys provide literally no insight on how their product would actually work in a technical sense. You just have to believe!

Incredible that IndieGoGo lets people keep money raised even if it doesn’t reach the goal. It’s an open invitation to those with absurd optimism or bad intent.

Apple iPhone captures 12% smartphone market share in China in Q1 2015 » Strategy Analytics

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics’ Handset Country Share Tracker(HCST) service, China smartphone shipments grew 17% annually to reach 110m units in the first quarter of 2015. Xiaomi maintained first position, but Apple is rapidly closing the gap with 12% marketshare in second place.

China smartphone shipments grew 17% annually from 93.6m units in Q1 2014 to a 109.8m in Q1 2015. China smartphone growth on an annualized basis has slowed from 39% to 17% during the past year, due to increasing penetration maturity. This is the first quarter that China’s smartphone annual growth rate has been lower than the global average since 2010.

Xiaomi, Apple, Huawei are the top three. Notice the company that’s missing from that list. Seems Samsung sold below 11.2m smartphones in China in Q1. Is the S6 going to bring it back?

Start up: damn smart TVs, peak Google?, acting on gators, no Apple car, blue bubble discrimination and more

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Samsung’s Smart TV ads opt-in. No, wait, opt-out. Photo by user on Ars Technica.

A selection of 9 links for you. Can be used as floor wax. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Google’s time at the top may be nearing its end » NYTimes.com

Farhad Manjoo, riffing on an idea set out by (and credited here to) Ben Thompson:

The problem for Google, though, is that its efforts aren’t impossible to replicate. In less than five years, Facebook has also built an enviable ad-technology infrastructure, a huge sales team that aims to persuade marketers of the benefits of Facebook ads over TV ads, and new ways for brands to measure how well their ads are doing. These efforts have paid off quickly: In 2014 Facebook sold $11.5bn in ads, most of them on mobile devices. That was up 65% over 2013.

Any number of up-and-coming social services, including Pinterest and Snapchat, could also do well. So even if YouTube does very well, it will be only one of several services where marketers want to spend their money.

“The movement of brand advertising into digital will probably not be winner-take-all, like it was in search,” said Ari Paparo, a former advertising product director at Google who is now the chief executive of an ad technology company called Beeswax. “And if it were to be winner-takes-all, it’s much more likely to be Facebook that takes all than it would be Google.”

Google would still make a lot of money if it doesn’t dominate online ads the way it does now. But it would need to find other businesses to keep growing.

Notable, by the way, how many ideas in big papers start out with Thompson. You should subscribe to his Stratechery blog.

Smart TVs are a great idea. Too bad TV makers are ruining them » WIRED

David Pierce (in his new post-Verge writing gig):

We should be rooting for smart TVs that don’t suck. We could ditch our Rokus and Fire TVs and do everything on our TVs themselves. It would mean fewer boxes, cables, and remotes to worry about. It’s just that smart TVs right now exist only on the spectrum between irritating and dangerous. It’s time for someone to do better.

Someday, if and when manufacturers figure it out, smart TVs will have lots of uses. One will be as a hub for our entire home—imagine a universal remote that doesn’t just control your programming, but light switches, the microwave, and the margarita machine. The other will be as a launching pad into a massively segmented world of content: your TV could make it easy to search for what you want to watch, no matter where it is, and could help you find something great even when you don’t know what you’re looking for.

I used a TiVo back in 2000, and it was terrific. But that level of intelligence vanished from UK TV (though Virgin reintroduced a sort of TiVo). It’s sorely needed.

I’m Brianna Wu, and I’m risking my life standing up to Gamergate » Bustle

I have a folder on my hard drive with letters from dozens and dozens of women who’ve abandoned their dream of becoming game developers due to Gamergate, some as young as 12. 

You’d hope that the gaming press would provide some sort of check on the unrelenting sexism in the game business, but the truth is, they’re complicit in creating our Gamebro culture. One of our largest gaming sites, IGN, has written one single, weak article addressing Gamergate where they don’t even mention it by name. I wish I could say I was surprised, but this is the site that advertises itself as “broverload.”

All this horror begs the question — what can be done? 

Fortunately, this isn’t something that requires us to boil the ocean to solve. Here are four easily achievable things that can be done immediately.

Her four points of action for Reddit, the FBI, Twitter and US law administration all seem sensible. One wonders which will get acted on first. One hopes they all will.

Is Apple making a car? In your dreams! » Tech.pinions

Tim Bajarin on the latest rumour mill output:

For the car, I believe Apple is interested in creating a whole in-car digital experience that spans navigation, voice search, communications, media, and safety and wants to learn from what Tesla has done so far. That is why they poached so many Tesla employees. Ultimately they want to revolutionize the in-car navigation, audio/video, communication and safety features experience and work to get them integrated into future automobiles.

For Apple TV, it makes no sense for them to create their own given the TV market competition and the rapid change in TV hardware itself. However, Jobs had a major vision on how to revolutionize the TV navigation and user interface and deliver live and streaming content with integrated apps and services. That is most likely going to be delivered through a brand new Apple TV box I believe will be released later this year.

You can never rule out Apple doing something brand new in hardware and even in a new category of devices but doing an Apple branded car or TV is just not in the cards.

New tech brings era of sub-nanometre semiconductors closer » Business Korea

Cho Jin-young:

A Korean research team has successfully developed a technology to manufacture semiconductors smaller than 1 nanometre within a large area. 

A research team headed by Ahn Jong-ryeol and Dr. Song In-kyung, professors in the Department of Physics at Sungkyunkwan University, announced on Feb. 9 that they have succeeded in arranging metal wires smaller than 1 nm with different characteristics on a silicon substrate. 

As a result, it may be possible to make silicon semiconductors at not only the nanometer but also angstrom (one ten-billionth of one meter) level. In the past, it was unclear whether or not the phenomena possible at the nanometer size could also be feasible at an atomic size.

Once you get down to that size, quantum physical effects are going to make behaviour wild, surely. This just seems to be (laborious) fabrication, rather than any actual testing of behaviour. But one to note, even so.

Hear that sound? It’s the Windows XP PC bubble popping » The Register

Paul Kunert:

The XP bubble has well and truly burst, leaving the UK [PC wholesale] channel awash with unwanted commercial PCs and vendors facing a costly write-down to clear a mountain of misery.

Microsoft ending support for the creaking operating system last April revived the industry in 2014, but it seems vendors forgot the sales cycle and that their products have a shelf life.

Distributors told El Chan that up to £50m of excess stock is lodged in warehouses, with all of the major players, including Lenovo, HP, Dell, Toshiba and Fujitsu blamed.

“The market was driven really hard last year,” said one, “but since November there was an awareness the channel was over-stocked. There’s been a correction in sales-out and now we are having tough conversations with vendors about resetting quotas.”

Another agreed it took three months for PC makers to realise that boxes were being pushed out of the door more slowly, and “they were buying in for the XP bubble”.

Could be some fun when Q1 PC figures are announced in April, followed by profit data in the succeeding weeks.

As Apple’s payments strategy takes shape, Google and Square respond » The Information

Amir Efrati and Jessica Lessin, with a generous definition of “respond”, which in Google’s case includes a being-tested service called “Plaso”:

A manager at a store that accepts Plaso payments said Google had “hooked up” Plaso directly to the store’s payment system and “all the data feeds back to Google.” In a different store that accepts Plaso, a manager said it runs as an app on Android phones that Google provided to the store. The manager said the app can “see” other Plaso users via the phones’ Bluetooth technology when they enter the store, allowing employees to identify those people just by their initials.

Plaso is currently being used only by Google employees, and its technical underpinnings are unclear…

…How Plaso would integrate with Google Wallet, which has yet to gain much traction as an in-store payment product, couldn’t be learned. While Google found a technical solution to bypass the wireless carriers that once blocked Google Wallet, the new method is costlier to Google, which is believed to lose money on in-store transactions done through Google Wallet.

Wow. Google loses money on in-store Wallet transactions – whereas Apple makes a per-transaction profit? This highlights the importance of “bizdev” – business development, aka getting everyone involved in a new technology in line before you unveil it, rather than hoping some mysterious consumer “pull” will lead to widespread adoption (as pretty much happened with Wallet).

It’s kind of cheesy being green » Medium

Paul Ford on the effect that Apple using white-on-blue for iMessages, v white-on-lurid green for text messages (ie anything to a non-iPhone, generally) has on users – and he has the tweets culled from Twitter to prove it:

This spontaneous anti-green-bubble brigade is an interesting example of how sometimes very subtle product decisions in technology influence the way culture works. Apple uses a soothing, on-brand blue for messages in its own texting platform, and a green akin to that of the Android robot logo for people tweeting from outside its ecosystem (as people have pointed out on Twitter, iPhone texts were default green in days before iMessage—but it was shaded and more pleasant to the eye; somewhere along the line things got flat and mean).

There are all sorts of reasons for them to use different colors. (iMessage texts are seen as data, not charged on a per-text basis, and so the different colors allow people to register how much a given conversation will cost—useful!). However, one result of that decision is that a goofy class war is playing out over digital bubble colors. Their decision has observable social consequences.

January 2014: Samsung appears to be stuffing pop-up ads for Yahoo in its Smart TVs » Business Insider

Steve Kovach, in January 2014 (that’s over a year ago):

Samsung’s Web-connected Smart TVs appear to be more than just a way to stream stuff from Netflix and Pandora. It looks like the company is also experimenting with ways to show you ads on your set, just like you’d see when browsing the Internet.

David Chartier, a tech writer and commentator, posted a photo of a pop-up ad for a “Yahoo Broadcast Interactivity” app that randomly appeared on his Samsung Smart TV last week. But the pop-up ad itself wasn’t the strangest part. It turns out the ad showed up while Chartier was watching his Apple TV, which was on a separate input. Whether it was a glitch or not, this clearly isn’t an optimal experience.

So that’s over a year ago; now this, in Australia – where you have to opt out:

Although GigaOm suggests the ad placement in third-party apps may have been a mistake on Samsung’s part, the business model is certainly intentional. As one redditor explained, the ads can be disabled: “To disable: press Menu on your Samsung Remote and scroll to Smart Hub > Terms & Policy > Yahoo Privacy Policy. Scroll to ‘I disagree with the Yahoo Privacy Notice’ and you can toggle the option on to opt-out.”

Bad week for Samsung: first always-listening TVs, now this.

Start up: Samsung ChatON going off, USB apps for iPad, the ‘uncanny valley’ for algorithms, Sony hack history, and more

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Bitcoin mining: significantly lower health and safety risk than other forms.

A selection of 10 links for you. Wipe off excess. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Apple, is USB allowed now? >> Medium

Matt Ronge, pointing to Duet Display, which lets you use an iPad (via Lightning) as an extra screen for a Mac running 10.9 or better:

For the past year, we’ve been working on an app (launching early 2015) that turns your iPad into a graphic tablet for your Mac (like a Wacom tablet). Our app at its core also streams video content from the Mac to the iPad, so we were very interested in USB connectivity early on in our project.

We knew that using USB instead of Wifi was a decision we had to make early on, as it would completely change our direction of development. USB offers a reliable, low latency connection which is 100x better than any wireless technology (especially with Yosemite experiencing serious Wifi reliability issues).

We were also very hesitant to build a business around a decision Apple may change on a whim. So we submitted an app to test the waters, would Apple allow an app that requires USB? An Apple representative called us and informed us USB connectivity was not allowed.

Duet Display looks like it could be fun, though one usually wants a bigger display – but if you had an 11in Macbook Air, a full-size iPad would almost double your screen size, and improve the resolution a lot.

Our tactics for Gamergate are outdated >> Space Channel 6

Brianna Wu:

For me, personally, I intend to keep lessening the amount I’m posting and writing about Gamergate. Everyone knows they are very sexist, very unhealthy individuals. Thanks to my Patreon, GSX’s full time staffer will document this behavior for law enforcement leaving me free to speak out for change in the industry and make inclusive games.

My suggestion to people rightly outraged about this movement, is to ask yourself what you currently want to accomplish. It’s my suggestion that it would be most helpful to shift the conversation back to representation in the industry. I think the gains in raising awareness of Gamergate have diminished, while the threat of giving the lunatic fringe the attention they desire has stayed the same.

To be blunt, I’m not sure endlessly talking about Gamergate does anything anymore.

I’m not sure it did past the second month. Idiots enjoy being idiots, and won’t be dissuaded from that track.

Topsy suggests a gradual dimunition in the number of tweets on this topic from 50,000 to 20,000 over the past month (and bear in mind that the obsessives tweet many, many times per day).

BuildZoom office burglary – $5000 reward – update!! >> BuildZoom

David Petersen of BuildZoom, from which equipment was stolen:

After our story was covered on ABC 7 News, we were contacted by a nearby startup that was burglarized on July 6th and July 13th. Comparing footage, it’s clear that the same person broke into both offices.

Update 2: It appears that this woman is breaking into SF startups with a Doorking / DKS code entry system. She has obtained a master key and is able to enter any office with this system.

Update 3: We believe we have identified the burglar. It’s a local San Francisco woman who has been convicted of similar crimes in the past. An acquaintance of hers emailed with photographs and additional information. It certainly looks like her.

Someone with a master key for office doors in SF? That’s a problem.

Facebook’s popularity among teens dips again >> Bloomberg

A report yesterday by Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. found that the portion of 13- to 17-year-old social-media users in the U.S. on Facebook slipped to 88% this year from 94% in 2013 and 95% in 2012. In the same period, Twitter and messaging applications rose in popularity in that age group, the study showed.

The Menlo Park, California-based company first warned a year ago that teens weren’t using its website as often as before. Facebook stopped discussing teen usage on its earnings calls after last year’s disclosure alarmed investors. While the issue was all but forgotten as the company’s advertising revenue reached new highs, it’s a bigger concern now, according to Tero Kuittinen, a managing director at Magid in New York.

“You look at Facebook and you say, ‘Wow, something really changed in 2014,’” Kuittinen said. “If kids are starting to use so much of their daily time on messaging apps, surely it’s going to hurt somebody.”

Among 13- to 17 year-olds, Twitter usage climbed 2 percentage points to 48%, according to the report. While more people use Facebook and its messaging app than any competitor, its user base tends to be older, with 55% of Facebook Messenger users being 37 or younger. By the same measure, 86% of Snapchat Inc.’s users and 83% of Kik Interactive Inc.’s users are under 37.

Seems reasonable to think that messaging apps are pulling teens away from Facebook.

2015: the year we get creeped out by algorithms >> Nieman Journalism Lab

Zeynep Tufekci:

It turns out computers have a built-in “uncanny valley” (that creepy feeling android robots generate when they kind of look human). Just like we don’t want robots too human-shaped — we want them to know their place — it turns out we aren’t too happy when our computers go from “smart” (as in automating things and connecting us to each other or information) to “smart” (as in “let me make that decision for you”).

Algorithmic judgment is the uncanny valley of computing.

Algorithms (basically computer programs, but here I’m talking about the complex subset that is being used to calculate results of some consequence, which then shape our experience) have become more visible in 2014, and it turns out we’re creeped out.

Tufekci is super-smart, and always ahead of the curve.

htmlwidgets: JavaScript data visualization for R >> RStudio Blog

Today we’re excited to announce htmlwidgets, a new framework that brings the best of JavaScript data visualization libraries to R. There are already several packages that take advantage of the framework (leaflet, dygraphs, networkD3, DataTables, and rthreejs) with hopefully many more to come.

An htmlwidget works just like an R plot except it produces an interactive web visualization. A line or two of R code is all it takes to produce a D3 graphic or Leaflet map. Widgets can be used at the R console as well as embedded in R Markdown reports and Shiny web applications.

This looks terrific (if you’re into R.)

Bitcoin’s collapse is worse than the ruble’s >> Quartz

Matt Phillips & Melvin Backman:

Why the collapse in bitcoin?  One of the clearest answers seems to be that it’s gotten harder to use bitcoin for some of its less savory uses, such as dodging taxes and buying drugs. Governments increasingly are trying to clamp down on the “dark web” sites where bitcoin quickly was the cryptocurrency of choice. Collapses of large, unregulated bitcoin exchanges — such as Mt. Gox — have done little to instill confidence in the currency either.

Mt Gox was a key reason for the start of the collapse. Yet the nearer Bitcoin gets to its 2011/12 levels, and the more people are using it (thus ironing out the speculative element), the more it looks like a really useful product. The implications of the blockchain are fascinating.

Absolute Sownage >> Attrition.org

Over the last two months, the multi-national Sony Corporation has come under a wide range of attacks from an even wider range of attackers. The backstory about what event prompted who to attack and why will make a mediocre made-for-TV movie someday. This article is not going to cover the brief history of hacks; readers can find details elsewhere. Instead, the following only serves to create an accurate and comprehensive timeline regarding the recent breaches, a cliff notes summary for easy reference.

Starts in April 2011, by the end of which we were up to 21. Current count: 24.

Why the sharing economy could be the internet’s most divisive revolution yet >> The Guardian

By me, on the “sharing economy” companies such as Uber and AirBnB:

what would happen if an Airbnb guest was harmed by fire, or a carbon monoxide leak – a constant concern for hotels. Airbnb’s site says owners “should” make sure they have a functioning CO detector and are following gas safety regulations. But although the money for any stay is paid via Airbnb, Robinson says he doesn’t know who would be responsible if someone were injured that way.

“I’m not a lawyer,” says [Patrick] Robinson [AirBnbB’s public policy director in Europe]. It seems surprising that the eventuality hasn’t come up in business meetings, but Robinson declines to discuss it.

It’s a scenario that has exercised insurance companies, which are wrestling with the question of who is liable in a collision involving a car being driven on an Uber journey, or one of the other car rental services, or a complaint involving Airbnb clients. Premiums might rise, or need extra tweaking.

I still find it surprising if AirBnB hasn’t discussed – and even worked out a plan – for the eventuality of poisoning or death at one of its lets, given that it receives the payments for them.

Samsung says ‘cya’ to ChatON smartphone messaging app >> WSJ

Samsung is closing ChatON, for which it claims a “user base” of over 200m users. To which everyone else says: O RLY? And they used it so much you’re closing it?

“Samsung’s failure in messaging apps is endemic of a broader struggle for the company in software and services,” said Rajeev Chand, managing director at Rutberg & Co., a San Francisco-based investment bank that focuses on the mobile industry.

Mr. Chand said he was puzzled by Samsung’s inability to parlay its massive handset sales into at least some traction in software and services, calling it “the defining issue for the company’s long-term success.”

“If they don’t succeed in apps and software, Samsung has a very large risk of being relegated to an increasingly shrinking-margin company,” he said, referring to the recent gains that low-cost Chinese and Indian competitors have made in handset sales in recent months.

Add in this from April:

Strategy Analytics, a Newton, Mass.-based research firm, said in a report Tuesday that U.S. users of Samsung’s devices spend little time on its own messaging, music and voice-activated applications including apps like ChatON, the South Korean company’s answer to services like WhatsApp, Line and Viber.

The report said that U.S. users of Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and S4 smartphones logged an average of six seconds per month using ChatON, compared to more than 11 hours per month on Facebook and about two hours per month on Instagram.

Six. Seconds. This is Samsung’s problem, writ large (or small). By contrast, Apple failed with Ping – but that was a social media app built on top of iTunes, itself a successful Apple-owned platform; iTunes remained. Samsung is left with nothing.

And it was always reluctant to give any hard numbers about ChatON. The irony is that ChatON is going to remain open for slightly longer in the US – apparently that’s one of the busier places.

Even more fun: at the end of November, Samsung categorically denied that it was going to close ChatON. Denials, eh?

Corrected: the author of the Gamergate post is Brianna Wu, not Anita Sarkeesian. Apologies, and thanks to Ron Hayter.

Start up: Google’s Europe problem, spyware (and Syria), why do bigger bras mean larger sales?, and more

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“Get me to the Alibaba bikini sale!” Photo from Xinjiang by Manal on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Come on, it’s Friday. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Send me links or observations.

 Spyware 2.0 >> Aral Balkan

Spyware 2.0 is not cloak and dagger. It’s not hiding in the shadows; it’s hiding out in plain sight like some saccharine Ronald McDonald statue. Spyware 2.0 is all cute doodles and loveable dinosaurs. It’s all the colours of the rainbow. Spyware 2.0 is so damn adorable that you just want to hug it as tightly as you can and never let it go. Spyware 2.0 loves you like a kitten.

The only difference between Spyware 1.0 and Spyware 2.0 is that the purveyors of spyware in the Internet era are not doing it entirely in secret.

I say entirely because they are not completely transparent either.

High costs and errors of German transition to renewable energy >> SPIEGEL ONLINE

“Join in and start today,” [German environment minister Peter] Altmaier writes in the introduction. He then turns to such everyday activities as baking and cooking. “Avoid preheating and utilize residual heat,” Altmaier advises. TV viewers can also save a lot of electricity, albeit at the expense of picture quality. “For instance, you can reduce brightness and contrast,” his booklet suggests.

Altmaier and others are on a mission to help people save money on their electricity bills, because they’re about to receive some bad news. The government predicts that the renewable energy surcharge added to every consumer’s electricity bill will increase from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour – a 20% price hike.

German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe.

Phasing out the nuclear plants (in reaction to Fukushima) turns out not to have been so smart.

How Alibaba is using bra sizes to predict online shopping habits >> Quartz

Alibaba’s rival JD.com booked over 14m orders on Singles Day, using information on what shoppers are buying to make decisions on future inventory. “When you have a sale where you have 14m data points in a single day, that’s going to be extremely helpful to your strategy,” Josh Gartner, senior director of international communications at JD.com, told Quartz.

But data can also befuddle. JD.com found that iPhone 5 sales during Singles Day were nine to 10 times higher than usual. Gartner isn’t sure why. In 2012, Alibaba was surprised to find bikini sales on Singles Day were the highest in the landlocked western region of Xinjiang.

There’s an explanation, but you’ll have to read the article.

Uber’s Android app is not ‘literally malware’ >> The Next Web

Owen Williams:

Let’s nip this one in the bud: it’s incredibly unlikely that Uber’s app is any kind of malware, and from our investigations, the worries in the original post are unfounded. The majority of the permissions listed in the post that calls the company out for being too broad with permissions are required by Android to do many of the app’s basic functions.

Despite what some are claiming, there’s no evidence that Uber accesses any data on your phone other than that used explicitly for the purpose of getting you a ride, nor does it send any of your SMS’, images or other data off your phone.

There’s no reason for Uber to collect data beyond what it needs; it’s certainly not in the company’s best interest.

It’s just that standard Android permissions are so difficult to distinguish from malware, perhaps.

Google only has itself to blame if Europe succeeds in breaking up the company >> Business Insider

Jim Edwards:

Merely being a monopoly is not a transgression, even in Europe. (It’s often a sign of natural success.) Rather, EU antitrust law applies when companies abuse their monopoly to manipulate markets around them unfairly.

On that measure, Google has more than qualified for scrutiny over the way it distorts markets that have nothing to do with search.

The best evidence for that came from Yelp and a coalition of companies it has formed who believe they are being screwed out of their natural, “organic” ranking in search results because Google simply dumps its own — often unhelpful — content on top of the “real” search ranking of which sites are best.

Yelp’s evidence was elegant and simple: It used Google’s own search API to create a browser extension that displayed Google search results without results that include promo boxes generated from Google+, the unpopular identity/social network product that Google launched to counter Facebook. The extension shows you the “real” result generated by Google’s algorithm, without the self-promotional fluff that Google layers on top of it.

The difference is alarming.

Meet Telecomix, the hackers bent on exposing those who censor and surveil the internet >> Forbes

Andy Greenberg:

As the globally-distributed hackers combed Syria’s networks and posted their findings in a crowd-sourced document, one American member of the group, who uses the handle Punkbob, spotted a Windows FTP server filled with data he recognized: logs from a Proxy SG 9000 appliance built  by the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company Blue Coat Systems. In Punkbob’s day job at a Pentagon contractor, he says, the same equipment had been used to intercept traffic to filter and track staff behavior. The Syrian machine’s logs showed the Internet activity of thousands of users, connecting the sites they attempted to visit and every word of their communications with the IP addresses that pointed directly to their homes. In short, he had discovered American technology being used to help a brutal dictatorship spy on its citizens.

They downloaded 600GB of data, showing precisely which sites the Syrian government was blocking – using Blue Coat’s products.

Microsoft to unveil Windows 10 consumer features at January event >> The Verge

Microsoft is planning to detail the consumer features of Windows 10 at an event in January. While Microsoft will be present at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January, sources familiar with the company’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft will hold a separate press event in late January to unveil the consumer preview of Windows 10. Microsoft previously promised “early 2015” for a discussion on consumer features, and it appears the company is on track.

I thought Microsoft had given up going to CES. Apparently there’s a new touch interface “dubbed Continuum” for switching between touch and non-touch environments.

Anita Sarkeesian battles sexism in games, #gamergate harassment >> Businessweek

Sarkeesian is the front-cover story (which is good). This part in the story seems telling:

The industry’s main trade group, the Entertainment Software Association, tries to emphasize how mainstream the industry is, even as many of the games themselves undermine its message. The ESA trumpets the fact that the proportion of women playing all video games—not just on Xbox-style consoles, but also on tablets and other devices—has grown to 45%, and that 51% of U.S. households own at least one video game console.

The range of games being produced overall has grown, with a far broader swath of the population engaging in online play as it’s become a fixture of smartphones and iPads. But a single hit console game, such as Call of Duty, can generate more than $1bn in revenue a year, and anything that might disturb that revenue stream presents obvious economic risk.

A clip from the latest instalment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, produced by Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, features a first-person character who picks up a sickly looking hooker on the street, has sex with her in his car, then gets annoyed with her chattering and punches her in the face before running her over and driving away.

Films show bad things happening, and being done by people with bad intent too. But where are the romcom video games? As the article points out, it’s pretty rare to find strong women characters. And also:

At one point, Sarkeesian spent two days replaying every game to satisfy a hunch that first-person characters had the capacity to stare at the butts of female characters, but not at the backsides of men. She was right.

Europe gets [Android] One too >> CSS Insight blog

Peter Bryner:

Karbonn’s Sparkle V runs Google’s Android One version of KitKat on a quad-core MediaTek 1.3 GHz processor. It has a 4.5in display, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of storage and a microSD slot. Android One devices have not been particularly popular in India, partly because of limited support by brick-and-mortar retailers, which have been reluctant to support such low-margin products.

But the real story here isn’t this particular device or the holiday price but rather Karbonn’s push into Western markets. While Karbonn already sells smartphones in countries outside India, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, this is the company’s most ambitious market expansion yet. It’s too early to say if Karbonn can establish its brand in Europe. Its products are already available in Spain and an entry into the highly competitive UK market is a key step. In addition to Android phones, the company is also expected to sell Windows Phone devices.

Other Indian phone makers such as Micromax are certainly watching Karbonn’s European holiday push closely. The market is getting crowded and commoditised. Some established brands will have to pay the price.

This could cost brands such as HTC, Samsung and Sony some market share.

Given the market segment Karbonn is aiming it, seems more likely to hurt Samsung than either of the others, which are premium brands. But perhaps Android buyers are more price-sensitive than brand-sensitive?

Most motherboard players to focus on gross margins in 2015 >> Digitimes

Asustek’s annual motherboard shipments are expected to return back to 22m units in 2014, but the increased volume will come mainly from its competitors, especially second-tier players such as Micro-Star International (MSI), ASRock and Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), not growth in the overall motherboard market.

With motherboard demand from China expected to slow down in 2015, Gigabyte Technology has turned to focus on pushing high-end motherboards to maintain its profits.

ASRock has been impacted the most from the price competition in terms of both shipments and profitability. MSI’s gaming notebook business is expected to contribute strong profits in 2014, helping the company to cover its motherboard business’ decline. But for 2015, the two players will both stop pushing for shipments and will try to keep their businesses profitable.

However, China-based motherboard vendors are seeing their market shares shrinking rapidly. Large players such as Colorful, Onda and Maxsum are struggling to survive with profits sliding each year, while small players such as Jwele, Topstar, Jetway and M-One may soon be eliminated from the market.

I’m fascinated by the motherboard market; there’s hardly any information about quite where the products go (self-build? Repair? OEMs whose products are then counted by IDC and Gartner in the “Others” column of PC shipments?). But it’s clearly suffering a squeeze. Would love to know more about its distribution.