Tag Archives: qualcomm

Start up: hacking Dems, Theranos loses another, Apple’s non-chatbot chatbots, slimmer Xbox!, and more

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Remember when Obama had a BlackBerry? He doesn’t any more – though he’s not saying what he does have. Photo by rowdyman on Flickr.

Don’t you dare sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. No, really.

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

A selection of 14 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump • The Washington Post

»Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts.

The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some GOP political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.

A Russian Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such intrusions.

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link to this extract

 

The evil that is VPAID ads • Google+

Artem Russakovskii:

»A few months ago, I complained about the insane state of today’s advertising and the evil that is VPAID ads.

These ads destroy performance, leech bandwidth by 10s of megabytes, and are served by major ad networks, including Google’s own AdX and AdSense.

Today, these VPAID ads are as popular as ever – and that is just disgusting. They’re the real cancer of the advertising industry.

To showcase just how evil they still are, I took a single AdX ad tag and put it on an otherwise empty page. A static image ad loads, but it’s secretly a VPAID one. It then randomly switches to a video, then back to a static image, then back again – it’s like a never-ending self-reloading cascade of garbage.

Right now after several minutes of just leaving this one single ad open, I’m at 53MB downloaded and 5559 requests. By the time I finished typing this, I was at 6140 requests. A single ad did this. Without reloading the page, just leaving it open.

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Obama finally upgraded from his BlackBerry • The Verge

Jacob Kastrenakes:

»President Obama has finally been allowed to replace his BlackBerry with something more modern — but he apparently isn’t thrilled with this new phone either.

“I get the thing, and they’re all like, ‘Well, Mr. President, for security reasons … it doesn’t take pictures, you can’t text, the phone doesn’t work, … you can’t play your music on it,'” Obama said during an appearance on The Tonight Show this week. “Basically, it’s like, does your three year old have one of those play phones?”

Obama’s been joking about his awful phone situation for years now. While his BlackBerry was considered surprisingly high-tech when he came into office, the situation quickly changed. As far back as 2010, Obama called using his BlackBerry “no fun,” and then a few years ago he lamented that security concerns prevent him from using an iPhone. While discussing his BlackBerry on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last year, Obama started laughing after a single person applauded. “The one old guy there,” Obama said, “He’s my age. Somebody my generation.”

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Obama came into office eight years ago, and so was campaigning as much as ten years ago, when his use of its seemed radical. Times change. The unanswered question: what is he using?
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Walgreen terminates partnership with blood-testing firm Theranos • WSJ

Michael Siconolfi, Christopher Weaver and John Carreyrou:

»Drugstore operator Walgreen Co. formally ended a strained alliance with Theranos Inc. as regulators near a decision on whether to impose sanctions against the embattled Silicon Valley firm.

Some officials at the Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. unit had grown frustrated at not getting more details and documentation from Theranos after learning it had corrected tens of thousands of blood tests, including many performed on samples collected from patients at Walgreens pharmacies, according to people familiar with the partnership.

In a news release late Sunday, Walgreens said it had told Theranos it was terminating their nearly three-year-old partnership, effective immediately, and that it was shutting down Theranos lab-testing services in Walgreens locations…

…The move is a significant blow to Theranos. The 40 Theranos blood-draw sites inside Walgreens stores in Arizona, which the company calls “wellness centers,” have been the primary source of revenue for Theranos and its conduit to consumers, analysts say. The tie-up also has given the blood-testing firm a stamp of credibility since it was publicly announced in September 2013.

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This feels like the third act of a Greek tragedy; Theranos certainly sounds like it should come from a Greek word, perhaps meaning “the aching desire to find a cheap way to test blood”, but I can’t find a meaningful translation anywhere. Presently being turned into a screenplay, with Jennifer Lawrence slated to play Elizabeth Holmes, so the big question is: will Bradley Cooper play John Carreyrou of the WSJ who exposed it all?

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Apple’s response to the chatbot craze doesn’t involve any chatbots • VentureBeat

Jordan Novet:

»Microsoft has been letting developers build integrations into Skype, and Facebook has been doing the same with Messenger. Google has revealed related plans for its forthcoming Allo app. Kik, Line, and Telegram have begun accepting outside integrations, as well. Even in the parallel universe of enterprise software, this trend is playing out — Slack is the greatest example there.

But all of these companies have chosen a text-messaging interface through which people will talk to other services — namely chatbots. Apple, in its infinite Apple-ness, is circumventing the hype around bots and will be simply letting developers build app extensions that live inside of a new “app drawer,” which users will open in Messages on iOS 10 by tapping the little blue A button that historically stands for App Store.

Developers can build these iMessage Apps using the iOS software development kit (SDK), which became available today in the beta release of Xcode 8. It’s possible to fine-tune the look and functionality of these mini apps, so that they don’t just look like the rest of Messages. (Documentation is already available.)

Onstage today, Apple’s Craig Federighi talked about a Square Cash iMessage app. It’s a bright green widget that pops up in place of the keyboard. A user selected $200 as the amount on a scrollable dial and then hit the pay button to pay that amount to the message recipient. The result was a box right underneath an earlier text message with a big $200 bill and a link to “tap here to deposit this cash.”

Federighi also demonstrated a DoorDash iMessage App through which multiple people could collaborate on one food delivery order. In a message bubble, this iMessage App displayed a dish from San Francisco restaurant and food truck operator Curry Up Now, with a little red DoorDash logo in the top left. Underneath that, there was some text — “3 people,” “Brian Croll added 2 items,” and a grand total so far of $48.68. “So I could just tap in and see what’s going on,” Federighi said. After tapping on the widget he was confronted with a full screen showing more detail, courtesy of DoorDash — a menu, prices, estimated delivery time, and a “view group cart” button. From there, Federighi checked out the cart and then added to it. When he was done, the DoorDash widget that had originally appeared in his Messages group chat was updated to reflect the changes to the order.

«

In other words, you don’t need to talk to machines to get machines to do your bidding. I don’t get the chatbot thing; it seems like wasted effort.
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iOS 10.0 • Apple Developer documentation

»In iOS 10, the NSUserActivity object includes the mapItem property, which lets you provide location information that can be used in other contexts. For example, if your app displays hotel reviews, you can use the mapItem property to hold the location of the hotel the user is viewing so that when the user switches to a travel planning app, that hotel’s location is automatically available. And if you support app search, you can use the new text-based address component properties in CSSearchableItemAttributeSet, such as thoroughfare and postalCode, to fully specify locations to which the user may want to go. Note that when you use the mapItem property, the system automatically populates the contentAttributeSet property, too.

To share a location with the system, be sure to specify latitude and longitude values, in addition to values for the address component properties in CSSearchableItemAttributeSet. It’s also recommended that you supply a value for the namedLocation property, so that users can view the name of the location, and the phoneNumbers property, so that users can use Siri to initiate a call to the location.

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So you can switch apps and have Siri call the hotel you were just looking at. Quite neat. Also notable in the documentation: “True Tone”, the ambient display adjustment presently only on the 9.7in iPad Pro, becomes part of the OS. It’ll surely be on the forthcoming iPhones.

And why link to this but not the Android N documentation? Because this will be on about half of iOS 10-capable devices within a month of release. Android M, released last year, is on perhaps 100m devices after nine months.
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Intel gets chip order from Apple, its first major mobile win • Bloomberg

Ian King and Scott Moritz:

»Apple’s next iPhone will use modems from Intel Corp., replacing Qualcomm chips in some versions of the new handset, a move by the world’s most-valuable public company to diversify its supplier base.

Apple has chosen Intel modem chips for the iPhone used on AT&T’s U.S. network and some other versions of the smartphone for overseas markets, said people familiar with the matter. IPhones on Verizon Communications’s network will stick with parts from Qualcomm, which is the only provider of the main communications component of current versions of Apple’s flagship product. Crucially for Qualcomm, iPhones sold in China will work on Qualcomm chips, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public.

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So this seems like Qualcomm keeps the CDMA versions, but Intel gets the GSM market. China might be a toss-up.
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Devices able to run iOS 10, biggest iOS release ever • Apple

»iOS 10 will be available this fall as a free software update for iPhone 5 and later, all iPad Air and iPad Pro models, iPad 4th generation, iPad mini 2 and later, and iPod touch 6th generation.

«

Ah, so that’s a lot clearer. There seemed to be suggestion on Monday that it would run on the iPad 2 and iPad 3; but they’re explicitly not in the list for the iPad. (Nor is the first iPad mini.)

The minimum iPad spec is the iPad 4, or iPad mini 2; for the phones, it’s the iPhone 5/C (which are the same thing).
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Microsoft reveals the new, slimmer Xbox One S, coming this August • TechCrunch

Brian Heater:

»The system the company showed off today arrived in a bright white color (“robot white,” according to press materials), a lightening up of the previous console. The device will come with a vertical stand, so users can decide how they want to orient it on their shelf.

The Xbox One S is 40% slimmer than the last version. Inside you’ll find a hard drive sporting up to 2TB and an integrated power supply. The new console features a built-in IR blaster, front-facing USB port (there are still two on the rear) and does 4K video. The One S also features HDR video support, for a more vibrantly colored gaming experience and higher contrast between dark colors and light.

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One area that smartphones and tablets haven’t quite swallowed up. Notable how much more storage they’re offering; even as games are increasingly downloaded from the cloud, gamers want more local storage to keep data.
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This USB adapter is Microsoft’s final admission that Kinect failed • The Verge

Tom Warren:

»Hardware planning takes years, and it’s clear Microsoft quickly realized that bundling Kinect was a mistake. The new Xbox One S doesn’t even include a Kinect port, and Microsoft has created a USB adapter that you’ll need to use if you want Kinect support. It’s a free adapter if you already own an Xbox One and Kinect…

…Microsoft is now working to bring Cortana to the Xbox One in an update this summer. While it was originally supposed to debut last year, Microsoft announced Cortana would require Kinect at E3 last year, before mysteriously delaying the feature. It’s clear part of that delay was related to getting headsets working with Cortana, and you won’t need a Kinect to use the digital assistant this summer.

The removal of the Kinect port on the Xbox One S is the final admission that Microsoft’s accessory is dead. It’s hard to imagine that the Project Scorpio console will re-introduce a Kinect port next year, and the accessory wasn’t even mentioned during any of Microsoft’s demos on stage. Microsoft claimed at E3 last year that “there are games actually that are coming out for Kinect,” but at E3 this year the only mention is a USB adapter that admits Kinect failed.

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Kinect is such an odd footnote in tech history: the fastest-selling piece of tech ever, considered a potentially useful tool for surgeons, and now an undesired add-on.
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Follow the sun • The Economist

»Led by big projects in these two countries [China and India], global solar-energy capacity rose by 26% last year. More remarkable is the decline in its cost. Studies of the “levelised cost” of electricity, which estimate the net present value of the costs of a generating system divided by the expected output over its lifetime, show solar getting close to gas and coal as an attractively cheap source of power. Auctions of long-term contracts to purchase solar power in developing countries such as South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Peru and Mexico provide real-world evidence that such assumptions may even prove to be conservative (see chart).

In sunny places solar power is now “shoulder to shoulder” with gas, coal and wind, says Cédric Philibert of the International Energy Agency, a prominent forecaster. He notes that since November 2014, when Dubai awarded a project to build 200MW of solar power at less than $60 a megawatt hour (MWh), auctions have become increasingly competitive.

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And that’s because the price of solar panels has fallen by 80% since 2010. Hell of a thing.
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Yes, there have been aliens • The New York Times

Adam Frank, who co-wrote a scientific paper on this vexed question:

»Instead of asking how many civilizations currently exist, we asked what the probability is that ours is the only technological civilization that has ever appeared. By asking this question, we could bypass the factor about the average lifetime of a civilization. This left us with only three unknown factors, which we combined into one “biotechnical” probability: the likelihood of the creation of life, intelligent life and technological capacity.

You might assume this probability is low, and thus the chances remain small that another technological civilization arose. But what our calculation revealed is that even if this probability is assumed to be extremely low, the odds that we are not the first technological civilization are actually high. Specifically, unless the probability for evolving a civilization on a habitable-zone planet is less than one in 10 billion trillion, then we are not the first.

To give some context for that figure: In previous discussions of the Drake equation, a probability for civilizations to form of one in 10 billion per planet was considered highly pessimistic. According to our finding, even if you grant that level of pessimism, a trillion civilizations still would have appeared over the course of cosmic history.

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So howcome they haven’t got in touch asking to borrow money? (The paper is available in full for free.)
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Motorola confirms Moto 360 Gen. 1 will not receive Android Wear 2.0 update • Android Police

David Ruddock:

»While you may have seen reports via Motorola’s Twitter account that the Moto 360 Gen. 1 would not be receiving Wear 2.0, we decided to follow up with Motorola’s official PR this morning on this news and received direct confirmation: the Moto 360 Gen. 1 won’t get Wear 2.0.

The Moto 360 was heavily hyped leading up to its launch nearly two years ago, and understandably so: a [semi-]circular display made it stand out from pretty much any smartwatch that had been released previously. While LG’s G Watch R was, in my opinion, a better take on the circular watch, the Moto 360 still stood out with its small bezels and minimalistic, lugless style. It really was, and is, a striking device.

Still, it seems more than a bit frustrating that Android Wear devices – which Google has time and again implied shouldn’t “age” like your smartphone does as new OS updates launch – are seemingly little-different in terms of support windows than smartphones. Watches, after all, are supposed to last for years, especially watches that cost upwards of $300.

«

Lenovo’s acquisition of Motorola completed in October 2014, having been announced in January 2014. The Moto 360v1 was launched in September 2014, and would have been in the works for at least a year before. Lenovo is now losing money on its smartphone business.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lenovo/Motorola quietly dropped out of the Android Wear business at least until that specific sector shows signs of life. Speaking of which…
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How will the $34bn wearables market combat wearables fatigue? • Forbes

Paul Armstrong:

»Some sobering stats:

•50% of consumers lose interest in the product within a few months. [Endeavour Partners]
•More than half of US wearable owners who have owned a device no longer use it. [Pew Research, 2013]
The wearables market will be worth $34bn in 2020. [CCS Insight]


SOURCE: CCS Insight

It takes 66 days to make a new behaviour stick – that’s a long time in the fast-paced, notification saturated world we live in. Wearable devices can help but the person has to have a decent amount of willpower or the behaviour wanes. Successful apps usually demonstrate a good combination. For example; a fitness tracker and something like MyFitnessPal which monitors macronutrients food intake and can give you some great data points but it doesn’t give tailored advice. Based on the data above there may be trouble ahead if consumers don’t begin seeing value in wearable devices. The issues are clear – either the tech doesn’t work or it’s not of value.

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Wearables’ biggest problem is battery life, no doubt. Means you have to take them off.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Start up: Samsung’s #bendgate?, algorithms v April Fool, graphene is coming!, the US’s backward financial improvement

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This might be what to do with trading algorithms on April Fools Day. Photo by kippster on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. Not thixotropic. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Chinese fingerprint on smartphone trends in Malaysia, Singapore » Digital News Asia

Karamajit Singh:

Chinese smartphone vendors entered the Malaysian market in earnest in 2013, and this accelerated in 2014 with the various brands winning over a sceptical market with their price-to-performance models.
 
As a consequence, what used to be known as the mid-level phone market in Malaysia – the RM700 to RM1,200 (US$190 to US$325) level – is collapsing rapidly, IDC argues.
 
“The story is that the low-end market is getting more competitive and many phones that carry good specs are already priced below RM700,” says [Jensen] Ooi [IDC market analyst for client devices at IDC Asia Pacific].
 
Feeling the pain here from the rapid commoditisation of the mid-tier market are the traditional large players like Samsung, Sony and LG, which are unable to differentiate their phones at price points above RM700.
 
IDC’s data shows that sub-RM700 phones made up nearly 60% of the Malaysia market in 2014, up from nearly 40% the year before. The majority of the growth has been captured by the Chinese vendors at the expense of Samsung, Sony and LG.
 
More bad news for these Android vendors: “Their share in the mid-range and high-end market has weakened and will continue to weaken this year, with only Apple continuing to grow there in 2014,” says Ooi.

Teardown of new Samsung Galaxy smartphone suggests deeper loss for Qualcomm » Reuters

Se Young Lee and Noel Randewich:

Samsung is not only using its own Exynos mobile processor, as had been widely reported, but also decided to rely on its in-house semiconductor business to source other parts, including the modem and power management integrated circuit chips, Ottawa-based consultancy Chipworks said in a web posting dated April 2.

Samsung is counting on its new flagship Galaxy S6 and S6 edge phones to help revive earnings momentum after a disappointing 2014. Strong sales of system chips such as its Exynos processor could also help boost earnings, analysts and investors say.

The Galaxy S6 also comes with Samsung’s Shannon modem chip, US phone carrier AT&T said on its website.

“It’s pretty clear if they’re using Shannon for the modem for AT&T that they’re trying to use all-Samsung silicon,” said Jim McGregor, an analyst at Tirias Research. “With their market share going down they’re under pressure to increase profit margins.”

Makes sense (and poses a problem for Qualcomm): the more Samsung-built chips are in each phone, the greater its profit. Samsung Electronics’s preliminary results – its range of expected revenues and operating profit – are released on Tuesday 7 April; full results by division later in the month.

Apple invents watertight iDevice buttons » Patently Apple

Jack Purcher:

Apple began working on various waterproofing methods for iDevices back in 2010 and in 2013 devised a waterproofing nano coating. In March we posted a report covering Apple’s most advanced invention on waterproofing to date titled “Apple Invents a Waterproofing Method for Future iDevices using Hydrophobic Conformal Coatings and Silicon Seals.” Today, the US Patent & Trademark Office published yet another waterproofing patent application from Apple that specifically covers a water tight button solution for iDevices.

It feels like an obvious solution, and covers the power switch and volume switches. Is the headphone jack and Lightning port close-ended? In that case water resistance would be sorted – and could become another extra feature to differentiate from past models.

Wal-Mart exec calls credit card upgrade a ‘joke’ » CNN

Wal-Mart’s executive in charge of payments thinks the United States’ switch to chip-based credit cards is going to be a disappointment.

The new “chip & signature” program is barely an improvement on security and fraud, said Mike Cook, Wal-Mart’s assistant treasurer and a senior vice president, at this week’s Electronic Transaction Association’s Transact conference in San Francisco. Cook said Wal-Mart would have preferred a “chip and PIN” system that Europe and Africa have, since PINs would protect cards from being stolen.

“The fact that we didn’t go to PIN is such a joke,” Cook told CNNMoney.

Cook said signatures on checks were sufficient 100 years ago, but they’re outdated today. PINs on debit cards were a major improvement to stop thieves decades ago. They’d do the same for credit cards – which is why banks should use them for all cards.

“Signature is worthless as a form of authentication,” Cook said during a presentation at the conference. “If you look at the Target and Home Depot breaches … not a single PIN debit card needed to be reissued in those breaches. The card number was worthless to the individual thief and fraudsters, because they didn’t know the PIN.”

Americans truly have no idea how backwards their financial systems are.

Schaumburg man acquitted after child porn got mixed up in WWII downloads » DailyHerald.com

Barbara Vitello:

Testifying in his own defense, [Wocjciech] Florczykowski, a 40-year-old electrical engineer, described himself as a history buff with an interest in World War II, specifically battlefield memorabilia. In pursuit of that hobby, Florczykowski said he occasionally travels to battlefields in Poland where he and other military history buffs use metal detectors to unearth everything from medals and canteens to shells, grenades and unexploded land mines.

He testified he was using a program called uTorrent (which enables users to share large files) to research explosives on a laptop supplied to him by his former employer DLS Electronic Systems in Wheeling and inadvertently downloaded pornography.

“What I discovered was completely disgusting. I was not looking for this stuff,” he said, adding that he moved the offensive images and other unwanted material to a folder he intended to delete but was fired from his job before he could do so.

Discovering information on explosives on the laptop, his supervisors alerted federal authorities.

And then things got really bad. (Note: on the site itself, you need to answer a survey question to view the content. Can’t decide if that’s great, terrible, or “never going to scale”.) Also: it’s child abuse, not child “porn”.

Grooveshark publishes proactive anti-piracy policy » TorrentFreak

In the Capitol case the Court noted that while Grooveshark keeps records of all processed DMCA takedown complaints and associated users, it does not keep an “independent record” of repeat infringers.

“Escape does not try to identify repeat infringers and fails to keep
records that would allow it to do so,” the judge said.

Grooveshark says it is now dealing with that criticism.

“In an era of simple database queries this new requirement may be redundant, but we will now create an additional independent record of repeat infringers from our existing databases, until our appeal clarifies this issue for Grooveshark and other hosting services committed to complying with the DMCA,” the company writes.

Grooveshark’s entire business model is basically built around passive piracy – letting people upload and then share stuff whose copyright they don’t own. The music labels have been trying to tear it down for years; it’s basically a wart on the face of the web.

Tesla stockholders can’t take a joke » Bloomberg View

On April 1, five minutes before the market closed, Tesla put out a spoof press release on its official feed. The stock leapt, then drooped:

So people lost maybe as much as a few hundred thousand dollars because, for a brief stupid minute, they thought that Tesla was introducing … a watch? No, of course they didn’t. They thought Tesla was introducing a thing called the Model W, and they didn’t read any further than the headline, and they bought Tesla stock hoping that the Model W, whatever it was, would be a huge success (or would be perceived as a huge success by someone else a minute later), and then they realized that they’d been fooled, and they sold the stock at a small loss and moved on with their day. And when I say “people” I mean mostly “algorithms,” which are faster and more literal than humans, though in the space of a minute it is conceivable that an actual human saw that headline and fired off a buy order before reading any further.

Maybe stock algorithms will kill off April Fool’s Day online. Here’s hoping.

How graphene may revolutionize the mobile industry » Android Authority

Roni Peleg (who edits a graphene news aggregation site):

Graphene can allow for super-efficient batteries that charge within minutes and last much longer than conventional Li-ion batteries, composite materials that make devices lightweight and extremely durable, touch screens that are flexible and transparent, and even chips that are extremely small but much faster than silicon chips.

Love graphene as a concept (and reality), but it’s weird how its implementation is always five years away.

SquareTrade tests shows Samsung S6 Edge as bendable as iPhone 6 Plus and more likely to crack under pressure » YouTube

Pretty brutal treatment, though. (Also includes abuse of HTC M9.) Here, by the way, is a Samsung executive at the S6 launch assuring the audience it won’t bend:

A little part of me wonders about the original “bendgate” stories and their origin.

The Economist’s Tom Standage on digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising » Nieman Journalism Lab

Joseph Lichterman interviews Standage, who remarks:

we’re not big on linking out. And it’s not because we’re luddites, or not because we don’t want to send traffic to other people. It’s that we don’t want to undermine the reassuring impression that if you want to understand Subject X, here’s an Economist article on it — read it and that’s what you need to know. And it’s not covered in links that invite you to go elsewhere. We’ll link to background, and we’ll link to things like white papers or scientific papers and stuff like that. The idea of a 600-word science story that explains a paper is that you only need to read the 600-word science story — you don’t actually have to fight your way through the paper. There is a distillation going on there.

I do like that thinking, having lived with it the majority of my life. (Do the links here actually help you? Do you click through? Most people don’t.)

Also worth reading: his observations about ads (“they’re going to go away”) and millenials – who, he says, are “all fans of Snapchat, AdBlock and incognito [mode]”.

Start up: pace of change, Anonymous’s guitarist, how first-time users view smartphones, Uber defended and more

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Stereo texting, by Peronimo on Flickr.

A selection of 12 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Is the pace of change really such a shock? >> plasticbag.org

Tom Coates, musing on his post-BBC repose (where there were warnings of the “sheer pace of change” in technology):

five years from now there will clearly be more bottom-up media, just as there are more weblogs now than five years ago, but I’d be surprised if it had really eradicated any major media outlets. These changes are happening, they’re definitely happening, but they’re happening at a reasonable, comprehendible pace. There are opportunities, of course, and you have to be fast to be the first mover, but you don’t die if you’re not the first mover – you only die if you don’t adapt.

Written in April… 2006. Worth reading now because it’s still completely true (and doesn’t apply only to the BBC, of course).

66-year-old rock guitarist sentenced to 10 days in jail for role in Anonymous attack >> The Verge

Russell Brandom:

Geoffrey Commander doesn’t fit the standard Anonymous profile. He’s a successful musician, earning his living by playing guitar for ELO and Elton John. At 66, he’s also a good deal older than your average hacktivist. But according to the indictment handed down last October, Commander was one of a group of 13 defendants who disrupted the websites of Bank of America, Mastercard, and a number of anti-piracy groups as part of Anonymous’s Operation Payback. Commander and his 12 co-defendants haven’t had as high a profile as the PayPal 13, who were brought before court around the same time, but they’re charged with the same crime: using a freely available web tool called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon to perform a denial-of-service attack.

Mr Low Orbit Ion Cannon Sky.. Really proving that Anonymous is much more diverse than it seems.

Peering into the minds of the 4.3 billion unconnected >> TechCrunch

Hassan Baig of ClubInternet, which tries to “connect the unconnected”:

The test subject in the GIF above was tasked with moving between various pages of the app launcher. Easy right? In multiple trials, she always attempted a mix of tapping and swiping to move between the pages, never definitively settling on swiping (which is the correct action for the said task). Her mental model for gesture control on mobile devices remained suspect throughout the usability test.

Overall, we’ve found that almost all of the unconnected muddle through when given a mobile device to use, struggling with understanding when to swipe, tap, double tap or pinch. A possible reason could be that feature phones, TV and radio — the three most widely used technologies among the unconnected — do not exactly nurture a mental model for gesture control in any meaningful way.

We’ve also found that repetitive smartphone use does alleviate this problem somewhat, but very gradually. Overall, in no way is using a smartphone as intuitive for the unconnected as it felt for us — the connected — back in 2007 when we experienced our first such device.

In defense of Uber in India >> Medium

Sriram Krishnan:

India has had a string of similar tragic incidents [to the one where an Uber driver is accused of rape, and had a past sexual assault record] for many years. When I was at Microsoft Hyderabad in 2005, we started having security guards accompany women home late at night after a string of incidents where women in tech companies were assaulted by their shuttle drivers. As I was writing this post, I found more incidents as recent as 2013. This has been happening for a long time now and India has been grappling with some hard social/cultural questions on why it has been unable to stop this. This is why a lot of us tell women traveling to India to be much more aware of their surroundings — the social calculus you employ when you do something as trivial as jumping into a cab or asking a stranger for a favor isn’t the same in every part of the world.

The idea of Uber doing background checks and “filtering out” this driver with an arrest record is laughable for anyone who has dealt with government records in India. First, there is no reliable way to run a check on someone in most parts of the world and second, even if they did, a small bribe in the right place will fix most records.

A side anecdote on how such records work. Most of my school friends didn’t have to go to the Indian equivalent of the DMV to get a license when they hit the right age — they just got a “friend” to get it for them for around $10. I remember being grumpy with my dad when he made me actually take the test. Not because my dad had some moral high ground but more because he didn’t want to spend the money on a bribe.

Despite its problems, Uber is still the safest way to order a taxi >> Business Insider

James Cook:

There’s also no cash involved with Uber, as payments take place through the app. And unlike taxis, you can’t hail an Uber off the street. While hailing a taxi is convenient, it opens up passengers to unlicensed taxis operating illegally. And of course, even if you get a taxi from an official rank, you don’t know who the person is at the wheel.

Uber also has a system where passengers and drivers can rate and — if need be — identify each other. The company is notoriously vigilant when it comes to its driver ratings. It has been speculated that any driver that dips below a 4.7 rating out of 5 are deactivated by the company.

In the normal course of business, drivers and riders only know each others’ first names. Riders get to know the cars, photos and license plates of their drivers, too. It’s all automatically recorded in the app. If a dispute arises (or an assault) Uber has a complete record of who was in the car, where the car went, and how long the journey was. That’s much more identifying info than a taxi ride generates.

He acknowledges that in the Delhi case “something there obviously went wrong”. But his general point is well-made.

YouTube offering its stars bonuses >> WSJ

Rolfe Winkler:

Three people who have been approached by Vessel [a startup intending to launch a subscription video service, with $75m of venture backing] say the company wants artists to post videos exclusively on its service for up to three days, part of its plan to offer subscribers an advance look at popular short-form video. One of those people said Vessel offered to pay an advance based on how well the creator’s videos have performed on YouTube.

Vessel also has told creators that its subscription service will provide a nicer neighborhood for their videos than YouTube, where videos may run next to edgy or low-budget fare, according to people who have heard the company’s pitch.

The moves show how emerging competitors are forcing Google to rethink YouTube’s traditional positioning as a “platform” where video creators can upload what they like. They still do, but YouTube now must put more skin in the game, investing to keep top stars on the site. Creators and agents say the service is acting with rare urgency.

The internet is full of niches, but some of those niches are gigantic.

Galaxy S6 rumors: Cat. 10 LTE data speed detailed in new report >> BGR

Tero Kuittinen:

a new report from South Korean online publication Naver says that Samsung is also working on a faster LTE chip of its own, which could be used in one version of next year’s Galaxy S6.

According to the report, Samsung is developing a tri-band LTE Cat. 10 modem for its Exynos chips that would support theoretical data speeds of up to 450Mbps, or significantly higher than the maximum 300Mbps speed of the current LTE Cat. 6 standard.

Apparently, Samsung is interested in making its own LTE modem chips, rather than relying on competing products. Qualcomm also has a similar modem for the Snapdragon 810 System on Chip that could be used in a different flavor of the Galaxy S6.

On the other hand, no matter how fast these LTE modem might be, they’re still useless as long as carriers don’t also support the faster data transfers.

Like any general, Samsung is still fighting the last war – in this case, the specs war – with the same weapons. Remember Smart Scroll, Air Gesture, and the like?

Qualcomm shoots down rumors of Snapdragon 810 delays >> Android Beat

Turns out that it was just a baseless rumor, which has now been shot down by Qualcomm’s Senior Director of Public Relations, Jon Carvill. While Carvill refused to comment on the delay or the rumor, he did say that the development on the Snapdragon 810 chip is going as per schedule.

“I can tell you that everything with Snapdragon 810 remains on track and we expect commercial devices to be available in 1H 2015,” said Carvill.

Okey-doke.

Android Police holiday gift guide 2014 >> Android Police

By far the best Android news site I’ve come across (for its ability to get exclusives, write interesting reviews and dig into new software). This year’s gift guide has that extra something; see if you can spot it.

By 2018, more than 50% of users will use a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities >> Gartner

Mobile devices are increasingly becoming the first go-to device for communications and content consumption, according to Gartner, Inc. In the emerging economies, users are adopting smartphones as their exclusive mobile devices while in developed economies, multi-device households are becoming the norm, with tablets growing at the fastest rate of any computing device. As such, Gartner predicts that, by 2018, more than 50% of users will go to a tablet or smartphone first for all online activities. 

“The use pattern that has emerged for nearly all consumers, based on device accessibility, is the smartphone first as a device that is carried when mobile, followed by the tablet that is used for longer sessions, with the PC increasingly reserved for more complex tasks,” said Van Baker, research vice president. “This behaviour will adapt to incorporate wearables as they become widely available for users. As voice, gesture and other modalities grow in popularity with consumers, and as content consumption tasks outweigh content creation tasks, this will further move users away from the PC.” 

Let’s hope they’re doing better than the first-time users above.

Monument Valley is Apple’s iPad Game of the Year >> Monument Valley by ustwo™ games

The thing to really pay attention to in this justifiedly celebratory blogpost is the email from the boss of UsTwo (which built the game) exhorting the team, and setting out clear goals – all starting “must…” – to achieve. All achievable, but all challenging. Great leadership and great teamwork.

Corrupt Apple exec sentenced to 1 year in prison >> Associated Press

A former Apple executive who sold some of the iPhone maker’s secrets to suppliers will serve a year in prison and repay $4.5m for his crimes.

Paul S. Devine was sentenced in San Jose federal court earlier this week, more than three years after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. The US Attorney’s office announced Devine’s penalty Friday, but declined to explain the reason for the lengthy delay in his sentencing.

Devine faced up to 20 years in prison.

The scheme funnelled millions in kickbacks to Devine for passing along confidential information to Apple suppliers and manufacturers who used the secrets to negotiate more favourable deals.

Considering this. The suppliers got better deals – so they were paid more by Apple? So either Apple’s profit was reduced, or it had to push up prices. Devine was a global supply manager at Apple between 2005 and 2010.

Links: Galaxy S6 chip problems?, Sony hackers reveal film pay, WhatsApp’s Italian divorce, and more

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I blame WhatsApp.

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

Unexpected hurdle: problems in Qualcomm Snapdragon set alarm bells ringing for Samsung, LG >> BusinessKorea

Local [Korean] smartphone makers are nervous at the prospect of a delay in the launch of new models next year, including the Galaxy S6 and the G4. It is unclear whether or not the supply of the Snapdragon 810 will exist in the first half of next year due to technical problems such as overheating and a decline in speed.

Samsung is likely to solve the problem by featuring its own Exynos chips in the Galaxy S6, but LG seems to be in trouble. Even though the company has its first AP, NUCLUN, it is not better than entry-level APs. If Qualcomm cannot supply the Snapdragon 810, it won’t be easy for LG to find an alternative for the G4.

“Qualcomm is faced with hard-to-solve problems. The Snapdragon 810 overheats when it reaches a specific voltage. It also slows down owing to problems with the RAM controller connected to the AP. In addition, there is an error in the driver of the Adreno 430 GPU,” said an industry source on 2 December.

The source added that for these reasons, it is unclear if the Snapdragon 810 will be used in premium smartphones like the Galaxy S6, the G4, and the Xperia Z4 scheduled to be released in the first half of next year.

Sony hackers reveal Seth Rogen and James Franco’s pay for ‘The Interview’ >> Variety

The cyber-attack targeting Sony Pictures uncovered a few more confidential details on Wednesday in what’s quickly evolved into a publicity nightmare for the company.

Seth Rogen was reportedly paid $8.4m for “The Interview,” according to new data obtained by Bloomberg, while his co-star James Franco earned $6.5m for the comedy.

The film, which allegedly cost $44m, also paid Britney Spears’ ex-husband Kevin Federline $5,000 for his cameo.

“The Interview,” about two journalists tasked with assassinating North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un, is at the centre of a recent hack attack at Sony. Several new films leaked online as a result of the computer breach in addition to personal data and salary information about the Sony Pictures’ top executives.

This hack is producing some remarkable information.

Yahoo set to pass Twitter in US mobile ads after Mayer revamp >> Bloomberg

Yahoo is now projected to be the largest gainer of US mobile-ad market share between 2014 and 2016, according to new data from EMarketer Inc. out today. Yahoo’s mobile-ad slice will climb to 3.74% in 2015 and to 4.2% in 2016.

While still tiny, it’s enough to push Yahoo ahead of current number three player Twitter, which will have 3.69% market share next year and 3.8% in 2016. Google and Facebook remain the biggest U.S. mobile-ad companies, with 35% and 17% shares next year respectively.

Yahoo, the comeback kid.

Having an affair in Italy? You may want to avoid using WhatsApp >> GlobalPost

Eric Lyman:

Call it “Divorce Italian Style” version 2.0.

In Pietro Germi’s Oscar-winning 1961 comedy of that name, the unfaithful protagonist, unable to divorce his smothering wife, plots to kill her. If it had been set in 2014, he could have just let her stumble upon his WhatsApp account.

The instant messaging service acquired by Facebook this year for $19bn is cited in nearly half of all Italian divorce proceedings — more than any other source of information, whether amorous text messages or emails, late-night phone calls, handwritten notes, or even lipstick-stained collars — according to the Italian Association of Matrimonial Lawyers.

That’s remarkable. Italy used to be one of the most backward countries in terms of its internet connectivity.

Virtual reality is going to change everything >> Business Insider

Dave Smith:

As you move your head around, you can see other concert-goers — real people — cheering, and as you turn back towards the stage, you can see the pyrotechnics go off right as Paul McCartney hits the chorus to “Live And Let Die.”

I took the Rift off my head, and I was back inside Business Insider’s conference room.

Virtual reality is going to be huge. Monumental. It’s going to change the way we live. Facebook and Samsung have already made significant investments, and Apple was recently caught looking to hire an app engineer “to create high performance apps that integrate with virtual reality systems.” And then there’s Magic Leap, the mysterious $542 million startup that’s built an augmented reality device “so badass you can’t believe it.”

The future of virtual reality is incredibly exciting. But right now, the main focus is games. And here’s why.

I tried virtual reality at a UK company called Virtuality in 1991-2; it was OK, but limited by the computing power of the time, and especially eyescreen resolution. In all seriousness, I think Smith is completely right: once this stuff gets cheaper (and it will) and pervasive (and it will), we’ll use it all the time.

After all, there was a time when nobody but a few crazies thought you could fit a supercomputer in your pocket. VR is the logical next step for all that surplus computing power.

Design Explosions: Mapping on iOS and Google Maps >> Medium

Jon Bell and William Van Hecke take an enormously deep dive into the tradeoffs and triumphs of the native mapping apps on iOS and Android. There’s no simple extract, but this is a good point (you’d have to read the piece to understand its context):

The en route lock screen, while I do struggle with it sometimes, is a great example of the limitations of design. #2 might be the best overall option, but shipping it has nothing to do with pixels. It’s all about relationships, and politics, and legal teams, and so forth. This is why it’s important to have design courage at an organizational level. Otherwise you can only get so far with your designs before the best ideas are overruled by legal, executives, and your partners. Effective designers have effective relationships.