Start up: inside the Fire Phone debacle, a selfie stick successor, CES beats the bedroom, CNN’s last-ever video, and more

Posted on January 7, 2015 by charlesarthur

The Mayday button on the Amazon Fire Phone. Perhaps should have been used before it went on sale. Photo by TechStage on Flickr.

A selection of 8 links for you. Do not use as a flotation device. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

The real story behind Jeff Bezos’s Fire Phone debacle and what it means for Amazon’s future » Fast Company

Austin Carr, in a terrific long read, explaining how the Fire Phone project began in 2010, and had Bezos as a micro-manager:

Some designers bristled at Bezos’s presence and privately questioned his taste, while others who were wowed by his wide-ranging insights loved his approach. Regardless, Bezos’s heavy hand certainly took getting used to, even for Chris Green, Lab126’s VP of industrial design. “In the beginning, Chris would take Jeff’s feedback a bit literally,” says Randall, the former Lab126 VP, “and there was many an evening spent over beers and sushi counseling him, saying, ‘Calm down, it’s going to get better.’”

Bezos drove the team hard on one particular feature: Dynamic Perspective, the 3-D effects engine that is perhaps most representative of what went wrong with the Fire Phone. Dynamic Perspective presented the team with a challenge: Create a 3-D display that requires no glasses and is visible from multiple angles. The key would be facial recognition, which would allow the phone’s cameras to track a user’s gaze and adjust the 3-D effect accordingly. After a first set of leaders assigned to the project failed to deliver, their replacements went on a hiring spree. One team even set up a room that they essentially turned into a costume store, filling it with wigs, sunglasses, fake moustaches, and earrings that they donned for the cameras in order to improve facial recognition. “I want this feature,” Bezos said, telling the team he didn’t care how long it took or how much it cost.

Turns out Bezos isn’t as good a micro-manager for building a phone as Steve Jobs. Result:

According to three sources familiar with the company’s numbers, the Fire Phone sold just tens of thousands of units in the weeks that preceded the company’s radical price cuts.

Was it perhaps somewhere around the 35,000 that I estimated in August? My range was between 26,000 and, generously, 35,000. I’d love to hear the actual figure.

The whole piece, though, gives terrific insight into how Bezos can get it wrong. He thought a single phone – one piece of hardware – could reshape Amazon’s brand, and turn it from a “get stuff cheap online” one, into a “we customers love you, take our money” brand. The two aren’t the same.

February 2014: What the world really needs: A telescopic SELFIE STICK » The Register

Simon Rockman in February 2014:

Mobile World Congress is often as interesting for the silly gadgets as it is for the mainstream announcements.

This (right) is the Selfie Stick, an extendable pole with a Bluetooth control for your phone.

The Selfie comes in two versions: a general one and one for Samsung phones where you have focus control.

Hahahahahawhatdo you mean they’re sold out everywhere?

The first wearable camera that can fly » Nixie

Wearable and flyable

The first wrist-band camera quadcopter.
Nixie flies, takes your photo, and comes back to you.

This feels like it could easily be one of those Great Ideas that is too easily bungled in the execution, but if it works well it could put selfie sticks out of business. Until selfie stick owners swat them out of the sky.

CES, the World’s Largest Trade Show, Is Too Big for Vegas » Bloomberg

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has a problem that many events would love to have: It’s become too big. And it doesn’t want to get any bigger.

With as many as 160,000 visitors to CES—the world’s largest annual trade show—the Nevada city’s sprawling hotels are stretched to the limit. Last January’s gathering of gadget-loving geeks somehow packed in a full 10,000 more people than Las Vegas has rooms for them to sleep in.

The Consumer Electronics Association, the folks who put on the conference and expo, says CES 2015 will have the equivalent of 35 football fields, or about 2 miles of floor space, filled with phones, televisions, smartwatches, washing machines and throngs of people trying to see it all. “In order to enhance the experience for our attendees, we aim to keep attendance between 150,000 and 160,000 so that everyone can get where they need to go,” says CEA Vice President Karen Chupka.

That’s OK – they can sleep in the lines for press conferences showing off LG’s new dishwasher. Actually, the graph with the story suggests that attendees has exceeded the number of available hotel rooms since 2012. I’m pretty sure I slept there in 2012. Could it be that, shock, some people share rooms? Also, how’s AirBnB coming along there? And might some attendees, um, live in Vegas?

The weirdly-synched life of the Google Nest household » The Register

Richard Chirgwin:

At first glance it looks like the typical Utopian vision of Silicon Valley, but Vulture South took a second look and asked ourselves: “what kinds of life does Google think we live?”

The short answer: wealthy, lazy, and either lonely or in a strange 1950’s-sitcom family synchronisation. Everybody rises and sleeps at the same time, everybody leaves and arrives together, and we’re rich enough to have ‘leccy cars but too poor to charge them.

The most obvious believer in the synchronised family is appliance giant Whirlpool. Its Nest integration can “let your washer and dryer know when you’re home and they will automatically switch to quiet mode”. Unless only one occupant is recognised, that means the only time the appliances are allowed to let their hair down and party is when everyone’s away.

The August Smart Lock will tell Nest to change your thermostat settings when you arrive (warm the house up) or leave (switch off the heating) – which begs the question “what if I lock the front door while other people are still at home?” At least the Kwikset Kevo smart lock understands that more than one person might be in a household.

The Withings Sleep System: when you go to sleep it will “let your Nest Thermostat to a comfortable nighttime temperature. Wake up and it will tell Nest you’re ready to start the day.” Once again, the idea that a household might have sleep and wake times staggered by hours seems alien to the developer.

This is my general objection to “internet of things” and “homes of the future” visions: they don’t account for how we actually live. Them: Look, you’ll be able to get your coffee maker to make coffee before you get out of bed! Me: so I’ll have had to put the coffee in the night before. As I have to go downstairs to get the coffee, why not just make it fresh while I’m there?

And so on. Most IOT/HOTF concepts seem to come from 20-somethings who have no concept of running a household. Hence, I think, their limited success.

This is the video CNN will play when the world ends » Jalopnik

Michael Ballaban, who unearthed this Holy Grail-style rumoured-but-until-now-never-confirmed video, which has the notice:

“HFR till end of the world confirmed.”

Hold for release. CNN, once ever so thorough in its factchecking, knew that the last employee alive couldn’t be trusted to make a call as consequential as one from the Book of Revelation. The end of the world must be confirmed.

That leaves open a whole host of unanswered questions. If this is the last CNN employee alive, in the last CNN bureau on Earth, who do they confirm it with? What does confirmation look like? Who can be the one to make that determination, to pronounce the universe itself dead? Is it Wolf Blitzer himself, ever a fan of the Washington Wizards, and thus a man who would know death when he saw it? Would it be Rick Davis, CNN’s head of standards of practices, who has been with the company since its birth and who thus would know CNN’s journalistic practices better than anyone?

Or would it be some sort of living embodiment of CNN itself, ready to proclaim its own demise, as Judgment Day is truly the only thing able to bring about the long-anticipated death of cable news?

And who would be around to watch it?

Um.. that CNN employee? The machines grinding us into nanoparticles to feed into their hoppers? Take your pick.

Breach puts Morgan Stanley client data up for sale » NYTimes.com

Nathaniel Popper:

the bank traced the breach to a financial adviser working out of its New York offices, a 30-year-old named Galen Marsh, according to a person involved in the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Marsh, who had been with Morgan Stanley since 2008, was quickly fired and is currently the subject of a criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a person briefed on the investigation said. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is also examining the matter.

Morgan Stanley said on Monday that it had determined that Mr. Marsh took data on about 10% of its 3.5 million wealth management customers, including transactional information from customer statements.

The bank said that Mr. Marsh did not take any sensitive passwords or Social Security numbers, and that it had not found any evidence that the breach resulted in any losses to customers. A lawyer for Mr. Marsh, Robert C. Gottlieb, acknowledged on Monday that his client did take the information in question but said that he did not post it online, share it or try to sell it.

Afghanistan war logs: insider breach. NSA/GCHQ documents: insider breach. Morgan Stanley: insider breach. Sony Pictures..?

Hit mobile game Monument Valley and piracy: ‘Only 5%’ of Android players paid for it » VenureBeat

Jeff Grubb:

Piracy is still a big problem on Android.

Developer Ustwo had one of the break out mobile hits in 2014 with its isometric puzzler Monument Valley, but a successful game is not impervious to piracy. The studio confirmed on Twitter today that Monument Valley has had an especially tough time with “unpaid installs” on Android. The company said that 95% of the people playing the game on Google’s mobile operating system did not buy it — although, Ustwo did explain that a small number of those installs are legitimate and were not illegally downloaded. This makes a big dent in Ustwo’s earnings since Monument Valley is a premium-priced game that does not have in-app purchases like Candy Crush Saga or other lucrative mobile releases. Gaming on smart devices surpassed $21bn last year, but it potentially could have more if it weren’t for piracy.

The paid rate was much better on iOS, but it’s still alarming. Ustwo said that 40% of the people who have the game on an Apple mobile device paid for it. Again, that means the majority did not give the developer money.

Depressing numbers, for a game that costs just $4. There’s certainly piracy on iOS – but the astronomical amount on Android really isn’t good news. Does this get factored into the quotes about “revenues from app stores” we see?

There is some confusion over the iOS figure though: it’s not clear whether someone who buys on the iPhone and then downloads to their iPad counts as an “unpaid install”. We also don’t know if that’s how it works on Android – though do 95% of Android owners have multiple devices?

Start up: Coolpad’s built-in malware backdoor, LG v Samsung, Rockstar’s patent fizzle, Google’s PR spin game, and more

Posted on December 24, 2014 by charlesarthur

A Coolpad smartphone. Back door not shown.

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This is the last collection of Overspill links until next week (at least). Have a great Christmas – and thanks to the hundreds of people who are coming to read every day. You’re always welcome.
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A selection of 11 links for you. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

SuperBeam Pro: easy & fast WiFi direct file sharing >> iTunes App Store

Works by Wi-Fi Direct (aka p2p sharing). Seems to be superfast, but one also wonders if Apple is going to be entirely happy about this. (Found via Producthunt.)

Rockstar consortium to sell 4,000 patents to RPX Corp. for $900m >> WSJ

Starting late last year, Rockstar sued several companies for allegedly infringing their patents, including Google and Cisco. Last month, Rockstar settled its suits against Google and Cisco. Financial details weren’t disclosed, but Cisco told investors in early November that it had recorded a pretax charge of $188 million to settle the Rockstar litigation.

As part of the deal with RPX, Rockstar will drop the remainder of its suits, which include claims against Samsung Electronics, LG, HTC and Huawei.

The settlements follow others in the long-running smartphone patent wars.

For instance, in May, Apple and Google agreed to drop all lawsuits between the two companies, and in August, Apple and Samsung agreed to end all litigation between the two companies outside the U.S. Apple and Samsung are still battling in federal court in California, where Apple has won two jury verdicts finding that Samsung infringed its designs for the iPhone.

Whether the Rockstar companies recouped its $4.5bn investment is an open question. In the minds of some experts, the $4.5bn figure reflected the high point of a frothy market that developed for patents in the earlier days of the smartphone industry.

The Rockstar companies squeezed more than three years of use out of the 4,000 patents, and will keep licenses going forward. The 2,000 patents they held back from Rockstar—and aren’t part of the sale to RPX—were among some of the most valuable in the Nortel portfolio.

Turns out that smartphone patents were just a sideline which led both Google and its rivals to drop huge amounts. (Google rather more than the others, through Motorola’s continued losses until it could sell it off. But nobody won.)

CoolReaper revealed: a backdoor in Coolpad Android devices >> Palo Alto Networks Blog

Claud Xiao and Ryan Olson:

Coolpad is the sixth largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, and the third largest in China. We recently discovered that the software installed on many of Coolpad’s high-end Android phones includes a backdoor which was installed and operated by Coolpad itself. Today we released a new report detailing the backdoor, which we’ve named “CoolReaper.”
After reviewing Coolpad complaints on message boards about suspicious activities on Coolpad devices, we downloaded multiple copies of the stock ROMs used by Coolpad phones sold in China. We found the majority of the ROMs contained the CoolReaper backdoor.

CoolReaper can perform the following tasks:
• Download, install, or activate any Android application without user consent or notification
• Clear user data, uninstall existing applications, or disable system applications
• Notify users of a fake over-the-air (OTA) update that doesn’t update the device, but installs unwanted applications
• Send or insert arbitrary SMS or MMS messages into the phone.
• Dial arbitrary phone numbers
• Upload information about device, its location, application usage, calling and SMS history to a Coolpad server.

Fabulous! All that extra software for no charge! (Coolpad is on sale in the west, by the way.)

They say it’s specifically tailored to hide what it does, and that Coolpad has ignored customer complaints about unwanted app installs. Their conclusion:

CoolReaper is the first malware we have seen that was built and operated by an Android manufacturer. The changes Coolpad made to the Android OS to hide the backdoor from users and antivirus programs are unique and should make people think twice about the integrity of their mobile devices.

Google adds song lyrics to search results but it feels like a cheap cash grab >> PCWorld

Ian Paul:

Google has figured out a way to deliver more instant answers in search results and boost music sales on Google Play simultaneously: song lyrics. Following Bing’s lead from October, Google is now surfacing lyrics for a limited number of songs when you search for “[song title] lyrics.”

Unlike Bing, however, you won’t see the full list of song lyrics in your search results. To see the complete lyrics you have to click a link to Google Play. There you’ll also have options to buy the track or subscribe to Google Play’s All Access subscription service.

If Bing’s song lyrics roll out convinced you to switch to Microsoft’s search engine, however, don’t bother switching back. Google’s song lyric catalog is extremely limited compared to its competitor. In fact, the new feature seems like more of a ploy to push people to Google Play than a truly helpful search function.

I hadn’t noted that Bing was already doing song lyrics. Google says it has licensed the lyrics it displays. But – as this article notes, and Techcrunch points out – it’s another annexation by Google of a content business.

LG boss may miss CES due to washing machine fiasco >> CNET

Cho Mu-Hyun:

South Korean prosecutors have imposed a travel ban on Jo Seong-jin, head of LG’s Home Appliance and Air Solution Company, who had been slated to represent LG at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show 2015 in Las Vegas.

Samsung earlier this year filed a lawsuit for property damages and defamation against Jo and four other LG Electronics executives after the IFA tradeshow in Berlin, Germany, claiming that the LG execs intentionally sabotaged the door hinges of one of its washing machines at an electronics store there. Samsung provided as evidence the damaged washing machine and CCTV footage allegedly showing Jo “willfully” damaging the appliance.

Who knew bathos could be so hilarious.

Xiaomi may adopt sapphire for covers of 5.7in smartphone >> Digitimes

China-based smartphone vendor Xiaomi Technology is likely to adopt sapphire for protective covers of Xiaomi 5, its 5.7-inch flagship model that will be showcased at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, Taiwan-based supply chain makers cited industry sources in China as indicating.

Japan-based Kyocera in early 2014 launched smartphones with protective covers made from internally-produced sapphire in the US market through cooperation with Verizon Wireless, while China-based Vivo and Huawei Device also launched smartphones with sapphire covers, the sources said.

If Xiaomi decides to adopt sapphire, existing sapphire production capacity is not sufficient to meet the demand, according to sources with Taiwan-based sapphire wafer makers.

Even with Xiaomi’s smartphone volumes, this probably isn’t possible. Maybe a high-end model?

Why Sony’s breach matters >> Learning by Shipping

Steve Sinofsky, who (of course) used to be at Microsoft:

in late 1996, seemingly all at once everyone started opening Word documents to a mysterious alert like the one below.

This annoying but benign development was actually a virus. The Word Concept virus (technically a worm, which at the time was a big debate) was spreading wildly. It attached itself to an incredibly useful feature of Word called the AutoOpen macro. Basically Word had a snazzy macro language that could do anything automatically that you could do in Word just sitting in front typing (more on this later). AutoOpen allowed these macros to run as soon as you opened a document. You’d receive a document with Concept code in AutoOpen and upon opening the document it would infect the default (and incredibly useful) template Normal.dot and then from then on every document you opened or created was subsequently infected. When you mailed a document or placed it on a file server, everyone opening that document would become infected the same way. This mechanism would become very useful for future viruses.

Looking at this on the team we were rather consternated. Here was a core business use case. For example, AutoOpen would trigger all sorts of business processes such as creating a standard document with the right formats and metadata or checking for certain conditions in a document management system. These capabilities were key to Word winning in the marketplace. Yet clearly something had to be done.

And that was just the start of a long run of malware. But he thinks we’re better off now.

Google just had to spin the Sony hack >> The Illusion of More

David Newhoff on Google’s PR spin around the “Goliath” emails uncovered by the Sony hack, which he calls a Pavlovian bell-ringing for its meme of “internet freedom”:

It’s no secret that motion picture producers and Google have an ongoing dispute with regard to piracy of filmed entertainment, and I think it’s a safe bet both parties regularly consult with counsel regarding their own interests. As such, I personally think one of the more serious results of this leak is the rather dramatic breach of attorney/client privilege. I don’t think we want a society in which hackers can arbitrarily violate this fundamental right in our legal system. Apparently, though, Google’s Sr VP and General Counsel, Kent Walker, was unfazed by this implication — perhaps Google is hacker proof — when he was quoted in Variety saying, “We are deeply concerned about recent reports that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) led a secret, coordinated campaign to revive the failed SOPA legislation through other means.” And as of this week, Google has launched a campaign it calls Zombie SOPA. Ding-a-ling!

Walker is not speaking as an attorney, but rather as a PR guy, when he plays the word secret like that in order to imply a conspiracy, knowing full well that communications between clients and attorneys are almost always secret. But near the end of the article, he is also quoted plaintively wondering why champions of the First Amendment like the MPAA would “want to censor the Internet.” Hear them ring! Of course any discussion about legal remedies to mitigate piracy are tantamount to censorship, right?

Why Samsung is losing out to low cost rivals >> Jana Mobile

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy series is extremely popular among the emerging market smartphone users that make up mCent’s user base (eight of the top ten devices used to access the mCent app in November 2014 came from the Samsung Galaxy series). However, the Galaxy is likely to become less popular as lower-priced competitors enter the market. This is partly due to the total price of components and assembly for Galaxy devices, which have steadily risen in the face of prevailing market trends. If the current trend is sustained, manufacturing and component costs for a Samsung Galaxy [from 2010] will be higher than the global average selling price for a smartphone in 2015…

…In November 2014, Samsung accounted for 40% of sessions on the mCent app for Android. It has been the most popular smartphone brand among users in our markets since the launch of the mCent app in June 2014, yet its popularity has been waning. In the key markets of Brazil, Indonesia, and India, Motorola, Smartfren, and Micromax have become noticeably more popular. We expect this trend to continue into 2015.

With the caveat, however, that they’re talking about the flagship Galaxy phones, not the cheapo phones that it sells at rock-bottom prices.

Though this is becoming a story that everyone is telling: Samsung losing out to the low-cost rivals. Its earnings guidance for the fourth quarter will come out in early January.

Mathematicians have finally figured out how to tell correlation from causation >> Quartz

Zach Wener-Fligner:

determining causal relationships is really hard. But techniques outlined in a new paper promise to do just that. The basic intuition behind the method demonstrated by Prof. Joris Mooij of the University of Amsterdam and his co-authors is surprisingly simple: if one event influences another, then the random noise in the causing event will be reflected in the affected event.

For example, suppose we are trying to determine the relationship between the the amount of highway traffic, and the time it takes John to drive to work. Both John’s commute time and traffic on the highway will fluctuate somewhat randomly: sometimes John will hit the red light just around the corner, and lose five extra minutes; sometimes icy weather will slow down the roads.

But the key insight is that random fluctuation in traffic will affect John’s commute time, whereas random fluctuation in John’s commute time won’t affect the traffic.

Smart – watch for this to filter through into all sorts of everyday algorithms in the next few years.

Did North Korea really attack Sony? >> The Atlantic

Bruce Schneier:

Allan Friedman, a research scientist at George Washington University’s Cyber Security Policy Research Institute, told me that from a diplomatic perspective, it’s a smart strategy for the U.S. to be overconfident in assigning blame for the cyberattacks. Beyond the politics of this particular attack, the long-term U.S. interest is to discourage other nations from engaging in similar behavior. If the North Korean government continues denying its involvement no matter what the truth is, and the real attackers have gone underground, then the U.S. decision to claim omnipotent powers of attribution serves as a warning to others that they will get caught if they try something like this.

Sony also has a vested interest in the hack being the work of North Korea. The company is going to be on the receiving end of a dozen or more lawsuits—from employees, ex-employees, investors, partners, and so on. Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain opined that having this attack characterized as an act of terrorism or war, or the work of a foreign power, might earn the company some degree of immunity from these lawsuits.

I worry that this case echoes the “we have evidence — trust us” story that the Bush administration told in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

Schneier is very sceptical of the US explanation. It’s noticeable how few security experts are on board with the US’s claims over this.

Start up: Google gets lyrical, Snapchat clone killing, the stolen smartphone business, and more

Posted on December 23, 2014 by charlesarthur

“Do you know Google’s getting into another content business?” “You hum it, I’ll play it”. Photo by guzzphoto on Flickr.

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

What did they say? Google including song lyrics in search results >> WSJ Digits blog

Google is trying to answer some of the world’s biggest questions. That list now includes: Wait, what did he just sing?

Song lyrics are now part of the increasingly robust packet of information Google shows in its search results, a move that threatens traffic to popular lyrics sites.

It’s unclear when Google started showing lyrics on the initial results people see when searching for, say, “Love Is Blindness lyrics.” (A TechCrunch article traces it to a post on a blog about SEO that points to this Google+ post from Dec. 19.) For now, the lyrics apply only to U.S. searches.

A Google spokewoman said, with apologies to Led Zeppelin we’re sure, “There’s a feeling you get when you turn to a song and you know that the words have two meanings. Well it’s whispered that now if you go search the tune, maybe Google will lead you to reason. Ooh, it makes you wonder.”

Makes you wonder if lyric sites are stuffed – as in, how can they make their businesses work now? How many content businesses is Google going to tramp into?

North Korea experiencing severe internet outages >> Associated Press

North Korea experienced sweeping and progressively worse internet outages extending into Monday, with one computer expert saying the country’s online access is “totally down.” The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

That’s the internet in North Korea, home to 24m people, where the internet is available to.. nobody quite knows how many people.

Huge privacy flaw uncovered in mobile phone networks >> HOTforSecurity

Graham Cluley:

In the last year or so there’s been a lot of bad news about how intelligence agencies and hackers can exploit weaknesses in internet communications to snoop upon our conversations and private messages.

Indeed, such has been the avalanche of revelations that it’s not uncommon at all to hear security researchers advise you to turn off your phone’s WiFi, and communicate via regular calls vand SMS messages instead because of the 3G phone network’s built-in advanced encryption.

Well, there’s bad news folks…

Two German security researchers have uncovered what they claim are serious security flaws that could allow criminals and intelligence agencies to spy upon private phone calls and text messages transmitted via cellular networks.

Still, as long as it doesn’t interfere with our film release schedule, that’s OK.

2015: The Year of Android >> Rusty Rants

Russell Ivanovic of Shifty Jelly:

I don’t often make predictions, but I’m willing to make this one: 2015 is going to be a huge year for Android. I’m not talking about the Market Share Wars, I never cared for them and Android won them long ago. I have little interest in the Who Makes The Most Money Wars either, I’m often baffled as to why people even care. As a developer and user of mobile platforms I’m more interested in app profitability, quality and diversity. I think 2015 is going to be a huge one for Android in this regard. Don’t believe me, ok, allow me to walk you through why.

Let’s start off with a myth: “No one makes money on Android”. I hear that all the time. The irony of the fact that we make 80% of our daily income on Android doesn’t escape me as these people wax eloquent about how this is a well established fact

Shifty Jelly does nicely from a podcast app; but Apple offers a free podcast app, so it’s not surprising that he sees money from Android and not iOS.

Reading this, though, he doesn’t quite explain what will make 2015 the specific year, or how we’ll measure it. More that it’s not a bad place for developers to be – which those who are interested in it probably know already.

More subtly, Android’s expansion in 2015 is going to be in low-income countries. Total revenues will go up, but per-install revenues will probably fall – and mobile ad rates will fall in line with installation growth.

6 things I learned from riding in a Google Self-Driving Car >> The Oatmeal

Matthew Inman:

Riding in a self-driving car is not the white-knuckled, cybernetic thrill ride one might expect. The car drives like a person, and after a few minutes you forget that you’re being driven autonomously. You forget that a robot is differentiating cars from pedestrians from mopeds from raccoons. You forget that millions of photons are being fired from a laser and interpreting, processing, and reacting to the hand signals of a cyclist. You forget that instead of an organic brain, which has had millions of years to evolve the cognitive ability to fumble its way through a four-way stop, you’re being piloted by an artificial one, which was birthed in less than a decade.

The unfortunate part of something this transformative is the inevitable, ardent stupidity which is going to erupt from the general public. Even if in a few years self-driving cars are proven to be ten times safer than human-operated cars, all it’s going to take is one tragic accident and the public is going to lose their minds. There will be outrage. There will be politicizing. There will be hashtags.
It’s going to suck.

But I say to hell with the public. Let them spend their waking lives putt-putting around on a crowded interstate with all the other half-lucid orangutans on their cell phones.

The secret world of stolen smartphones, where business is booming >> Wired

Matthew Shaer:

A picture slowly emerged of a so-called credit-mule scheme, ingenious in its simplicity and impressive in its reach. Middlemen such as Shamshad were dispatched to seemingly random American cities, where they trolled homeless shelters and halfway houses, offering $100 to anyone who would buy, on their behalf, a few on-contract phones from a local electronics store.

Back in California, the contraband was handed off to Wen and Tan, who arranged to have the phones shipped to their contacts in Asia. The profit margin was enormous: In North America, wireless carriers typically subsidize the cost of our smartphones in order to lure us into multiyear voice and data contracts. To obtain a phone, in other words, we fork over a small fraction of the device’s actual market worth. Wen and Tan took advantage of the system by obtaining iPhones — through middlemen and mules — for $200 a pop, then selling them in China for close to $1,000.

Records obtained by the eCrime Unit indicate that in a single year, Wen mailed 111 parcels using his FedEx account. By the time the whole operation was brought down in March of 2013, he and his wife had become very wealthy, to the tune of close to $2.5m in annual income.

Terrific article, rich in detail and observation. The numbers implied in the insurance sums and the numbers is amazing.

From messaging apps to ecosystems : Line, WeChat, Viber & Others >> Counterpoint Technology

Neil Shah:

It is foolish to ignore the growing scale of these platforms which are growing in capabilities and are becoming ecosystems in themselves.

If we look at carefully these platforms are beginning to look identical and at some point in future will become a commonplace. However, the differences that will make them standout or survive in long run is their business model and their reach in terms of capabilities and user base.

These ambitious app based platforms are expanding their reach across multiple areas attracting users to spend more time communicating, shopping as well as consuming content. These are creating greater amount of stickiness and using their horizontal business model to scale and with presence on the major platforms from iOS to Android to Windows to target the complete pie of smart devices users.

Notably including Samsung ChatON (reckoned here to have 100m monthly active users), but not Apple’s iMessage – which probably has about 300m MAUs.

What happened when Marissa Mayer tried to be Steve Jobs >> NYTimes.com

Nicholas Carlson (in an extract from his forthcoming book on Yahoo:

Previous Yahoo C.E.O.s had underinvested in mobile-app development, plowing money into advertising technology and web tools instead. A couple of days into the job, Mayer was having lunch at URL’s when an employee walked up to her and introduced himself as Tony. “I’m a mobile engineer,” Tony said. “I’m on the mobile team.”

Mayer responded to Tony, “Great, how big is our mobile team?” After some back and forth, Tony replied that there were “maybe 60” engineers. Mayer was dumbfounded. Facebook, for instance, had a couple of thousand people working on mobile. When she queried the engineering management department, it responded that Yahoo had roughly 100. “Like an actual hundred,” Mayer responded, “or like 60 rounded up to 100 to make me feel better?” The department responded that it was more like 60.

Companies like Facebook and Google are known for their fast-paced product updates. Yahoo, by contrast, was sluggish. Yahoo Mail, with its 30 billion emails a day, was arguably the company’s most important product. But despite the decline in desktop email use, Yahoo hadn’t built mail apps for smartphones. It had simply made the Yahoo Mail website usable on smaller mobile screens.

Although we know how the story turns out, it seems like this is going to be a book worth reading. (There are all sorts of pieces you could pull out of this article. Yahoo has been such a mess for so long.)

Microsoft removes all third-party Snapchat apps from the Windows Phone store >> TechCrunch

Jon Russell:

The ban on third parties may not last for too long, however. We know that Snapchat is working on building a mobile messaging platform, and that could mean that it finally releases an official API to allow third parties to connect to its service while providing increased protection for user privacy.

That said, the company recently introduced video advertising so keeping its service free of third party apps on all devices gives it absolute control over targeting its user base with ads, thus potentially maximizing its value to advertisers.

None of this means much for Snapchat fans on Windows Phone, who have never had an official app and now don’t even have unofficial ones. Such are the problems of being a ‘third’ platform in today’s iOS-Android dominated world.

I recall Stephen Elop at Nokia in mid-2013 pointing to a Snapchat-compatible app as evidence of how things were improving. (It’s worth looking back at to see how things haven’t changed for Windows Phone in those 18 or so months.) Wonder if this clearout was some sort of precondition by Snapchat before it would build a first-party app.

Start up: smartphone epochs, UK buyers slow on tablets, OnePlus faces India patent suit, Uber redux, and more

Posted on December 18, 2014 by charlesarthur

Ahh – a Nokia smartphone. Photo by David Roessli on Flickr.

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

The Innovator’s Stopwatch. Part 2 >> Asymco

Horace Dediu:

As diffusion proceeds through each adopter category, the product is re-positioned to address each group’s presumed behavior. Innovators (first 2.5% of the population) are offered novelty, a chance to experiment and uniqueness of experience; early adopters are offered a chance to create or enhance their position of social leadership; the early majority build imitate the leadership of the early adopters and justify it with productivity gains; the late majority are skeptics but, given a set of specific benefits, join the earlier adopters. Finally the laggards reluctantly agree to adopt as their preferred alternative of not adopting disappears.

The theory suggests that a firm can be successful if they modify their marketing and perhaps product mix to accommodate these adopter categories in a timely manner.

If this is the case however, why is it that those who have access to these data (i.e. who is buying and when) not to do the right thing?

Really you have to read it for the graphs, showing the rise and fall of Palm/WinMob, Nokia, Samsung (projected), and the rise of China and India. But what about Apple?

Mobile Innovation: we need to get past the App Store duopoly >> Continuations

Albert Wenger, of VC firm Union Square Ventures:

Many people have pointed to the amazing commerce integrations in WeChat in China as an example of what can be done. What fewer have said though is that China does not have an app store duopoly. So WeChat has been free to innovate on commerce without having to live in the confines of what Apple or Google deem appropriate (and hence not in conflict with their own ambitions). As far as I can tell Chinese smartphones work just fine and any claim that centralized app stores are required for security or quality control is simply a pretense for wanting to extract more economics. The price of Chinese phones also does away with the claim that cross subsidization is required for adoption or phone innovation.

I thought USV was sure that Android was going to be the only app store anyone would need. Now it isn’t? Also, why not just go HTML5, as some of the commenters suggest?

Huawei, with 30,000 patents in China, is preparing to sue Xiaomi >> Patently Apple

local first-generation smartphone manufacturer rivals in China such as Huawei and ZTE are now going after Xiaomi where they know they’re weak: Patents. With Ericsson’s success against Xiaomi in India, both Chinese rivals are now racing to file lawsuits.

A Korean report tapping into industry sources stated that earlier this week Huawei and ZTE were known to be preparing to sue Xiaomi, OPPO, and Bubugao for infringement of their patent rights.

Earlier, Huawei and ZTE sent out a warning letter to these companies asking them to stop infringing on their patents and pay legitimate royalties. However, as they did not respond, Huawei and ZTE decided to take legal action against them.

An industry source added that “It was confirmed that China’s second-generation smartphone manufacturers had been violating four to five patents related to communications technology, including WCDMA, which is used in 3G mobile communications.”

Huawei and ZTE are strong patent holders, collecting more than 70 percent of relevant royalties in China’s mobile phone market. Huawei has nearly 30,000 of the 39,000 mobile phone patents in China. It has also registered 7,000 patents this year alone.

Oh dear, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

OnePlus has been ordered to stop selling the OnePlus One in India after legal action by Micromax >> Android Police

Ryan Whitwan:

Micromax—which plans to launch its YU brand with Cyanogen soon—has gone to the Delhi High Court to allege OnePlus is infringing on its exclusive licensing of Cyanogen OS. The court agreed, and now OnePlus is barred from selling, marketing, or even importing its devices in India. Additionally, the company is not permitted to ship any device in India that bears the Cyanogen logo or branding even after it gets the OS situation worked out.

As we recently discussed, OnePlus says it was only notified of the exclusive agreement between Micromax and Cyanogen two weeks before the OPO was to launch in India. It plans to have a custom ROM of its own ready by February, with a beta release sooner. However, the devices shipping in India right now still have CyanogenMod installed. They won’t get official support or updates, but apparently that’s not good enough for Micromax.

Dixons Carphone shines but we’re not taking the tablets >> London Evening Standard

Computer tablets have failed to capture the [UK] consumer’s imagination this Christmas — they were tipped to be the biggest festival seller but sales have actually fallen, according to the boss of Dixons Carphone.

Seb James, chief executive of the newly merged phone and electricals retailer, suggested most people already had one and a technology shift was needed before people buy new versions.

His comments come as the company, created from a merger of the Currys, PC World parent and Carphone Warehouse, reported its first set of half-year results since the deal this year.

Sales rose 5% to £5.02bn in the six months to beginning of November. However, the company made a £20m loss before tax, thanks to the £100m spent on the merger — lawyer and banker fees alone amounted to about £11m.

Wonder what form a “technology shift” would need to take to get people buying a new round of tablets.

Uber: Exec accessed reporter’s private trip info because she was late >> Naked Security

Lisa Vaas:

In a letter to Senator Al Franken, Uber says it accessed a reporter’s account because “She was 30 minutes late” to a meeting and an executive wanted to know when she’d show up so he could meet her in the lobby.

And flash his iPhone at her. And tell her that he was tracking her, according to a report from The Guardian.

In fact, Uber New York General Manager Josh Mohrer reportedly poked at BuzzFeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan’s personal data twice, on both occasions tracking her movements without her permission.

As an excuse, it’s lame. As a reason, it’s also lame. That hasn’t stopped Uber’s general counsel saying in the letter that it has a “strong culture of protecting [passenger] information.” Except when it doesn’t, clearly.

And as Franken pointed out in response, the letter doesn’t answer his questions – viz, what “legitimate” business purposes are for accessing customer data inside Uber.

Smartphone Comparison Chart >>Gnod

Interactive, and covering pretty much everything available in the US. Helpful if you are a specification freak; otherwise, more of a curio, though one on which you could waste an easy half an hour.

Shifting Freebase over to Wikidata >> Freebase on Google+

When we publicly launched Freebase back in 2007, we thought of it as a “Wikipedia for structured data.” So it shouldn’t be surprising that we’ve been closely watching the Wikimedia Foundation’s project Wikidata[1] since it launched about two years ago. We believe strongly in a robust community-driven effort to collect and curate structured knowledge about the world, but we now think we can serve that goal best by supporting Wikidata – they’re growing fast, have an active community, and are better-suited to lead an open collaborative knowledge base.

So we’ve decided to help transfer the data in Freebase to Wikidata, and in mid-2015 we’ll wind down the Freebase service as a standalone project. Freebase has also supported developer access to the data, so before we retire it, we’ll launch a new API for entity search powered by Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Google bought MetaWeb in 2010; this move, giving the responsibility to the crowd, suggests either that upkeep was too expensive, or that Google has found better ways to do it internally.

Start up: how much (little) ‘Happy’ earned on Pandora, Sony hack spills on, ‘inception’ mobile hack, QNX trumps Microsoft, and more

Posted on December 15, 2014 by charlesarthur

Ford MyTouch, powered by Microsoft. Well, not in the future. Photo by HighTechDad on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Choking hazard in children under 3. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Project Goliath: Inside Hollywood’s secret war against Google >> The Verge

What is “Goliath” and why are Hollywood’s most powerful lawyers working to kill it?

In dozens of recently leaked emails from the Sony hack, lawyers from the MPAA and six major studios talk about “Goliath” as their most powerful and politically relevant adversary in the fight against online piracy. They speak of “the problems created by Goliath,” and worry “what Goliath could do if it went on the attack.” Together they mount a multi-year effort to “respond to / rebut Goliath’s public advocacy” and “amplify negative Goliath news.” And while it’s hard to say for sure, significant evidence suggests that the studio efforts may be directed against Google.

The Sony hack is laying bare huge amounts of the entertainment industry’s thinking. Read on for more.

Nation-backed malware targets diplomats’ iPhones, Androids, and PCs >> Ars Technica

Researchers have uncovered yet another international espionage campaign that’s so sophisticated and comprehensive that it could only have been developed with the backing of a well resourced country.

Inception, as the malware is dubbed in a report published Tuesday by Blue Coat Labs, targets devices running Windows, Android, BlackBerry, and iOS, and uses free accounts on Swedish cloud service Cloudme to collect pilfered data. Malware infecting Android handsets records incoming and outgoing phone calls to MP4 sound files that are periodically uploaded to the attackers. The researchers also uncovered evidence of an MMS phishing campaign designed to work on at least 60 mobile networks in multiple countries in an attempt to infect targeted individuals.

“There clearly is a well-resourced and very professional organization behind Inception, with precise targets and intentions that could be widespread and harmful,” the Blue Coat report stated. “The complex attack framework shows signs of automation and seasoned programming, and the number of layers used to protect the payload of the attack and to obfuscate the identity of the attackers is extremely advanced, if not paranoid.”

Ford dumps Microsoft for BlackBerry infotainment system >> CNN

Ford is upgrading its infotainment system to make it more like a smartphone or tablet – and it is dumping its longtime software provider Microsoft as part of the change.

Instead, Ford (F) will use BlackBerry’s QNX operating system for the new Sync 3 infotainment system. Ford Sync allows drivers to navigate, listen to radio and music, make phone calls and control the car’s climate through touch or voice commands.

Among Sync 3’s improvements will be the ability to expand or shrink the display with pinch-to-zoom gestures. Customers will also be able to swipe the screen’s display, as they do on a smartphone or tablet.

Wonder if it’s anything to do with the glitches in MyTouch that surfaced in 2011, when it said it “will send memory sticks to 250,000 customers in the US offering a software upgrades for its glitch-prone MyFord Touch system, which replaces the standard dashboard knobs and buttons with a touchscreen.”

A win for BlackBerry’s QNX, though unlikely to be a dramatic money-earner for a while, if ever.

Pharrell made less than $3,000 from 43 million Pandora streams of “Happy” >> Fusion

Through the first three months of 2014, “Happy” was streamed 43m times on Pandora, while “All Of Me” was played 55 million times on the service.

But how much money did all those streams make for the artists involved in creating the tracks?

According to an email from Sony/ATV head Martin Bandier obtained by Digital Music News’ Paul Resnikoff, “Happy” brought in just $2,700 in publisher and songwriter royalties in the first quarter of this year, while “All Of Me” yielded just $3,400.

Windows Phone wobbles: why users are losing heart >> Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Unlike Ed Bott and Tom Warren I still use a 1020 as my main phone. I like the platform and I like not taking a separate camera with me. It was great for taking snaps on holiday in Norway. But I cannot survive professionally with just Windows Phone. It seems now that a majority of gadgets I review come with a supporting app … for iOS or Android.

Microsoft is capable of making sense of Windows Phone, particularly in business, whether it can integrate with Office 365, Active Directory and Azure Active Directory. On the consumer side there is more that could be done to tie with Windows and Xbox. Microsoft is a software company and could do some great first party apps for the platform (where are they?).

The signs today though are not good. Since the acquisition we have had some mid-range device launches but little to excite. The sense now is that we are waiting for Windows 10 and Universal Apps (single projects that target both phone and full Windows) to bring it together. Windows 10 though: launch in the second half of 2015 is a long time to wait. If Windows Phone market share diminishes between then and now, there may not be much left to revive.

Windows 10 and unified development won’t be Windows Phone’s saviour; mobile apps aren’t shrunken mobile apps (just look at a desktop website shrunken down to a mobile screen to realise that).

And the very first comment is from someone who has given up on Windows Phone. These are not good signs.

With WebRTC, the Skype’s no longer the limit >> Reuters

WebRTC, a free browser-based technology, looks set to change the way we communicate and collaborate, up-ending telecoms firms, online chat services like Skype and WhatsApp and remote conferencing on WebEx.

Web Real-Time Communication is a proposed Internet standard that would make audio and video as seamless as browsing text and images is now. Installed as part of the browser, video chatting is just a click away – with no need to download an app or register for a service.

WebRTC allows anyone to embed real-time voice, data and video communications into browsers, programs – more or less anything with a chip inside. Already, you can use a WebRTC-compatible browser like Mozilla’s Firefox to start a video call just by sending someone a link.

A terrific desktop browser technology that feels like it’s five or six years too late in reaching a standard. Video calling is on mobiles now, in a variety of different (incompatible) protocols, some cross-platform, some not.

Furious Google ended MPAA anti-piracy cooperation >> TorrentFreak

The leaked emails reveal that Google responded furiously to the perceived slur [in a press release put out by the MPAA in reaction to Google’s press release about its changes to its algorithm].

“At the highest levels [Google are] extremely unhappy with our statement,” an email from the MPAA to the studios reads.

“[Google] conveyed that they feel as if they went above and beyond what the law requires; that they bent over backwards to give us a heads up and in return we put out a ‘snarky’ statement that gave them no credit for the positive direction.”

In response to the snub, Google pressed the ‘ignore’ button. A top executive at Google’s policy department told the MPAA that his company would no longer “speak or do business” with the movie group.

In future Google would speak with the studios directly, since “at least three” had already informed the search engine that they “were very happy about the new features.”

Tablet Ownership is Growing Faster than Ownership of Any Other Connected Device, According to The NPD Group

Tablet ownership among US consumers is on the rise, and growing at a faster rate than that of any other connected device. According to The NPD Group’s Connected Intelligence, Connected Home Report, as of the third quarter of 2014 (Q3 2014) there were 109m tablets in use, up 35m from last year.

“Now that the tablet market is unmistakably past the early adopter stage we are able to gain visibility into what the user base is still doing with their devices, and in this case it’s often video focused activities,” said John Buffone, executive director, Connected Intelligence.

More than half, 55%, of tablet users report leveraging a video feature of their device. This includes video calling; taking, posting, and uploading videos; as well as watching video from a streaming service or app from a TV channel or pay TV provider. Video feature usage is even more prominent among younger consumers. Two-thirds (67%) of tablet users aged 18-34 use these video features compared to 53% of 35-54 year olds, and 45% of users age 55 and older. Further, watching video from a streaming service or TV channel app is the most common video focused behaviour.

By contrast, there are 176m smartphones in use, for the same population. You wonder why tablet sales are slowing at the high end (Apple)? Because the high end is saturated, and tablets probably have a four-year, not two-year, replacement cycle.

And video usage is going to suck the life out of the networks.

Workflow for iOS aims to simplify automation of complex multi-step tasks >> Apple Insider

Examples of tasks that can be accomplished with Workflow, as noted by developer DeskConnect, include:

• Add a home screen icon that calls a loved one
•
Make PDFs from Safari or any other app
•
Get directions to the nearest coffee shop in one tap
•
Tweet the song you’re listening to
•
Get all of the images on a Web page
•
Send a message including the last screenshot you took

Once an automated task has been created within Workflow, users can launch them from within the app, or via other apps using a Workflow Action Extension, in addition to the aforementioned home screen shortcut.

There are location-aware actions, and you can create a homescreen shortcut to call someone (that was the first one I created). Wonder if this – with its capability of putting shortcuts on the homecreen – will fall foul of Apple’s hokey-cokey app store policies.

Google shuts down Russian engineering office >> The Information

Amir Efrati:

Google launched engineering operations in the country in 2006, and its programmers, including a top coder named Petr Mitrichev, work on Web-search quality, developer tools and the Chrome browser, among other projects. It has a sizable Moscow office. Sales operations are expected to continue in some form.

It’s unclear exactly why Google is making the move now, but it is likely related to the Russian government’s decision to require Web companies, starting in 2016, to keep data related to its citizens within Russia as opposed to data centers outside the country. There also was an alleged recent raid by authorities of a high-profile foreign e-commerce firm in Moscow that sent shockwaves throughout the tech community.

Google’s flight from Russia follows similar moves by other well-known firms including Adobe Systems. Western venture and private equity firms also have pulled back their activities in Russia.

I think Efrati had the scoop on this; the WSJ followed it up.

Start up: goodbye Windows Phone, Panic get iCloudy, Google’s long deal, how the cyberwars started, and more

Posted on December 12, 2014 by charlesarthur

Stormy weather ahead for Windows Phone? Picture by MacBeales on Flickr.

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

Transmit iOS 1.1.1 [Updated] >> Panic Blog

UPDATE 12/11/14: After a considerate conversation with Apple, Transmit iOS 1.1.2 has been released with restored “Send To” functionality.

While the process feels less-than-perfect, this resolution is a nice reminder that, just as we thought, there are good people at Apple who will push hard to do the right thing. We hope you enjoy Transmit iOS 1.1.2.

I wrote about the strange back-and-forth that seems to be going on inside Apple over iOS 8 functionality for The Guardian. Developers are, to put it mildly, puzzled.

Apple contract loss could hit Google search revenue big time >> Investors.com

Google has potentially $9.4bn in gross revenue at risk if it’s unable to renew a contract with Apple for mobile Safari toolbar searches, says a Citigroup report, which says potential losses depend on how many Apple customers stick with Google’s search engine.

Google stock had fallen 3.5% as of Wednesday’s close since the Information reported on Nov. 24 that Google’s default search agreement with Apple might be in peril. Google stock, though, was up a small fraction in early trading Thursday.

That report said the Apple-Google deal is set to expire in 2015, possibly as soon as January. Apple’s iPhone 6 sales have been stronger than projected, increasing the potential impact.

Citigroup analyst Mark May estimates that 60% of Google’s 2014 mobile search revenue will come from its default search deal with Apple.

60% is a big number. I was previously wrong about what would happen in the Firefox search deal (Google was expected to renew; Yahoo got the deal in the US), so I’ll stand off this. But the intimation I’ve heard from Apple is that it still thinks Google offers the best search experience.

A Letter to Indian Mi Fans >> Hugo Barra on Facebook

Dear Mi fans,

We have been committed to continue our sales of Redmi Note and Redmi 1S devices in India. In the last 2 days alone, we received about 150,000 registrations for Redmi Note on Flipkart and the momentum has been terrific.

However, we have been forced to suspend sales in India until further notice due to an order passed by the Delhi High Court. As a law abiding company, we are investigating the matter carefully and assessing our legal options.

One way or another, Xiaomi’s going to have to pay up, and that’s going to hit its bottom line unless it comes up with its own patents.

FRAND-ly injunctions from India: has ex parte become the “standard”? >> Spicy IP

Following up on the injunction given against Xiaomi in the Indian high court blocking further sales of the Chinese handsets over standards-essential patents owned by Ericsson:

given that Ericsson sued Indian telecom companies in the past, one needs to carefully reflect on the impact that these patent wars are likely to have on national interest and the growth of the Indian telecom industry. While there are plenty of writings in the pharma space (the various tussles between MNC’s on the one hand and the local generic industry and public health/affordable medication on the other), we haven’t focussed much on the telecom terrain. The time is now ripe to focus on this technology sector as well!

See this ET article from Soma Das and Anandita Singh, which speaks of the latest order in the Ericcson vs Micromax dispute (covered by Rupali on SpicyIP) and reflects a bit on this oft-neglected “national interest” dimension:

“The Delhi High Court has asked homegrown handset maker Micromax to pay a royalty that amounts up to 1% of the selling price of its devices to Ericsson for using the Swedish equipment maker’s patents on technologies that are essential to manufacture the products. The interim order holds until December 31, 2015, the deadline set by the court to conclude the trial…

Apparently China sets a ceiling of 0.017% of adjusted sale value of handsets for the total SEP payout. India might be closer to that, but other countries won’t be. Xiaomi is going to have a problem.

Mysterious 2008 Turkey pipeline blast opened new cyberwar era >> Bloomberg

Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley:

The pipeline was outfitted with sensors and cameras to monitor every step of its 1,099 miles from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The blast that blew it out of commission didn’t trigger a single distress signal.

That was bewildering, as was the cameras’ failure to capture the combustion in eastern Turkey. But investigators shared their findings within a tight circle. The Turkish government publicly blamed a malfunction, Kurdish separatists claimed credit and BP Plc (BP/) had the line running again in three weeks. The explosion that lit up the night sky over Refahiye, a town known for its honey farms, seemed to be forgotten.

It wasn’t. For western intelligence agencies, the blowout was a watershed event. Hackers had shut down alarms, cut off communications and super-pressurized the crude oil in the line, according to four people familiar with the incident who asked not to be identified because details of the investigation are confidential. The main weapon at valve station 30 on Aug. 5, 2008, was a keyboard.

Surprising. Stuxnet followed not long after.

Because reading is fundamental >> Coding Horror

Jeff Atwood:

Let’s say you’re interested in World War II. Who would you rather have a discussion with about that? The guy who just skimmed the Wikipedia article, or the gal who read the entirety of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?

This emphasis on talking and post count also unnecessarily penalizes lurkers. If you’ve posted five times in the last 10 years, but you’ve read every single thing your community has ever written, I can guarantee that you, Mr. or Mrs. Lurker, are a far more important part of that community’s culture and social norms than someone who posted 100 times in the last two weeks. Value to a community should be measured every bit by how much you’ve read as much as how much you talked.

So how do we encourage reading, exactly?

You could do crazy stuff like require commenters to enter some fact from the article, or pass a basic quiz about what the article contained, before allowing them to comment on that article. On some sites, I think this would result in a huge improvement in the quality of the comments.

Though he thinks that’s sub-optimal. See what he does suggest. This is such a terrific post. Read it all.

Benedict Evans on Twitter: “The end of SMS http://t.co/0n9hCi9uJJ”

Graph sourced from IHS/ industry data/ Ofcom showing that SMSs per head peaking in 2011 for a wide range of countries (except, strangely, France). Over-the-top services are taking over.

I’ve given up on Windows Phone >> The Verge

Tom Warren is The Verge’s Microsoft correspondent; he started Winrumors.com (which is part of how he got the job at The Verge). He’s been using Windows Phone since 2010, along with other platforms. Now he’s going to stick with an iPhone 6:

I’ve always been slightly frustrated at the lack of Windows Phone apps, but as the gaps have been gradually filled, a new frustration has emerged: dead apps. Developers might be creating more and more Windows Phone apps, but the top ones are often left untouched with few updates or new features. That’s a big problem for apps like Twitter that are regularly updated on iOS and Android with features that never make it to Windows Phone. My frustration boiled over during the World Cup this year, as Twitter lit up with people talking about the matches. I felt left out using the official Windows Phone Twitter app because it didn’t have a special World Cup section that curated great and entertaining tweets, or country flags for hashtags.

That same sense of missing out extends elsewhere with Windows Phone. I rely on apps like Dark Sky on iPhone to give me a weather warning when it’s about to rain, or Slack and Trello to communicate with colleagues at The Verge. All three aren’t available on Windows Phone, and Dark Sky is particularly useful when you’re at a bar and it pings you a notification to let you know it’s going to rain in your location for the next 30 minutes. It lets you decide whether to grab another beer (tip: always grab another beer) or risk getting wet. It’s an essential app to me personally, and it’s a good example of how apps are changing the world.

Sites certified as secure often more vulnerable to hacking, scientists find >> Ars Technica

The so-called trust marks are sold by almost a dozen companies, including Symantec, McAfee, Trust-Guard, and Qualys. In exchange for fees ranging from less than $100 to well over $2,000 per year, the services provide periodic security scans of the site. If it passes, it receives the Internet equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of approval that’s prominently displayed on the homepage. Carrying images of padlocks and slogans such as “HackerProof,” the marks are designed to instill trust in users of the site by certifying it’s free of vulnerabilities that hackers prey on to steal credit card numbers and other valuable customer data.

A recently published academic paper discovered an almost universal lack of thoroughness among the 10 seal providers studied. For one thing, the scientists carried out two experiments showing that the scanners failed to detect a host of serious vulnerabilities. In one of the experiments, even the best-performing service missed more than half of the vulnerabilities known to afflict a site. In another, they uncovered flaws in certified sites that would take a typical criminal hacker less than one day to maliciously discover.

Well isn’t that so disappointing.

Why have I given up on Windows Phone? Blame Verizon >> ZDNet

Ed Bott – Ed Bott – has finally given up on Windows Phone. Not because of any faults in the platform itself, but because of the lock that carriers have in the US:

I’d love to leave Verizon behind completely and switch to another carrier, but I don’t have that luxury: Where I live and work, Verizon is the only carrier with a reliable signal.

After waiting in vain for months, I’ve finally given up. I used the Nokia Software Recovery Tool to restore the factory software to my Lumia Icon and put it on the shelf until Microsoft and Verizon figure things out. In the meantime, I’ve switched to an iPhone 6 Plus.

I’m probably not the only one.

And as long as US-based carriers, including the biggest of them all, Verizon, are able to drag their feet and ignore Windows as a mobile platform, it’s unlikely that anything Microsoft can do will be able to make a dent in its market share in the United States.

This highlights the real problem in the mobile phone market: it is carriers which are the “customers”, while people like you and I are “users”. The same disconnect existed with PCs in business (and particularly enterprise apps). There’s no simple solution, though. (Don’t say “Wi-Fi networks!”)

The decision by both Warren and Bott may be seen by some as canaries in the coalmine. Their reasons are slightly different – but both blame Microsoft. That feels significant.

Start up: Sony-signed malware, robots watching videos, Nexus 6’s lost finger lock, are tablets desktops?, and more

Posted on December 10, 2014 by charlesarthur

I love robots, by Duncan on Flickr.

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

Swedish police raid The Pirate Bay, site offline >> TorrentFreak

This morning, for the first time in months, The Pirate Bay disappeared offline. A number of concerned users emailed TF for information but at that point technical issues seemed the most likely culprit.

However, over in Sweden authorities have just confirmed that local police carried out a raid in Stockholm this morning as part of an operation to protect intellectual property.

“There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law,” read a statement from Paul Pintér, police national coordinator for IP enforcement.

‘Destover’ malware now digitally signed by Sony certificates >> Securelist

Functionally, the backdoor contains two C&Cs [command & control servers for computers taken over by the malware] and will alternately try to connect to both, with delays between connections:

208.105.226[.]235:443 – United States Champlain Time Warner Cable Internet Llc

203.131.222[.]102:443 – Thailand Bangkok Thammasat University

So what does this mean? The stolen Sony certificates (which were also leaked by the attackers) can be used to sign other malicious samples. In turn, these can be further used in other attacks. Because the Sony digital certificates are trusted by security solutions, this makes attacks more effective. We’ve seen attackers leverage trusted certificates in the past, as a means of bypassing whitelisting software and default-deny policies.

We’ve already reported the digital certificate to COMODO and Digicert and we hope it will be blacklisted soon. Kaspersky products will still detect the malware samples even if signed by digital certificates.

Everyone says “ooh! Thailand again!” (a previous part of the hack was linked to a hotel in Bangkok) but nobody says “hmm, Time Warner.” What if the hackers are based in the US? (Speaking of which, has Re/Code walked back – as one says – on its claim that North Korea was behind the Sony hack?)

Android source reveals scrapped Nexus 6 fingerprint sensor >> Ars Technica

Methods like “FINGERPRINT_ACQUIRED_TOO_FAST” and “FINGERPRINT_ACQUIRED_TOO_SLOW” in the fingerprint API suggest it supported a “swipe” style fingerprint reader, which, unlike Apple’s stationary fingerprint reader, requires the finger to be moved across a sensor at the right speed. Another file said the system would show a picture indicating which part of the finger would need to be scanned next, which again points to it being more like a swipe reader and less like a whole-fingerprint scanner.

The fingerprint API would be open to multiple apps, with a comment saying Google had built “A service to manage multiple clients that want to access the fingerprint HAL API.” Presumably this would allow apps like Google Wallet to use your fingerprint as authentication.

Motorola had a fingerprint scanner in the Atrix in 2011. Sucked.

The real reason why Google is dropping the tablet v desktop distinction – it’s the user context, stupid! >> Search Engine Land

Looking at the huge amount of search query data that they have access to, Google picked up on a pattern in the way people use their devices. What they noticed is that user context trumps everything else.

“User context” refers to the time, location and device from which a search is conducted, and as [group product manager of Global Mobile Search Ads at Google] Surojit [Chatterjee] put it: “User context drives what people search for, and the actions they take. So for example, say I am at home in the evening, and I’m doing a search. The actions that I will take will be largely the same if I’m using a smartphone, tablet or notebook, because the context is the same. Particularly between notebook and tablet, the query patterns are very similar.”

Similarly, the types of searches that we typically think of as “mobile” searches are the ones that people make when they’re out and about, away from home or work – and that user context is actually far more important than the physical device they are using.

Also: “Currently, 80% of tablet traffic occurs in the home, in the evening, and Google is much more interested in user context vs. user hardware.”

In other words, tablets are the new laptops/desktops.

Korea’s shrinking market: domestic smart device market size likely to shrink for two years >> BusinessKorea

[Research company IDC] mentioned a decline in smartphone supply as the main culprit of the negative growth of the domestic market. The smartphone segment used to account for 80% of the overall smart device market, but the domestic supply is forecast to drop by 20.5% to 17.54m units and the sales by 29.2% to 12.345trn won (US$11.1bn) this year.

“The smartphone market has already reached a saturation point, and the market downturn has been accelerated by the recent suspension of the business of mobile carriers, the Terminal Distribution Structure Improvement Act and the crisis of Pantech,” IDC Korea explained.

Non-tablet PC demand is on the decline as well, with more and more people using their smartphones and tablet PCs instead of conventional PCs.

That’s a steep drop in Samsung’s and LG’s homeland.

OMG! Mobile voice survey reveals teens love to talk >> Official Google Blog

Mobile voice searches have doubled in the past year, says Google, which commissioned a study of 1,400 US adults so it could commission an annoying infographic:

We weren’t surprised to find that teens — always ahead of the curve when it comes to new technology—talk to their phones more than the average adult. More than half of teens (13-18) use voice search daily — to them it’s as natural as checking social media or taking selfies. Adults are also getting the hang of it, with 41% talking to their phones every day and 56% admitting it makes them “feel tech savvy.”

Those numbers feel high. Would love to know how they break down between smartphone platform; Google doesn’t specify that, and doesn’t show what the actual questions on the survey are.

Given that about half of smartphone owners in the US have iPhones, could it be that a significant portion of those people who use voice commands (because that’s what the survey asks about – not voice search) were actually asking Siri to do stuff?

Note though how Google cleverly elides from “voice search” (what it offers in the Google app) to voice commands – which don’t necessarily involve Google at all.

Digitimes Research: Lenovo mobile device shipments to lead Samsung by 9 million units in 2015 >> Digitimes

Note that by “mobile” it’s excluding smartphones, which might strike some as contrary. But anyway, Jim Hisiao and Joanne Chien report:

Despite difficulties to achieve further shipment growths for its tablet business, Lenovo with its advantage as the largest notebook brand vendor worldwide and aggressive promotions of its inexpensive and phone-enabled tablets is expected to achieve 50m in total tablet and notebook shipments in 2015, widening its gap with Samsung to 9m units.

Because tablet demand will weaken in 2015, Lenovo’s and Samsung’s strategies for the mobile computing device market are expected to focus on maintaining their tablet shipments. Digitimes Research believes Lenovo’s shipments for tablets with phone functions to emerging markets in 2015 are expected to remain strong…

…Samsung’s aggressive expansion of its tablet product line in the first half of 2014 did not receive a good response from the market. Since the company is expected to turn conservative about its tablet business and place most of the resources on the smartphone business in 2015, Digitimes Research expects the Korea-based vendor’s tablet shipments to drop to 36m units in the year.

As for the notebook business, after phasing out from the market in the second half of 2013, Samsung’s shipment volume has dropped rapidly and is only expected to reach 5m units in 2015.

Samsung’s essential weakness compared to Lenovo is its failure to make any profit from selling PCs.

Editorial: No comments. An experiment in elevating the conversation >> St Louis Post-Dispatch

Last Sunday, we challenged our region to have the serious discussion on race that it has been avoiding for decades. Such difficult discussions are made more challenging when, just to present a thoughtful point of view, you have to endure vile and racist comments, shouting and personal attacks.

If you’ve watched many of the talking heads on cable television try to discuss the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, you know what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, sometimes comments on newspaper stories and columns have a similar effect.

In fact, it has a name: “The nasty effect.”

That’s what University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele dubbed the negative effect certain comments can have on a reader’s understanding.

Comments on general news sites are a waste of the readers’ (and arguably writers’) time. I wonder how much further this trend will go.

Apple trial continues, without a plaintiff for now >> Associated Press

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers scolded Marianna Rosen and her attorneys on Monday for not providing more complete information about the iPods Rosen had purchased. That came after Apple lawyers successfully argued that the devices purchased by Rosen were not among those affected by the lawsuit.

But the judge also rejected Apple’s argument that the case should be dismissed because it’s too late to name a new plaintiff. She ordered the attorneys suing Apple to identify a new person, by Tuesday, who can serve as a lead plaintiff.

Both sides estimate about 8 million people bought iPods that are potentially affected by the lawsuit, which focuses on Apple’s use of restrictive software that prevented iPods from playing music purchased from competitors of Apple’s iTunes store. The plaintiffs say that amounted to unfair competition and that Apple was able to sell iPods at inflated prices because the software froze makers of competing devices out of the market.

Apple is carving out entirely new areas of law. There was the antitrust case where it had the minority share (in ebooks), and now a class action (also with antitrust implications) where none of the plaintiffs shows up. Presumably a suitable plaintiff will have to show that they bought music from Real and that it was deleted… but that they then couldn’t reload it or play it on any device, or only on the iPods? Did Apple explicitly promise that they would be able to buy music bought from anywhere on it? (I don’t think so.) The limits of this case aren’t clear.

Robots, not humans, fake 23% of web video ad views, study finds >> Bloomberg

Computers being remotely operated by hackers account for almost one in four views of digital video ads worldwide, according to a study that estimates such fraud will cost advertisers $6.3bn next year.

The fake views, which also account for 11% of other display ads, often take place in the middle of the night when the owners of the hijacked computers are asleep.

The result is retailers, automakers and other companies paying for web advertisements that are never seen by humans, or are seen by fewer people than they are paying for, according to the report released today by the Association of National Advertisers, whose members include Wal-Mart Stores, Ford Motor Co. and Wendy’s.

“We’re being robbed,” said Bob Liodice, president and chief executive officer of the New York-based association, which has 640 members that spend more than $250bn a year in advertising. “This isn’t about system inefficiencies or process sloppiness. This is about criminal activity.”

Between this and Google’s announcement that half of all online ads aren’t actually viewed, a lot of the basis for the online advertising business begins to look a bit shaky.

China’s polluted soil is tainting the country’s food supply >> Businessweek

A new study from the China National Environmental Monitoring Center examines the results of nearly 5,000 soil samples from vegetable plots across China. Roughly a quarter of the sampled areas were polluted. The most common problem is high soil concentrations of heavy metals—such as cadmium, lead, and zinc—which leach out from open mines and industrial sites and into surrounding farmland.

Plants grown in tainted soil can absorb heavy metals. People who ingest high levels of heavy metals over an extended time can develop organ damage and weakened bones, among other medical conditions.

Links: self-driving cars in the rain (oh dear..), iBeacon in the Louvre, the unseen digital ads, bitcoin gets easier, and more

Posted on December 5, 2014 by charlesarthur

Apparently this stuff affects self-driving cars. Photo by Anthony Quintano on Flickr.

A selection of 6 afternoon links for you. Enjoy to the full extent of the law. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Louvre Museum’s DNA >> MIT SENSEable City Lab

How much time would you take to smile back at the Mona Lisa? Today, sophisticated Bluetooth signal tracking allows us to map how visitors move through a museum like the Louvre in Paris – what galleries they visit, what path they take, and how long they spend in front of each piece of artwork. Join us for a look inside one of the world’s largest museums… to see the people in front of the paintings.

Surprisingly, people who stay for long or short times don’t vary that much in where they go. They just go at different paces.

This is how bad self-driving cars suck in the rain >> Jalopnik

(Jump forward to about 5 minutes in.)

The issues with the KAIST Unmanned Systems Research Group’s car were numerous, but the biggest problems had less to do with the slippery road surface and more to do with the visual systems. Those cameras and LIDAR arrays are dependent on a clear view, and with the angle of the car shifting and the direction of the sun, the sensors fail to pick up everything from street signs to lane markings and even pedestrians. And it just keeps getting worse.3

The team has to hit the emergency stop button at least twice, veers onto the side of the road, doesn’t see a curb and almost slams into a light pole, and then smacks into a barrier when parking.

56% of digital ads served are never seen, says Google >> Advertising Age

An incredible 56.1% of ads on the internet are not seen by humans, according to new research released today by Google.

“With the advancement of new technologies we now know that many display ads that are served never actually have the opportunity to be seen by a user,” said Google group product manager Sanaz Ahari in a blog post.

Those ads appear outside the viewable area of a browser window. Once you factor in bots, even fewer ads are seen by the people advertisers are paying to reach.

Bitcoin price decline sparks rare mining difficulty drop >> Coindesk

Mining difficulty determines how difficult it is to hash a new block and varies based on the amount of computing power used by miners on the bitcoin network. Bitcoin’s growing popularity has attracted more computing power to the network, meaning that the difficulty has been steadily increasing for some time.

However, stagnant pricing has caused a reduction in the hash rate over the past few weeks, resulting in the slight difficulty decrease. The estimated next difficulty level is 39,884,219,890, or -0.31%.

The sheer size of the bitcoin network ensures resilience and stability, but the hash rate has been stagnant for weeks and started declining in the first days of December.

This actually makes me think that bitcoin might have a chance as a medium of exchange. Once its price is stable for long enough, it becomes unattractive to speculators – but ideal for people looking to transfer value.

The SSD endurance experiment: two freaking petabytes >> The Tech Report

Geoff Gasior:

Our SSD Endurance Experiment has left four casualties in its wake so far. Representatives from the Corsair Neutron Series GTX, Intel 335 Series, Kingston HyperX 3K, and Samsung 840 Series all perished to satisfy our curiosity. Each one absorbed far more damage than its official endurance specification promised—and far more than the vast majority of users are likely to inflict.

The last victim fell at 1.2PB, which is barely a speck in the rear-view mirror for our remaining subjects. The 840 Pro and a second HyperX 3K have now reached two freaking petabytes of writes. To put that figure into perspective, the SSDs in my main desktop have logged less than two terabytes of writes over the past couple years. At this rate, it’ll take me a thousand years to reach that total.

They’re wayyy over spec. Great experiment.

Start up (2): LA schools iPad subpoena, Yandex wants Google antitrust, are you a codebreaker?, and more

Posted on December 4, 2014 by charlesarthur

An Enigma coding machine. By visualtheology on Flickr.

An afternoon selection of 6 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

This is the second of two posts of links today. (It’s an experiment.) Like? Don’t like? Let me know.

Gallery of Fluid Motion >> American Physical Society

The energy deposition in a liquid drop on a nanosecond time scale by impact of a laser pulse can induce various reactions, such as vaporization or plasma generation. The response of the drop can be extremely violent: The drop gets strongly deformed and propelled forward at several m/s, and subsequently breaks up or even explodes. These effects are used in a controlled manner during the generation of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light in nanolithography machines for the fabrication of leading-edge semiconductor microchips. Detailed understanding of the fundamentals of this process is of key importance in order to advance the latest lithography machines.

Yeah, whatever – the video of a LASER shooting an INK DROP at a bazillion frames per second is SUPER COOL.

Federal grand jury subpoenaed documents from L.A. Unified >> LA Times

LA school district officials turned over 20 boxes of documents Monday in response to a federal grand jury subpoena for documents related to its troubled iPad project, officials confirmed Tuesday afternoon.

The subpoena asked for documents related to the bidding process as well as to the winning bidders in the $1.3bn effort to provide a computer to every student, teacher and campus administrator.

The contract, approved in June 2013, was with Apple to supply iPads; Pearson provided the curriculum as a subcontractor.

The investigation is a broad one, seeking records related to Apple and Pearson that predate the bidding process or that involve other projects, according to the subpoena, which was provided to The [LA] Times.

A $500m contract that’s looking increasingly dodgy. The superintendent, John Deasy, is criticised for having (unspecified) “close ties” to “Apple executives” including Tim Cook – though you’d expect Cook might find some time for someone spending half a billion dollars.

Could make a fun trial, if it comes to anything.

Yandex CEO Backs Google Antitrust Probes as Search Share Drops – Bloomberg

Yandex chief executive officer Arkady Volozh said he supports antitrust investigations of Google, whose Android operating system is helping it gain market share against Russia’s biggest search engine.

Android’s default options push users to Google services including search and maps, limiting consumers’ ability to choose such services from Yandex or other vendors, Volozh said in an interview at the company’s Moscow offices. The operating system has 85% of Russia’s smartphone market, according to researcher IDC.

“This is very similar to what Microsoft was doing a decade ago,” Volozh said. “They were trying to use dominance in operating systems to promote their Internet Explorer browser and were finally banned from doing this. The same is now happening with Android – Google dominates in it and runs practices incompatible with fair competition…

“I fully agree with the investigation the EU began to change the situation,” Volozh said. “If we want to have different players in Internet services, if we want startups continuing to evolve in different spheres – search, commerce, maps, mail, etc. – and new apps emerging, there should be a possibility for these apps to be freely delivered to consumers.”

I understand that European Commission inquiries to Android handset makers have been extremely detailed – to the slight concern of the handset makers. Yandex would like a situation where it could bid to be the default search engine on an Android handset.

Question is, will the EC seek to force that?

Could you have been a codebreaker at Bletchley Park? >> Daily Telegraph

Tom Chivers:

In January 1942, a series of letters to The Daily Telegraph had claimed that the paper’s crossword wasn’t hard enough. It could be solved in a matter of minutes, they said; so a man called WAJ Gavin, the chairman of the Eccentric Club, suggested this be put to the test. He put up a £100 prize, to be donated to charity in the event that anyone could do it, and Arthur Watson, the paper’s then editor, arranged a competition in the newsroom on Fleet Street.

Five people beat the 12-minute deadline, although one, the fastest, had misspelled a word and was disqualified. The puzzle was printed in the next day’s edition, January 13 1942, so that everyone could try their hand (see the puzzle further down this article). And there the matter might have rested – but, unknown to the Telegraph and the contestants, the War Office was watching. Stanley Sedgewick, one of those who took part, said: “Several weeks later, I received a letter marked ‘Confidential’ inviting me, as a consequence of taking part in ‘The Daily Telegraph Crossword Time Test’, to make an appointment to see Col Nichols of the General Staff, who ‘would very much like to see you on a matter of national importance’.”

Bonus: that cryptic crossword for you to try to solve in less than 12 minutes. And then await a call.

Touchscreen clamshell notebooks to be phased out of the market >> Digitimes

Despite Microsoft and Intel aggressively promoting clamshell-type touchscreen notebooks, orders for such devices from vendors have already disappeared completely, and after existing inventories in the channel are cleared, this type of notebook will be phased out of the industry, according to sources from notebook makers.

In 2015, vendors will turn to focus on conventional non-touchscreen notebooks as well as 2-in-1 devices. Since touchscreen controls are not a necessary feature for notebooks, and increase costs, demand for touchscreen notebooks has been weak since their launch.

Unclear if this applies to Chromebooks too, but feels unsurprising.

Be wary of ‘order confirmation’ emails >> Krebs on Security

If you receive an email this holiday season asking you to “confirm” an online e-commerce order or package shipment, please resist the urge to click the included link or attachment: Malware purveyors and spammers are blasting these missives by the millions each day in a bid to trick people into giving up control over their computers and identities.

An “order confirmation” malware email blasted out by the Asprox spam botnet recently.
Seasonal scams like these are a perennial scourge of the holidays, mainly because the methods they employ are reliably successful. Crooks understand that it’s easier to catch would-be victims off-guard during the holidays. This goes even for people who generally know better than to click on links and attachments in emails that spoof trusted brands and retailers, because this is a time of year when many people are intensely focused on making sure their online orders arrive before Dec. 25.

This is the second post of the day. Let me know if you’d rather just have a single post.

Start up: Android bloatware, did vinyl really sell?, Samsung shakes up, and more

Posted on December 2, 2014 by charlesarthur

Bloated Santa is here for you! Image by Lynn Friedman on Flickr.

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

Carriers can now install apps on Android handsets without customers’ permission >> Forbes

Matt Hickey:

The fact that bloatware was a notorious failure doesn’t mean that everyone’s been paying attention, of course. A company called Digital Turbine has a new service – called Ignite — for Android handsets that allows a carrier to install apps on customers’ smartphones “for more advertising revenue” whenever it wishes. In other words, carriers can now push garbage apps onto their users handsets to make a few bucks here and there whether the user wants it or not, and it seems as if the practice is perfectly legal.

Digital Turbine claims Verizon and T-Mobile as customers (among others), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that those carriers are currently using the service to push apps, but it does mean that they could if they wished. That said, some users have as recently as this week claimed that they were pushed updates called “DT_Ignite” for “performance enhancements”. The update apparently asks for permission to access almost any part of the phone’s system, making it not just annoying but also potentially dangerous.

So it’s not quite “without permission”, but it’s certainly “without transparency”. Users who noticed it find it annoying.

Google Glass deal thrusts Intel deeper into wearable devices >> WSJ

An Intel chip will replace a processor from Texas Instruments Inc. included in the first version of Glass, the people said.

Intel plans to promote Glass to companies such as hospital networks and manufacturers, while developing new workplace uses for the device, according to one of the people.

Google launched the Internet-connected eyewear in 2012 as a consumer gadget, but it was criticized by privacy advocates and widely regarded as nerdy. But Glass shows early signs of catching on as a workplace-computing device.

Through a program it calls Glass at Work, Google is working with software developers including Augmedix Inc. and APX Labs LLC to encourage use of Glass in industries such as health care, construction and manufacturing where employees work with their hands but need information.

Smart; no doubt Intel will subsidise it, as part of its desperate ongoing efforts to get into mobile. However Google still seems to think consumers will want Glass: 300 staff work on Glass, but only 5% (that’s 15) focus on “Glass at Work”.

Huawei Technologies has big plans, faces big questions >> The Seattle Times

One area Huawei is unlikely to return to, unless the market changes: Windows Phone.

Huawei produced two models running Microsoft’s smartphone OS before it said it was putting its plans for future Windows Phones on hold.

“We didn’t make any money in Windows Phone,” Kelly said. “Nobody made any money in Windows Phone.”

Huawei is also facing stiff competition in the smartphone market from Beijing-based Xiaomi, which in the third quarter of this year bypassed Huawei to become the world’s third biggest smartphone vendor, according to IDC.

Xiaomi, founded just four years ago, has ascended quickly due mainly to a strategy of offering high-end features for low prices, resulting in high-volume sales figures, especially in its home country.

Huawei says it isn’t looking to compete in the low-margin arena, and is instead concentrating on high-end phones.

“We will lose volume in that shift,” Kelly acknowledged.

Why Eric Schmidt doesn’t know how Google works >> VentureBeat

Darius Lahoutifard is an entrepreneur with a withering critique of Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg’s new book “How Google Works”:

the authors are confusing causation and correlation. Schmidt points out a series of characteristics of Google as a company and presents them as the reasons for Google’s success, but in my opinion, they are all consequences of Google’s success.

For example the authors write: “Their plan for creating that great search engine, and all the other great services was equally simple: Hire as many talented software engineers as possible, and give them freedom.” Well, this worked because the search was already successful enough to fund that freedom. I would love to see one single company that isn’t dominating a market with no cash cow in-flow that can succeed without strict discipline, sharp focus, hard work, and hands-on management.

If this management style is the reason for Google’s success, then why have the majority of initiatives at Google either failed or been financially inefficient and unprofitable? If they were standalone startups, they would have most likely already been dead.

Another special characteristic of Google is its sales force. When interacting with sales people at Google, I am shocked to see how untrained and inefficient they are.

No punches pulled. At all. (Google was very, very focussed as a startup. The post-IPO moonshot stuff has been a bit hit-and-miss. Well, miss, apart from Android and Maps.)

Small Data: Is lots of vinyl being sold? >> BBC News

Anthony Reuben:

This year is the first time that more than a million vinyl albums have been sold [in the UK] since 1996. This was based on Official Charts data released by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), going back to 1994, which was when they started keeping count.

There was nothing particularly wrong with the figures, except that 1994 is quite a bad year to start looking at vinyl, as the graph above shows.

Look at the graph, and you suddenly realise what a non-story this was.

Samsung mobile chief survives shakeup >> Korea Times

“We expect the mobile business will get better under Shin’s leadership,” Lee Joon, head of communications at Samsung’s Future Strategy Office, told reporters in a briefing.
He explained its critical consumer electronics business affiliate had no option but to pursue “stability” rather than radical changes as Chairman Lee, who makes key decisions, was still recuperating.

Now, Samsung is seeing a transition of power to Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong.

“When the junior Lee takes over completely, then Samsung will see real changes in management,” said a senior executive at a components affiliate by telephone.

Samsung Electronics only promoted three presidents, the lowest number since 2008.

“This year, the performance of Samsung Electronics and other affiliates wasn’t that good,” Lee Joon said.

Is Uber’s rider database a sitting duck for hackers? >> The Washington Post

A person who had a job interview in Uber’s Washington office in 2013 said he got the kind of access enjoyed by actual employees for an entire day, even for several hours after the job interview ended. He happily crawled through the database looking up the records of people he knew – including a family member of a prominent politician – before the seemingly magical power disappeared.

“What an Uber employee would have is everything, complete,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the company.

A more sophisticated – and malicious – person with that access could have scraped data on a massive scale, then used powerful analytical software to learn things that Uber users might want to keep private, for professional or personal reasons.

So for once, the headline doesn’t conform to Betteridge’s Law.

Rohinni produces the ‘world’s thinnest’ LED lights using 3D printing, and it adds light anywhere >> 3ders.org

The paper-thin Lightpaper is made by mixing ink and tiny LEDs together and then printing the mixture out on a conductive layer. This layer is then sealed between two additional layers. The tiny diodes are about the size of a red blood cell. When a current runs through the paper, the tiny, randomly-dispersed diodes will light up.

Rohinni’s LightPaper is much thinner than current lighting technology OLED, which has been used in flat screen televisions and allowed TV screens thinner than tenth of an inch to be manufactured. But it seems that the company is more interested in using LightPaper in the automotive industry, as a new means for make excellent taillights, or branding.

Its application potential was endless, said Nick Smoot, chief marketing officer. He said they were thinking about printing lamp shades, so lamps would not need light bulbs. “Anywhere there is a light, this could replace that.” He also said that eventually people will be able to print their own at home. “You will be able to design and print you own light,” he said. “Right now we are printing the light, but we are going to be putting that back in the hands of the people.”

An easily repairable and upgradeable mobile phone >> Puzzlephone

Another modular smartphone, like the Google Ara, but more limited: you can replace the battery, screen and OS. (It’s not clear what else.) Designed and built in Finland, and aims to start shipping in 2015.

Steve Jobs’ testimony expected to play major role in iPod antitrust lawsuit >> Mac Rumors

The complaint focuses on Apple’s older iPod models, which only supported music purchased on iTunes and songs downloaded from CDs. Also being disputed is Apple’s FairPlay system of encoding purchased music, which limited music playback to the iPod and not competing MP3 players. In the suit, consumers claim Apple violated antitrust law by deliberately limiting interoperability with competitors, while exclusively promoting its products and services.

The email testimony is expected to paint Steve Jobs as an aggressive businessman who worked hard to ensure the success of the iPod and iTunes. This success often came at the expense of smaller competitors, which were not allowed to connect to Apple’s popular iPod ecosystem. In one already released email, Jobs addresses Apple’s lack of support for the-then upcoming MusicMatch music store.

“We need to make sure that when Music Match launches their download music store they cannot use iPod,” he wrote. “Is this going to be an issue?”

This relates to 2004 and 2005. Apple will argue that the purpose was to improve the platform for the consumer. (Side note: in January 2013 the US FTC decided that Google’s manipulation of search results to the disfavour of competitors was not an antitrust matter, because it benefited consumers.)