Tag Archives: startup

Start up: Hubspot culture, bad citations, Wikipedia for piracy, how Tay was pre-broken, and more

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Who’d have guessed that letting a browser page vibrate your phone could be abused by scammers? Photo by queenkv on Flickr.

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

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

My year in startup hell at Hubspot » Fortune

Dan Lyons got dumped by Newsweek, having been a journalist for decades, and then as a 50-something joined a Boston startup whose pitch is basically spam people (but never call it spam), created by a co-founder who is only ever referred to by his first name:

»Dharmesh’s culture code incorporates elements of HubSpeak. For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as “graduation.” In my first month at HubSpot I’ve witnessed several graduations, just in the marketing department. We’ll get an email from Cranium saying, “Team, just letting you know that Derek has graduated from HubSpot, and we’re excited to see how he uses his superpowers in his next big adventure!” Only then do you notice that Derek is gone, that his desk has been cleared out. Somehow Derek’s boss will have arranged his disappearance without anyone knowing about it. People just go up in smoke, like Spinal Tap drummers.

Nobody ever talks about the people who graduate, and nobody ever mentions how weird it is to call it “graduation.” For that matter I never hear anyone laugh about HEART or make jokes about the culture code. Everyone acts as if all of these things are perfectly normal.

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Some people hate Lyons, but he’s never less than incisive to the point of sulphuric.
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January 2014: potential malicious use of the HTML5 Vibrate API » Terence Eden’s Blog

This was Eden writing just over two years ago:

»There is a new API in town! HTML5 will (soon) let you make the user’s device vibrate. What fun! Obviously, it’s useful for triggering alerts, improved immersivness during gameplay, and all sorts of other fun things like sending Morse Code messages via vibration.

At the moment, Chrome (and other Android browsers) ask for permission before accessing features such as geo-location, camera, address book etc. This is a security measure to prevent your private information leaving your hands without your knowledge.

At the moment, accessing the HTML5 Vibrate API doesn’t trigger an on-screen warning. Its use is seen as pretty innocuous. Because, realistically, the worst it can do is prematurely drain your battery. Right?

I’m not so sure.

«

He was right not to be sure. Comments from this year show that this is indeed being used by scammy ads. (It’s supported on Chrome for desktop and mobile, not on Safari for desktop or mobile; you can check your browser’s capability.
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Citation, appropriation, and fair use: News Genius picks up again where failures left off » Glenn Fleishman’s Glog

Fleishman points to previous attempts to let people write content on top of other peoples’ work:

»As with many Internet tools created without any forethought about abuse, opting out, and reporting and resolving issues, [News] Genius [which lets people put commentary onto web pages without the consent of the author] seems malicious in absence rather than in intention. As Ella [Dawson] wrote:

»

You can hate-read my content all you want—I know that is a risk of being a person who says things on the Internet. But when you create a tool that pastes commentary directly on top of my work without letting me opt-in and without providing a way for people to turn off the annotation on their pages, you are being irresponsible. You are ignoring the potential your tool has to be abused, and you are not anticipating the real harm your tool can do.

«

Contrast this with Medium’s approach to annotation on Medium’s site. Essay authors can receive public or private notes, and choose which to make public and which to remain private or delete. Commentary on a post, called “responses,” is presented at the end like comments, but each response is a full-fledged Medium post.  (Last year, Medium added the ability for everyone, instead of certain outlets or requiring email, to disable responses to appear linked; they can still be made, they just don’t appear at the end of the referenced post.)

«

Past experience suggests News Genius will die a death; it’s just a question of how long it will take, and how many people will have lousy experiences like Dawson.
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Wikipedia doesn’t realize it’s the developing world’s internet gatekeeper » Motherboard

Jason Koebler:

»If you’re just catching up, Angolans are using free access to Wikipedia and Facebook to trade copyrighted movies, music, and television shows, a development that is decidedly against Wikipedia’s rules. The product is called Wikipedia Zero, which “zero rates” all data going to and from Wikipedia websites from mobile phone users in 64 developing countries, meaning the customer doesn’t pay any money for it. In Angola, 50mb of mobile data normally costs $2.50; the median annual salary is $720.

At first glance, giving people in developing nations unlimited access to Wikipedia or Facebook’s Free Basics program seems like a no-brainer. Some access is better than no access, the thinking goes, and Wikimedia, as a nonprofit corporation focused on spreading knowledge, has gotten less public flak than Facebook has for Free Basics, which critics say serves only to indoctrinate the developing world into Facebook’s ecosystem. But the situation in Angola shows that there are problems with zero-rating that Wikimedia’s nonprofit status and knowledge-sharing mission can’t solve.

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Land Registry faces privatisation » The Guardian

Heather Stewart, Hilary Osborne and Rowena Mason:

»The Land Registry is being put for up for sale less than two years after the Liberal Democrats blocked previous plans for a £1bn-plus privatisation.

Sajid Javid, the business secretary, faced immediate criticism for announcing the selloff of the 150-year-old agency – which maintains records on the ownership of land and property across England and Wales – just as the Easter break was about to begin.

Union leaders criticised what they called the “cynical” timing. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, said: “Homebuyers and owners rely on the Land Registry to provide an impartial professional service and it must remain under public control, free from any profit motive and conflict of interest.

«

In the UK, sales of properties and land must be registered with Land Registry. Privatising it would create a private monopoly with the force of law. This would create a company that could raise fees on any product and which would not be answerable to Freedom of Information requests.

This is an unbelievably stupid idea. I’m thus not surprised that Savid Javid is backing it.
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Fly-eye phones are coming » Kevin Marks

Written in January, and increasingly relevant:

»the cameras built into phones have reached the limits of useful resolution, and the differences in responsiveness have been competed away too. The next step will be multiple cameras on each side of the phone. I expect we’ll first see 2 cameras at opposite ends of the phone, so you can take stereoscopic images and videos with natural eye spacing.

However, having simultaneous spaced images means you can extract 3d information from the photo – Google’s camera app has done this for a while but you need to pan up and down. This means you can change depth of field synthetically to give nicer images by blurring unwanted foreground or background details out. This also means you can more easily compensate for lens distortion, making faces less spherical looking in close-ups.You can even reconstruct 3d objects, scanning smaller ones, or panning around a room to derive a more accurate 3d model.

Once you have an accurate 3d model of the room, doing Augmented Reality becomes much more practical – you can place elements on the walls or floors, and have them pass behind and in front of object in a more realistic fashion. Think of the gratuitous effects Snapchat can do with that – 3d halos, birds flying around your head.

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Look what Snapchat can already do with face recognition (Face Swap) and you get an inkling.
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TayAndYou – toxic before human contact » Smerity.com:

Stephen Merity argues, very convincingly, that Microsoft’s Tay going haywire wasn’t shocking, surprising or unpredictable at all:

»The entire situation was made worse by a few factors:

• TayAndYou would repeat phrases uttered to it, a trivial attack vector
• The facial recognition on images included a small number of utterances, another trivial attack vector that could be gamed for negative results
• TayAndYou produced over 96,000 tweets in a single day, meaning little to no quality oversight would be in place – if there were any potentially insulting responses they were near guaranteed to be found

Was implementing a filter for swearing out of scope..? To be fair, the bot would still find something insulting to say but I’m certain the majority of worst cases would be flagged.

Even if filtering on the generation end was considered too much, the training data shouldn’t have been toxic. Maybe at least filter the training data for anything discussing Hitler. If a PR department wouldn’t want their humans tweeting about Hitler, I’ve no clue why you’d want a bot to.

«

Meanwhile, Microsoft is ever so ever so sorry.

If you’re working in AI/deep learning, Merity’s blog is worth rummaging through.
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Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind ‘Dilbert’ explains why. » The Washington Post

Michael Cavna:

»[Scott] Adams, in other words, believes that Trump himself has turned the campaign game around. On the stump, the real-estate mogul is not running on the knowledge of his numbers or the dissection of the data. He is running on our emotions, Adams says, and sly appeals to our own human irrationality. Since last August, in fact, when many were calling Trump’s entry a clown candidacy, the “Dilbert” cartoonist was already declaring The Donald a master in the powers of persuasion who would undoubtedly rise in the polls. And last week, Adams began blogging about how Trump can rhetorically dismantle Clinton’s candidacy next.

Adams, mind you, is not endorsing Trump or supporting his politics. (“I don’t think my political views align with anybody,” he tells The Post’s Comic Riffs, “not even another human being.”) And he is not saying that Trump would be the best president. What the Bay Area-based cartoonist recognizes, he says, is the careful art behind Trump’s rhetorical techniques. And The Donald, he says, is playing his competitors like a fiddle — before beating them like a drum.

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It’s about irrationality. And people are irrational, no matter what they might think. (I’m very much hoping this is wrong.)
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The readers’ editor on closing comments below the line » The Observer

Stephen Pritchard is the readers’ editor of The Observer, the Sunday sibling to The Guardian:

»While there is a general desire to open comments on as many subjects as possible, moderators are made aware in advance of opinion pieces that are likely to need careful handling.

Last weekend, after consultation, comments were delayed on several Observer articles, including Nick Cohen on becoming a Jew, Victoria Coren Mitchell on the Adam Johnson underage sex case and Barbara Ellen on Jamie Oliver’s advocacy of breastfeeding.

Comments opened once moderators were in place, but within minutes antisemites and Holocaust deniers were hounding Cohen, apologists for sex with teenagers were appearing in the Coren Mitchell thread and misogynists were busy insulting Ellen. It had to stop.

The Telegraph is in the process of ending commentary on its site. That’s not being proposed here, but editors need to think harder about when it would be wise to switch off the ability to comment if a subject is likely to attract so much rage that a mature conversation becomes impossible. It devalues our journalism and offends our readers.

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Fewer open comment threads also means less moderation, which saves money. But I think this is a broader trend: general news sites will have fewer and fewer open comment threads. It’s just not worth the trouble. Speaking of which…
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Public Access: we’re shutting down our comments … see you next week » Engadget

Here’s Amber Bouman at tech site Engadget:

»The thing is, we like having a comments section. It gives our readers a place to share their experiences, point out mistakes we’ve made, offer up different perspectives and provide more information. Our comments section can be an incredible place to visit, and we value that our readers take the time out of their day (often repeatedly) to participate. But we can’t take pride in a comment system that isn’t offering you the features you need to participate; that runs amok with racist, sexist or homophobic slurs and threats; or that takes joy in in-fighting and provoking fights.

A quality comments section should make it easy for users to contribute. A good comments section has users who feel a sense of duty and kinship, who act as a community. An exceptional comments section informs its readers, corrects authors and provides worthwhile insights in a polite and constructive manner.

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It can be done; I think you make people pay to be commenters, and revoke that – without refund – if they cross the line.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none specified.

Start up: hedge funds like AI, Facebook’s close separation, what if Twitter died?, BlackBerry cuts, and more

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A break like this, affecting the home button, is probably going to lead in time to an #error53 fault if you don’t get it repaired by Apple. But what causes it, exactly? Photo by wZa HK on Flickr.

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

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

Will AI-powered hedge funds outsmart the market? » MIT Tech Review

Will Knight:

Anthony Ledford, chief scientist of MAN AHL, explains that the company is exploring whether techniques like deep learning might lend themselves to finance. “It’s at an early stage,” Ledford says. “We have set aside a pot of money for test trading. With deep learning, if all goes well, it will go into test trading, as other machine-learning approaches have.”

Trading might seem like an obvious place to apply deep learning, but actually it isn’t clear how comparable the challenge of finding subtle patterns in real-time trading data is to, say, spotting faces in digital photographs. “It’s a very different problem,” Ledford admits.

Academic experts also sound a note of caution. Stephen Roberts, a professor of machine learning at Oxford University, says deep learning could be good “for extracting hidden trends, information, and relationships,” but adds that it “is still too brittle with regard to handling of high uncertainty and noise, which are prevalent in finance.”

You just know that this isn’t really going to work, but also that it’s going to be used by a ton of funds to try to get ahead of the market – a market composed of other funds also trying to use the same processes.
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iOS security – iOS 9 or later » Apple

Let’s try to get on top of this #error53 stuff:

During an iOS upgrade, iTunes (or the device itself, in the case of OTA software updates) connects to the Apple installation authorization server and sends it a list of cryptographic measurements for each part of the installation bundle to be installed (for example, LLB, iBoot, the kernel, and OS image), a random anti-replay value (nonce), and the device’s unique ID (ECID).

The authorization server checks the presented list of measurements against versions for which installation is permitted and, if it finds a match, adds the ECID to the measurement and signs the result. The server passes a complete set of signed data to the device as part of the upgrade process. Adding the ECID “personalizes” the authorization for the requesting device. By authorizing and signing only for known measurements, the server ensures that the update takes place exactly as provided by Apple.

The boot-time chain-of-trust evaluation verifies that the signature comes from Apple and that the measurement of the item loaded from disk, combined with the device’s ECID, matches what was covered by the signature.

These steps ensure that the authorization is for a specific device and that an old iOS version from one device can’t be copied to another. The nonce prevents an attacker from saving the server’s response and using it to tamper with a device or otherwise alter the system software.

To recap, with #error53, people who have had third-party replacements of screens and/or home buttons on the iPhone 6/Plus and 6S/Plus (but not the 5S) find that it works fine – though they can’t use TouchID (it’s greyed out as an option). But when they do an OS update, the phone bricks: can’t get data, can’t restore.

So my understanding of this is: the reason why devices which have had third-party replacement parts only brick after an OS update, yet work fine before it, is this: on trying to install the update they connect to the auth server. The server decides that the cryptographic measurements no longer match what it has on record. So it decides the chain of trust is broken, and effectively shuts down the device.

But it’s poor decision-making by Apple, and equally poor communication. Why doesn’t it happen on the 5S? Update: because the 5S doesn’t have NFC for Apple Pay. (Thanks, Andy.) What’s the process that Apple uses when it does the repair to revalidate the TouchID system (which fails even with valid parts)? Why can’t the system tell that it’s just TouchID that’s affected? The safety process has overshot its requirements. Every part of what happens makes sense from a security perspective  – but not if considering that many people will get third-party repairs.
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Three and a half degrees of separation » Research at Facebook

How connected is the world? Playwrights, poets, and scientists have proposed that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by six other people. In honor of Friends Day, we’ve crunched the Facebook friend graph and determined that the number is 3.57. Each person in the world (at least among the 1.59 billion people active on Facebook) is connected to every other person by an average of three and a half other people. The average distance we observe is 4.57, corresponding to 3.57 intermediaries or “degrees of separation.” Within the US, people are connected to each other by an average of 3.46 degrees.

Our collective “degrees of separation” have shrunk over the past five years. In 2011, researchers at Cornell, the Università degli Studi di Milano, and Facebook computed the average across the 721 million people using the site then, and found that it was 3.74 [4,5]. Now, with twice as many people using the site, we’ve grown more interconnected, thus shortening the distance between any two people in the world.

Apparently my average is 3.26 so ya boo. Zuckerberg is 3.17. Sheryl Sandberg is 2.92 – blimey.
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On your cute release notes » The Brooks Review

Ben Brooks:

We’ve all seen them. Notes about a fictional engineer who was hired and then fired. A cute story about something completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. Recipe for ‘squash bug soup’ or something along those lines.

With disturbingly increasing frequency, companies are deciding to let their marketing departments handle their release notes instead of the engineering team or product manager.

And we are all worse off for it.

As a user I mostly look at release notes to find out about one (or more) of three things:

• Have you added something new to the app which will make it better for me? That is: what are the new features, what do those features do, and perhaps how do I get to them.
• Have you fixed that bug which was making the app hard for me to use, perhaps even impossible for me to use? Aka: What bugs did you fix?
• How active is development on this app? Before I invest or move to most apps I look at recent release notes to get a sense of whether they are in maintenance mode (just major bug fixes), or under some kind of active development (minor bug fixes and feature releases, optimized for current version of iOS, etc).

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BlackBerry cuts 200 jobs in Ontario and Florida to trim costs » Reuters

Alastair Sharp:

The layoffs will affect 75 manufacturing jobs in Sunrise, Florida, a state government website showed.

The company also confirmed that Gary Klassen is one of the people who has departed in the latest round of cuts. Klassen was one of its longest-tenured employees and the inventor of its BBM messaging service.

One source familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue, said many of the Canadian cuts were people working on its BB10 handset software at its Waterloo, Ontario, headquarters.

A spokeswoman for BlackBerry declined to comment on which divisions will be affected by the cuts, but said the company stood by its commitment to release further updates on its BB10 software.

BB10 is so, so dead.
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“Dangerous ramifications” » Medium

Rohin Dharmakumar, with some examples of things that didn’t happen:

In January 2015, users of Microsoft’s Office in India were suddenly greeted with a pop-up asking them to “Support Microsoft Office”. The Indian government under PM Narendra Modi was said to be formulating an “Open Source Policy” under which all government offices were to either mandate or prefer open-source software for official work.

Clicking the “Support Office” button caused Microsoft to send the PMO and the Ministry of IT a letter from the user’s name with a pre-determined format. It said the user’s loved Microsoft’s products and wanted their government interactions to be based on the same. “I urge you not to ban Microsoft Office,” it ended.

The same message popped up on users of various Microsoft products in India – Windows, XBox, Windows Phone, Skype etc.

Within a few weeks, over 7 million emails had been sent in support to Microsoft.

“Support Monsanto”

In January 2014, farmers in the southern Indian state of Karnataka were surprised to see a notice attached to every bag of seed they bought from Mahyco, the market leader.

“Tell the Karnataka Govt. not to ban MMB”, said the notice. MMB was Monsanto-Mahyco Biotech, the joint-venture that licensed Monsanto’s crop technologies in India.

He has some more examples of things that didn’t happen – and then one which did.
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Why most A/B tests give you bullshit results » Mixpanel

We’ve all seen the articles. Company X increases conversions 38% with this simple trick. Hell, I’ve written some of them.

But those success stories have hidden the grey underbelly of testing and experimentation.

AppSumo revealed that only 1 out of 8 tests produce results. Kaiser Fung estimates that 80 to 90 percent of the A/B tests he’s run yield statistically insignificant results.

Yet many new testers walk into A/B testing thinking it’ll be quick and easy to get results. After running a handful of simple tests, they think they’ll find the right color for this button or the right tweak to that subject line, and conversions will, poof, increase by 38% like magic.

Then they start running tests on their apps or sites, and reality suddenly sets in. Tests are inconclusive. They yield “statistically insignificant” results and no valuable insights about the product or users. What’s happening? Where’s that 38% bump and subsequent pat on the back?

Don’t get frustrated. If you’re going to be running A/B tests, you’re going to have some tests that fail to produce meaningful results you can learn from. But if you run good tests, you’ll have fewer failures and more successes.

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Advice for companies with less than one year of runway » The Macro

Dalton Caldwell:

Let’s imagine that you are the founder of a company that has successfully raised an angel or institutional round and are currently in a situation where you have 12 months or less of runway.

The hardest part of dealing with a low runway situation is managing your own psychology. You have to simultaneously manage your own anxiety to not be overly negative about your prospects, but also not be irrationally positive. It’s a delicate balance.

Watch companies do the various things in this post over the next year or so.
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Technology: the rift with reality » FT.com

Tim Bradshaw:

With so many [virtual reality] headsets hitting the market this year, the challenge may be figuring out what people will do with them. Video games are seen as the first popular application, and some are experimenting with VR versions of films including The Martian. Futuresource Consulting believes the VR content market could be worth $8.3bn within four years.

Beyond entertainment, advocates say these headsets could transform education, travel, real estate and architecture, not to mention videoconferencing and social networking. Some inside Uber are worried that Oculus could one day prove disruptive to their business by removing the need for people to travel. Why hail a taxi when you can teleport?

“Whenever a market is this early, you have to have strong convictions loosely held,” says Nabeel Hyatt, a venture partner at Spark Capital, which also backed Oculus. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
That uncertainty provides fertile ground for entrepreneurs. “There will be billion-dollar companies started by college students because someone gave them a Rift as a present and they solved a very specific problem,” says Anjney Midha, a partner at KPCB Edge.

However, as any sci-fi reader knows, new technologies have inherent risks, too. The futures depicted in Ready Player One and Snow Crash are dystopian and chaotic.

In December, academics led by Christian Sandor of the Nara Institute, Japan, wrote that “true augmented reality”, where the digital is indistinguishable from the physical, “will be the most powerful medium that humanity ever had at its disposal”.

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What if Twitter Died? » Tech.pinions

Bob O’Donnell:

this seems to be one of the fundamental problems of Twitter. It’s appealing to Hollywood, TV, music and sports celebrities as a means to interact more intimately with their fans and share the kinds of details they’d never provide to traditional celebrity media. It’s appealing to the tech industry as a mouthpiece for those who want to determine the course of what is or isn’t important. The digital taste-setters, so to speak.

But for mainstream business and consumer users? Not so much. Arguably, this is the biggest problem with Twitter—it can’t seem to stretch beyond its celebrity, celebrity follower, and tech roots. If you aren’t into celebrities or the tech industry, Twitter just isn’t that appealing, especially given all the other options for online social interactions.

Despite these points, I think the navel gazing value of Twitter to the tech industry is so high, I seriously doubt they’ll let Twitter actually die. Someone with enough money and enough self-interest will likely make sure that, no matter what, Twitter will continue in some shape or form. Eventually, it’s value may start to fade, as some have already started to argue, but at least the Twittersphere will have a few years to adapt and find new alternatives.

The fundamental challenge is a publishing service that’s essentially based on self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and self-importance at some point is going to run into the wall of indifference. Not everyone cares to read about what the self-elected are all doing all the time.

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Yahoo loses mobile entrepreneur Arjun Sethi to venture firm » WSJ

Douglas MacMillan:

Mr. Sethi helped lead Yahoo’s effort to compete with Facebook Inc.FB -2.29% and Snapchat Inc. in the emerging area of mobile chat apps. Last July, his team released Livetext, a mobile app that lets users send live video and text without any sound.

Livetext failed to take off with users. In its first month, the program dropped out of the ranking of the 1,000 most popular apps in Apple Inc.’s app store and never returned, according to data from App Annie.

Yahoo’s struggles to produce a hit mobile app has hurt Ms. Mayer’s chances at turning around the 20-year-old Internet icon. This week, Yahoo said its board is weighing “strategic alternatives” to the turnaround which likely include a sale of its core Web business…

…Mr. Sethi is one of dozens of startup founders Ms. Mayer brought into Yahoo through a series of small acquisitions. In her three-and-a-half years as CEO, Yahoo has spent more than $2.3bn on at least 53 acquisitions, largely for small mobile-software developers whose apps were shuttered and whose founders were enticed to work on new projects at the company. At least 26, or over one-third, of the more than 70 startup founders and CEOs who joined Yahoo through an acquisition during Ms. Mayer’s tenure have left the company, according to their profiles on LinkedIn Corp.

As has also been pointed out, Yahoo last week wrote down the value of those acquisitions by $1.2bn. The idea of a video app without sound appears dumb, but then again lots are like that; but Instagram, Facebook and Vine were all there ages earlier. Yahoo’s problem is that it’s late and has no traction in mobile, not that the ideas are of themselves bad.
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Sacked in Dublin by a boss in… London » Private Eye

Private Eye is always anonymous:

Google’s claim that all its real business is handled through its European HQ in Dublin while its multiple UK offices exist merely to count the paperclips, organise staff leaving collections and do the morning coffee run is further undermined by evidence it gave to an employment appeals tribunal in the Irish capital in 2013.
Rachel Berthold had been sacked in May 2011 from a position as a “level six” manager, which the tribunal heard put her in the top 7% of employees in Google’s Dublin office.

Anne-Catrin Sallaba, her former boss as Google Europe’s Head of Publisher Services, gave evidence to the tribunal that Berthold had failed to meet performance targets – but Sallaba had to cross the Irish sea to do so, given that as Berthold’s line manager she was employed in, er, London.

Berthold was eventually awarded €100,000 for unfair dismissal. Sallaba has in the meantime been promoted twice, and now rejoices in the job title “Senior People Development Manager, Head of Global Onboarding” – still in London!

As it happens, Matt Brittin of Google UK will be testifying before the UK Parliament this week.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: Apple’s $8bn tax bill?, the tech funding squeeze, Friends Liquidated, Samsung ‘Live Photos’+ more

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At least you knew that the advert might be seen by real people. No such assurances in the online world. Photo by University of Pittsburgh Libraries on Flickr.

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

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

Why you should never consider a travel planning startup » Tnooz

Nadav Gur, principal at NG Vanguard Enterprises:

First, you need to acquire users. Guess what — if they’re not planning a trip, they’re not interested in travel planners. They don’t even acknowledge their existence.

People are bombarded by new websites/apps/brands all the time, and they filter for what’s relevant.

That’s what you see GEICO ads on TV all the time – cause the only way to get your attention those 1–2 times a year when you give a damn about insurance, is to be in front of you all the time.
No matter how much press/word-of-mouth/viral exposure you’re getting, it only registers if/when it happens to be relevant.

Inevitably this means that you too have to advertise a lot. And no, free user acquisition schemes like SEO do not work in 2015 at scale in established markets.

The Priceline Group spends over $2bn per year on Google Ads alone. Guess why?

Not so easily disrupted. And that’s before you get to the question of how many people spend enough on travel for any affiliate amounts to be worthwhile.
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Tech faces hour of reckoning as fundraising drops, layoffs rise » USA Today

Jon Swartz:

Is tech in for a rude awakening this year after a magic carpet ride the past few years?

The numbers, and recent actions by once-highflying start-ups, would seem to suggest so.

Consider: Mega-rounds, defined as funding of more than $100 million for venture capitalist-backed companies, are in free fall. The rate of private start-ups attaining unicorn status — a valuation of at least $1 billion — are grinding to a crawl. Friday layoffs at tech start-ups, deemed Black Fridays, are increasing. Bellwether tech stocks such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon have been taking it on the chin.

“It’s a time to re-calibrate — so many companies can’t burn extraordinary amounts of money forever,” says Sunil Panel, co-founder of Sidecar, a pioneer in the crowded ride-sharing space that shuttered operations on Dec. 31.

Last year, Silicon Valley projected unbridled swagger. Today, “there is definitely an era of reckoning,” says Chris Sacca, a venture investor with stakes in Uber and Twitter. “Reality is setting in.”

Not sure about “grinding to a crawl” (note to USA Today subs: things grind to a halt, or slow to a crawl), but the slowdown in stupid ideas is palpable.
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European antitrust chief takes swipe at privacy issue » The New York Times

Mark Scott on the EC’s Margrethe Vestager’s speech at the DLD conference:

“If a few companies control the data you need to cut costs, then you give them the power to drive others out of the market,” Ms. Vestager said at the DLD conference, a gathering of digital executives and policy makers.

She said that “it’s hard to know” how much data is given up when using an online messaging service.

“But it’s a business transaction, not a free giveaway,” she continued. “As consumers, we need to be treated fairly.”

Ms. Vestager’s warning shot in the often-rancorous privacy debate comes ahead of a Jan. 31 deadline for Europe and the United States to reach a new data-sharing agreement…

…A number of European executives echoed Ms. Vestager’s fears about how a small number of American tech companies could use their large-scale data collection to favor their own services over those of rivals. Among them was Oliver Samwer, the German entrepreneur who co-founded Rocket Internet, one of the region’s most high-profile tech companies.

“If someone like Google or Facebook has all of the data, then that’s not good,” Mr. Samwer said here on Sunday.

link to this extract

Whatsapp goes free, says it won’t introduce ads » Mashable

Whatsapp readily acknowledges that killing its only source of income will raise questions about introducing third-party ads. But the company has a different idea.

“Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from. That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight,” the post reads.

We reckon Whatsapp will charge organizations and business for establishing channels with their users through the service, though no details were announced. The idea is by no means new; a Bloomberg report in May 2015 claimed Whatsapp might foray into B2C messaging in the “longer term.”

Perfectly sensible business idea, and could also turn it into a platform like WeChat (whose capabilities and inclusions dwarf those of any western app).
link to this extract

Friends Reunited website to close down » BBC News

Zoe Kleinman:

Friends Reunited launched in the year 2000 and was bought by broadcaster ITV for £175m ($250m) in 2005.

However, it failed to keep pace with other social networks.

It was sold to comic publisher DC Thompson for only £25m in 2009 and Mr Pankhurst wrote in a blog post that the company had offered it back to him a couple of years ago.

Pankhurst and business partner Jason Porter agreed to take on the site for a trial period to see if they could revitalise it.

“It became clear that most of the actual users coming to the site were using it purely as a messageboard,” wrote Mr Pankhurst.

“And I also realised that of the more than 10 million users registered, a lot had done so over a decade ago and hence their contact details were out of date. But importantly – it hasn’t covered its costs and like any business this can’t continue indefinitely. Therefore, whilst it’s sad, I believe it’s time to move on and put Friends Reunited to bed.”

Quite why ITV or DC Thompson bought it is one of those mysteries of business; it was never remotely a fit with either. So after ruining many marriages (of people who looked up old school flames), it’s handing that particular torch over to Facebook, where people can do exactly the same…
link to this extract

Pakistan lifts ban on Youtube after launch of own version » Reuters

Tommy Wilkes:

Pakistan said on Monday it had removed a three-year ban on YouTube after the Google-owned video-sharing website launched a local version that allows the government to remove material it considers offensive.

Pakistan banned access to YouTube in September 2012 after an anti-Islam film, “Innocence of Muslims”, was uploaded to the site, sparking violent protests across major cities in the Muslim-majority country of 190 million people.

The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom said in a statement that under the new version of YouTube, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority can ask for access to offending material to be blocked.

“On the recommendation of PTA, Government of Pakistan has allowed access to recently launched country version of YouTube for Internet users in Pakistan,” the ministry said.

“Google has provided an online web process through which requests for blocking access of the offending material can be made by PTA to Google directly and Google/YouTube will accordingly restrict access to the said offending material for users within Pakistan.”

link to this extract

November 2013: Bitcoin under pressure » The Economist

The Economist doesn’t name writers, but I happen to know this is by Glenn Fleishman, writing back in 2013:

Server farms with endless racks of ASIC cards have already sprung up. But as part of Bitcoin’s design, the reward for mining a block halves every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years. Sometime in 2017, at the current rate, it will drop to 12.5 Bitcoins. If the returns from mining decline, who will verify the integrity of the block chain?

To head off this problem, a market-based mechanism is in the works which will raise the current voluntary fees paid by users (around five cents per transaction) in return for verification. “Nodes in the peer-to-peer network will try to estimate the minimum fee needed to get the transaction confirmed,” says Mr Hearn.

Bitcoin’s growing popularity is having other ripple effects. Every participant in the system must keep a copy of the block chain, which now exceeds 11 gigabytes in size and continues to grow steadily. This alone deters casual use. Bitcoin’s designer proposed a method of pruning the chain to include only unspent amounts, but it has not been implemented.

As the rate of transactions increases, squeezing all financial activity into the preset size limit for each block has started to become problematic. The protocol may need to be tweaked to allow more transactions per block, among other changes. A further problem relates to the volunteer machines, or nodes, that allow Bitcoin to function. These nodes relay transactions and transmit updates to the block chain. But, says Matthew Green, a security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, the ecosystem provides no compensation for maintaining these nodes—only for mining. The rising cost of operating nodes could jeopardise Bitcoin’s ability to scale.

Following Mike Hearn’s farewell the other day, I think Fleishman is allowed to say “told you so”.
link to this extract

“Bitcoin Boulevard” no longer booming » Marketplace.org

Elizabeth Miller:

It’s been almost two years since a group of businesses in a Cleveland suburb started accepting digital currency bitcoin as a form of payment. The response at first was huge.  Visitors from around the world stopped at what became known as “Bitcoin Boulevard.” But now, the bitcoin hype has subsided. 

Along a lane of small retail stores, restaurants and bars, nine independent Cleveland Heights businesses banded together to form Bitcoin Boulevard in May 2014. But today, two of those businesses have closed, one is not actively accepting bitcoin, and a wine shop ceased most of its bitcoin transactions after the Ohio Division of Liquor Control banned alcohol purchases with the digital currency.

Mitchell’s Fine Chocolates is one of the original nine businesses. Owner Bill Mitchell says he started seeing a drop in bitcoin payment when its value dwindled at the beginning of 2015.

“Since the latter part of the winter of this year going through the end of October, it’s been deader than a doornail,” said Mitchell.

Mitchell isn’t the only one seeing a drop in bitcoin business. Shawn Paul Salon says it has only had six bitcoin transactions in the past 18 months. That’s a lot less exciting than everyone had hoped.

Reality check.
link to this extract

The problem with Adgorithms’ prospectus » Investors Chronicle

Alex Newman, on the AIM-listed ad tech company whose shares have plummeted by 80% from their IPO:

So what went wrong? This is what the company said in its first profit warning, on 9 October, explaining a “significant” and indefinite impact on revenue:

“In recent weeks, the online advertising market has experienced severe disruption, resulting in a loss of supply for major online advertising exchanges and a drop in demand from major media buyers.”

In fact, this disruption had begun several months before, even prior to Adgorithms’ listing. In April, media trading platform news site adexchanger.com reported that AppNexus – which, together with fellow ad exchange Adap.TV related to the majority of Adgorithms’ 2014 revenues – had started screening out unverifiable media inventory. AppNexus’ chief executive, who followed several other ad exchanges when he launched the clean-up in November 2014, later acknowledged that more than half of the impressions flowing through his platform were failing the test. This has had the dual effect of suppressing Adgorithms’ revenues and – according to Peel Hunt analyst Alex DeGroote – increasing the cost of digital media.

Adgorithms certainly should have known about AppNexus’ clean-up plans before listing, and was aware that at least one of its peers had been hit by the broader changes. In April, fellow Israeli ad tech group Matomy Media (MTMY) issued a profit warning, citing the “implementation by one of the leading media trading platforms [this was AppNexus] of a new media verification and screening tool that resulted in an immediate decrease in the amount of digital media available for purchase”.

“Unverifiable” inventory is what can also be called “fraudulent” ads – shown to bots on sites that humans never visit. It’s worth visiting the AdExchanger link (“screening out unverifiable…”) which points to just how much junk and fraud there may be going on.

Seriously, online ads have ended the age of “half of what I spend on advertising is wasted”. Now you have no idea what proportion it may be if you’re using an ad network.
link to this extract

Samsung to launch Live Photos rival called Vivid Photo with Galaxy S7 » Android Geeks

Marius Maria:

Back in September, Apple launched the iPhone 6S which comes with Live Photos, a feature which captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after a picture is taken. HTC’s Zoe Capture was capable of doing the same thing long before Live Photos, but this gimmick only became cool now because Apple has it on its phones.

But Samsung wants to jump into the Live Photos bandwagon, too. According to one of our sources the software engineers of the South Korean phone maker are testing a Live Photos-like feature that is supposed to debut with the Galaxy S7 later this year.

Not sure about the “But” beginning that second paragraph. All sorts of words fit better: “Now”, “Predictably”, “Unsurprisingly”. Cold comfort for HTC.
link to this extract

App economy jobs in the United States (Part 1) » Progressive Policy Institute

Michael Mandel:

Is 1.66 million a reasonable figure for US App Economy employment? This figure is based on our estimate of roughly 550,000 core app economy workers. That’s out of roughly 5 million people employed in computer and mathematical occupations or as computer and information systems managers. In effect, core app economy workers make up roughly 11% of the tech workforce.

Informal discussions with tech executives suggest that it’s reasonable to attribute roughly 11 percent of the tech workforce to the App Economy in the United States. Large portions of software development involve backend systems, such as financial and operation databases, which are not mobile specific. On the other hand, software development focused on online consumer or individual interactions must necessarily involve apps, because Americans increasingly access the Internet via their smartphone or other mobile devices. Going forward, mobile is likely to become more important rather than less, further pushing up the number of App Economy jobs.

We can do another comparison. In 2007, before the introduction of the iPhone, there were roughly 3.9 million people employed in computer and mathematical occupations or as computer and information systems managers. Since then tech employment has risen by 1.1 million, suggesting roughly half the net gain in tech occupational employment since 2007 has come from the App Economy.

For the job breakdown, it puts iOS at 1.4m (87%), Android at 1.1m (70%), BlackBerry at 107,000 (6%) and Windows Phone/Mobile at 45,000 (3%). Adds up to 166% because some people (two-thirds?) work on multiple ecosystems. (Via Horace Dediu.)
link to this extract

Apple may be on hook for $8bn in taxes in Europe probe » Bloomberg Business

Adam Satariano:

The European Commission contends that Apple’s corporate arrangement in Ireland allows it to calculate profits using more favorable accounting methods. Apple calculates its tax bill using low operating costs, a move that dramatically decreases what the company pays to the Irish government. While Apple generates about 55% of its revenue outside the US, its foreign tax rate is about 1.8%. If the Commission decides to enforce a tougher accounting standard, Apple may owe taxes at a 12.5% rate, on $64.1bn in profit generated from 2004 to 2012, according to Larson, a litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

Apple is perhaps the highest-profile case of US companies facing scrutiny from officials in Europe. Starbucks, Amazon and McDonalds also have had its tax policies questioned.

Several senators came to the defense of US companies on Friday. In a letter to US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, bipartisan members of the Senate Finance Committee asked the administration to make sure that European regulators won’t impose retroactive penalties like those that would hit Apple.

Odd if Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter aren’t also in this.
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

Start up: make like Apple?, Samsung sells off fibre optic, authors v Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s PR push and more

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Spring-making machine: photo by Mitch Altman, taken in Shenzhen, China, November 2014

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

No, you can’t manufacture that like Apple does >> Medium

What happened when Apple wanted to CNC machine a million MacBook bodies a year? They bought 10k CNC machines to do it. How about when they wanted to laser drill holes in MacBook Pros for the sleep light but only one company made a machine that could drill those 20 µm holes in aluminum? It bought the company that made the machines and took all the inventory. And that time when they needed batteries to fit into a tiny machined housing but no manufacturer was willing to make batteries so thin? Apple made their own battery cells. From scratch.

Pretty much no company, big or small, can afford to do these things. Yes, Apple has done a great job building many of these products and yes, consumers have come to love many of these difficult-to-manufacture features. But you are not Apple. So long as you’re providing value to your customers, taking the fit and finish of your product down a notch is okay. Especially for your first few production runs.

So what should you avoid? Here’s a few things that Apple often does that can cause problems for a startup.

The “white plastic” one in the list that follows is so obvious when you think about it, but non-obvious until it’s pointed out (or seen).

Samsung Electronics exits fibre optics amid sharper focus on reviving smartphones >> Reuters

Samsung Electronics agreed to sell its fibre optics operations to US specialty glass maker Corning Inc, exiting another non-core business to focus on shoring up underperforming key areas like smartphones.

Terms of the sale, including plants in China and South Korea, weren’t disclosed. Announced by both parties on Tuesday, the South Korean firm’s second exit from a business line this quarter comes as it braces for its lowest annual profit in three years, squeezed by stiff competition…

…The firm also said in October it will halt its light emitting diode lighting business outside of its home country, which was also considered a non-core business.

Best >> stratechery

Ben Thompson on disruption, and what Clayton Christensen’s theory lacks because it doesn’t include user experience as a factor:

That’s the thing though: the quality of a user experience has no ceiling. As nearly every other consumer industry has shown, as long as there is a clear delineation between the top-of-the-line and everything else, some segment of the user base will pay a premium for the best. That’s the key to Apple’s future: they don’t need completely new products every other year (or half-decade); they just need to keep creating the best stuff in their categories. Easy, right?

He’s totally right that Apple should have bought Dropbox; but Steve Jobs couldn’t see the inherent, coming value of the cloud – even though it was Jobs, in 1997, who told developers about the importance of network computing and not having to worry about locally stored data.

Android 5.0 Lollipop delay for HTC One and One M8 Google Play Editions >> TechRadar

The reason for the first delay was pretty vague, with Google simply stating that it would “need to re-spin SW”. If we were to Google Translate that confusing statement into plain English, we’d guess that it meant Google needed time to tweak and update the Android 5.0 Lollipop software.

That delay pushed back the expected Lollipop update to December 1. However that date came and went with no sign of the update.
 
It soon emerged that the Lollipop Update has been delayed once again, with Mo Versi, HTC’s VP of Product Management, reporting that the delay this time is due to Google being too busy at the moment, but that we should expect the update soon.

Just to be clear – that’s for the stock Android versions of the HTC One and M8, not those with HTC’s Sense skin. “Too busy” is a great reason.

Author discontent grows as Kindle Unlimited enters its fifth month >> The Digital Reader

Nate Hoffelder:

When Kindle Unlimited launched in the US 4 months ago there were many questioning whether it was good or bad for authors, and if the chorus of complaints over the past few days are any indication then the answer will be no.

HM Ward kicked off the discussion on Friday when she revealed that she was pulling out of KDP Select, the program Amazon uses to funnel indie ebooks into Kindle Unlimited.

Ward withdrew her books not because the average payment had dropped to only $1.33, but because her total revenues had fallen by 75%

Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s ebook subscription service. All the news from authors seems not to be positive.

Apple had a rough morning >> Bloomberg View

Matt Levine with a terrific explanation of the “flash crash” of Apple stock, which seems to have mostly been driven by computer-based high-frequency trading. Because no human reacts that fast:

You’ve lost several thousand dollars on your Apple trades. Maybe you should cut your losses and get out? Again, you are not, like, pondering this in your heart of hearts: You are an algorithm, and you are programmed with some loss limits, so you cut your losses and start selling. So instead of dampening volatility, you actually start increasing it.

Chesterton’s Fence >> The Epicurean Dealmaker

GK Chesterton argued:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This is clearly why Chesterton never got venture funding in Silicon Valley.

The real reason Amazon is telling us about its robots >> Huffington Post

Timothy Stenovec applies a suitably sceptical eye to the news, recalling how coincidentally a year ago Amazon told 60 Minutes about its drone plans:

This year, Amazon appears to be trying the same thing again – only this time, it’s with robots. The company recently invited a select group of journalists – I was not one of them – to tour one of its California warehouses and watch robots move 750-pound shelves of products. Amazon says it uses 15,000 such robots in its facilities, and that the machines, a result of Amazon’s $750m purchase of robot-maker Kiva Systems in 2012, will cut costs, save you money and help get products to you faster.

There was no news of Amazon’s robot fleet until just after midnight on Monday, when suddenly a flood of stories appeared – suggesting that the news was “embargoed,” a term for the common media practice of agreeing not to publish certain information until a certain time.

The robots are interesting, and every journalist knows about having something to please the editor for a Monday morning. Perhaps brick-and-mortar stores could start PR schemes where they show how they’re paying tax?

This “smart” ring is another reason to never trust Kickstarter videos >> Gizmodo

With $880,998 in funding, well exceeding its $250,000 asking price, Ring was a smart device that was meant to Bluetooth control everything in your life — except that it doesn’t. Not by a long shot.

We debunked the thing outright as soon as it showed up on Kickstarter in March, but that didn’t stop thousands of backers from signing up for the product and who are now probably regretting that $269 monetary decision. YouTube user Snazzy Labs breaks down every facet of the ring, and why it’s such a terrible, terrible waste of money.

“Comically unusable” is among the more generous phrases used by Snazzy Labs (cool name bro) in the video, which is worth watching just to see how wearables should not be done, ever.

Santa or the Grinch: Android tablet analysis for the 2014 holiday season >> Bluebox Security

Bluebox Labs purchased over a dozen of these Black Friday “bargain” Android tablets from big name retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Kmart, Kohl’s and Staples, and reviewed each of them for security. What we found was shocking: most of the devices ship with vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations; a few even include security backdoors. What seemed like great bargains turned out to be big security concerns. Unfortunately, unsuspecting consumers who purchase and use these devices will be putting their mobile data & passwords at risk.

(Via John Moltz.)

Start up: Chromebooks beat iPads, Netscape’s growing pains, OnePlus’s India problem, Nexus 9 before and after, and more

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The inside of Peter Morgan’s eye.

A selection of 12 links for you. Clean regularly. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter – observations and links welcome. (Note: I’ve tweaked – I hope – the font size on each link entry. If the spacing seems off, suggest a better CSS for it. I’m all ears, having twiddled with it to little satisfaction.)

Google overtakes Apple in the US classroom >> FT.com

 

Apple has lost its longstanding lead over Google in US schools, with Chromebook laptop computers overtaking iPads for the first time as the most popular new device for education authorities purchasing in bulk for students.

Google shipped 715,500 of the low-cost laptops into US schools in the third quarter, compared with 702,000 iPads, according to IDC, the market research firm. Chromebooks, which sell for as little as $199, have gone from a standing start two years ago to more than a quarter of the market.

It marks the first time Google has outsold its rival and consolidates a lead it opened up over Apple this year in the broader education market, which includes higher education establishments, as it closes in on Microsoft Windows, the market leader.

The multibillion-dollar education market has become a battleground for hardware makers trying to win the loyalties of the next generation of consumers. It has traditionally been dominated by Windows devices, which have a decades-long head start on iPads and Chromebooks, but schools are increasingly turning to lower-cost alternatives.

A $500m schools contract in Los Angeles was going to be all-iPad – and then the deal hit the rocks, and LA went for Chromebooks instead.

Peek Retina >> Indiegogo

What is Peek Retina?
It’s a clip-on camera adapter that gives high quality images of the back of the eye and the retina. This helps us to diagnose cataracts, glaucoma and many other eye diseases, ready for treatment.

It has been developed by an award-winning team of experts in eye care, engineering and technology.

Peek Retina combines both a traditional ophthalmoscope and a retinal camera in a mobile phone, providing a portable, affordable and easy way to carry out comprehensive examinations.

It sits neatly over the top of the device allowing a healthcare worker to easily take high-quality images of the back of the eye. It feels much less intrusive for the patient too.

The aim is to bring it to the millions of people who need affordable eye care in poorer regions. A donation would make a great Christmas gift. Or buy one for yourself.

A letter to our Indian users >> OnePlus Blog

This week, we announced that the OnePlus One will finally launch in India on December 2, 2014. This has been a long time coming both for our Indian fans, who have been incredibly patient, and everyone behind the scenes who have been working towards this moment since June.

OnePlus and all of our partners, including Cyanogen, have put countless hours of work into making this launch a success. Just last month, on October 7, Cyanogen released the 38R OTA update which included SAR values inside phone settings to comply with Indian regulations. Therefore, it was surprising and disappointing to hear from Cyanogen on November 26 that they had granted exclusive rights in India over the Cyanogen system to another company. Prior to this, OnePlus and Cyanogen have successfully cooperated to release the OnePlus One or carry out commercial operations in 17 countries and regions (including India). It is truly unfortunate that a commitment we both made to our Indian users will now not be upheld.

Cyanogen’s exclusive partner in India: home-grown Micromax. OnePlus’s solution: set up physical places where it will flash peoples’ OnePlus phones to the newest system. That’s going to be expensive.

Smartphones to commoditise like PCs; margins to contract >> Fitch Ratings

The margins of Asian smartphone makers are likely to contract in the medium term amid heightened competition and product commoditisation, says Fitch Ratings. The slowing pace of hardware development, and more manufacturers achieving a threshold level of build quality and functionality, means that the rapid growth of lower-cost smartphone producers will challenge market-leading incumbents and reduce profitability.

The smartphone industry runs the risk of following the cycle seen in PCs, where device-makers’ share of the value chain was squeezed by competition and where operating systems and applications software have become more important to consumers than hardware from a specific manufacturer. The dominance of Microsoft’s operating systems and applications enabled this trend in PCs. In smartphones, this trend may be facilitated by the Android operating system and the open environment for third-party application developers…

…Fitch expects that Samsung’s credit profile will remain solid, given its technology leadership, integrated structure and wider product range. Apple too is relatively well positioned owing to its strong brand value and ecosystem. Outside the big two, established brands such as LG Electronics, Sony, HTC and Nokia, will face stiffer competition from low-cost Chinese vendors.

It’s the value trap all over again.

Uber Josh Mohrer: New York’s general manager is facing disciplinary action over privacy violations >> Slate

Uber said Friday that it has concluded an investigation of New York City general manager Josh Mohrer for alleged privacy violations and has “taken disciplinary actions” against him.

Uber began looking into Mohrer 10 days ago after BuzzFeed’s Johana Bhuiyan reported that Mohrer had accessed her Uber travel data without her permission on multiple occasions. In one instance earlier this month, Bhuiyan arrived for a meeting with Mohrer at Uber’s New York headquarters in Long Island City to find him waiting for her. “There you are,” she recalled him telling her. “I was tracking you.”

Reached Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for Uber declined to comment on any specifics of the “disciplinary actions” or discuss what might have prompted them other than the BuzzFeed report.

Somehow unsurprising that Uber would go for undisclosed self-regulation on this.

The best travel gear of 2014 >> Co.Design

If you need an unusual present for someone who’s always in and out of airports, or rides a bike, or needs an umbrella, here you go. Some great ideas in here.

Is Monument Valley overpriced? Yes. >> Terence Eden’s Blog

We live in times of desperate austerity. When you say “well, it’s only the price of a cup of coffee!” you utterly fail to realise that for many people Starbucks represents an unobtainable level of decadent spending.
People have hard lives. After working two jobs, slumped on an endless night bus home, they want relief from the pain and tedium of the working day. Pulling out an old phone – perhaps a hand-me-down, or one bought in happier times – they want to spend what little disposable income they have wisely. Something that gives them bang for their buck.

Renting a movie, like Transformers, works out at £1.30 per hour of enjoyment. Twice as cheap as Monument Valley.

Reading a book, knitting, chatting on the phone with a friend – all cheaper.

As the reviewer [quoted earlier in the post] said – there are many games which are just as good looking as Monument Valley, with far longer play times. Often for free.

This is a classic “functional pricing” argument, which I find is much more widely made (especially over PCs and smartphones and tablets, where “measurement” seems superficially easy – x GHz processor, y RAM, z hard drive storage). It’s also meaningless. I wouldn’t rent Transformers; you could offer it to me free and I wouldn’t watch it. Why? Because in my view it’s crap. Therefore no (non-negative) price is sufficiently low for me.

By contrast, I find Monument Valley to be fascinating, clever, unexpected, memorable – all those things that for me Transformers is not. As for other games that have longer play times and are free – sure, but is Doodle Jump or Angry Birds as memorable as Monument Valley?

I don’t often disagree with Eden, but this seems to me a classic case of mistaking price and value. Equally, it’s one that lots of people make when it comes to apps – which is the problem app makers face.

An Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool

From the teeny tiny to the gianty–… anyway. Terrific way to feel small. (Via Jake Davis.)

The BlackBerry Passport enigma: TCOB-machine or “worst designed thing, ever” >> Ars Technica

Sean Gallagher:

When viewed in the right light, the Passport ends up looking pretty. It was unexpectedly the best smartphone we’ve ever used from the perspective of taking care of business. Yes, it benchmarks somewhat below phones in its price range on the tests that would run in the BlackBerry 10 OS. And there’s still a significant “app gap” between the Passport and competing devices. But that’s all background noise when you use the Passport as it’s intended—as an information and communications machine, designed for people who still live and die by the e-mail inbox rather than iMessages and Hangouts and Snapchats.

Unlike this one, most reviews of the Passport miss its point – it’s not a general-purpose smartphone. It’s a BlackBerry.

The baffling and beautiful wormhole between branches of math >> WIRED

Lee Simmons, capitalising on the fact that “wormhole” is a key phrase at the moment (because of Interstellar) and hey, maybe this is new! But it isn’t. If you don’t know Euler’s identity equation, you’re in for a treat though:

the weirdest thing about Euler’s formula — given that it relies on imaginary numbers — is that it’s so immensely useful in the real world. By translating one type of motion into another, it lets engineers convert messy trig problems (you know, sines, secants, and so on) into more tractable algebra—like a wormhole between separate branches of math. It’s the secret sauce in Fourier transforms used to digitize music, and it tames all manner of wavy things in quantum mechanics, electron ics, and signal processing; without it, computers might not exist.

Nexus 9 made on Thursday vs before launch buttons comparison >> Nexus9

Poster “Sebianoti” posted a picture of his old and new Nexus 9 tablets, and commented:

Today my new Nexus 9 arrived, it was manufactured last week, it was shipped to me on Friday from Taiwan and it arrived today. It’s my replacement to my faulty one with extreme light bleed and buttons that are almost impossible to press, as you can see that’s one issue that’s been fixed. This may be the first Nexus 9 in white that has the buttons fixed, at least that’s what HTC’s AVP told me. Light bleed is still present however it’s nowhere near as bad as before.

Seems like damning with faint praise. The LTE version has apparently been delayed. HTC isn’t covering the Nexus name with glory here (and replacements aren’t going to help its bottom line).

Excerpts from my diary of early days at Netscape >> Jamie Zawinski

Here are some excerpts from my diary during the first few months of the existence of Netscape Communications (All Praise the Company), back when we were still called Mosaic. Back when there were only 20 or 30 of us, instead of however-many thousands of people there are today. Back before we had any middle managers.

This is the time period that is traditionally referred to as “the good old days”, but time always softens the pain and makes things look like more fun than they really were. But who said everything has to be fun? Pain builds character. (Sometimes it builds products, too.)

So you want to go work for a startup? Perhaps this will serve as a cautionary tale…

The first one starts at 4am. SGI hardware, Irix 5.3… but the same frustration that will be recognisable to many startups. It starts in July. By September:

We’re doomed.

We’ve finally announced a public beta to the net, and there are loads of bugs, and they’re hard bugs, sucky, hardware-dependent ones. Some of our private beta testers crash at startup on some SunOS 4.1.3 systems, and I’ve got what seems like an identical system here and it doesn’t crash. And scrolling text doesn’t work with the OpenWindows X server, though it works fine elsewhere.

(Via Steve Werby.)