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China is very serious about cyberespionage
China is very serious about cyberespionage
Google apologists like myself often answer concerns that the search-and-advertising giant can scan your email with something like “yes, but they’re doing it with robots and scrubbing it clean of all identifying information.”
China, however, is not so concerned with your privacy or its own image. In fact, monitoring otherwise-harmless civilians probably proves valuable to the renegade nation by illustrating the best means of tricking US netizens into installing backdoor viruses on their systems.
The most important point this article makes, in my view, is that China is playing the long game on cyberespionage efforts. As David Feith reports in the Wall Street Journal piece linked to above:
The essence of China’s thinking about cyber warfare is the concept of shi, he says, first introduced in Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” about 2,500 years ago. The concept’s English translation is debated, but Mr. Thomas subscribes to the rendering of Chinese Gen. Tao Hanzhang, who defines shi as “the strategically advantageous posture before a battle.”
They’re not going to take down any infrastructure any time soon, but if and when they want to, their current efforts will probably go a long way to helping them learn how to do it.
This stuff is not just a headline: it’s been happening for some time, is still happening, and is likely only to increase. Mr. Feith’s article at the Journal is well worth reading.
Facebook To Reveal “Home On Android”
Facebook To Reveal “Home On Android”
I predict Facebook will announce a custom Android launcher — a “home” screen.
Update April 4, 2013: I was right.
Abortion's inevitable return to the Supreme Court
Abortion’s inevitable return to the Supreme Court
Above the Law’s Elie Mystal is right: thanks to medical technology and laws that ignore their own consequences, abortion is going to return the Supreme Court. I hope it’s sooner than later.
Make Feedly look more like Reader
Make Feedly look more like Reader
If you like Feedly but prefer Reader’s white space and width, grab this handy script. Chrome users like me should install Tampermonkey first.
OUYA and Emulation
Darrell Etherington, reporting at TechCrunch:
OUYA forum admin and owner Ed Krassenstein said in a post on his site that EMUya, a NES emulator, has been submitted to OUYA for review and should definitely be available at launch, and a couple of SNES emulation options are confirmed, including the SuperGNES and the Mupen64Plus Nintendo 64 emulators. The Mupen64Plus project is also said to be available at launch, with the developer behind it posting that it has already been approved by OUYA for inclusion in the official store.
OUYA would do well to backtrack on this, and fast. If they mean to make themselves a legitimate part of the console landscape, the encouragement of unlicensed emulation, which amounts to copyright infringement, is not the way to go.
Yahoo: The Marissa Mayer Turnaround
Yahoo: The Marissa Mayer Turnaround
Jean-Louis Gassée consistently provides insight and, perhaps even more importantly in today’s tech-writing landscape, truly elegant prose. This is a great write-up, but I recommend you make Monday Note one of your weekly reads. He and Frédéric Filloux are often voices of reason among the din of unqualified opinion.
Easily fake a tweet from anyone's account
Easily fake a tweet from anyone’s account
I wonder whether Twitter can eliminate the potential for this stuff, because Shawn King of The Loop is right: it definitely raises concerns for journalists, not to mention anyone whose account lends credence to the crazy things you might say with this hack.
HBO CEO wants to bundle HBO GO with your internet subscription
Titles are Toxic
Michael Lopp on the anachronism and true uselessness of titles:
When a company is small, everyone does a little bit of everything, so titles make no sense. My first title at Netscape was “Bitsifter”. Sure, there were some titles, but they were titles of convenience so external parties could apply their antiquated title frameworks to folks on our team during meetings. “Oh, I see, you’re the VP of Product… how very impressive.”
I give no one any respect whatsoever based on their title: they have to earn it. This can be done through genuine conversation, viable work product, or explicit demonstrations of effective leadership. There is no other way.
Google and Experimentation
This is a great article, especially if you don’t know much about the history of Android. However, Adrianne Jeffries of The Verge ends her article with a silly quote from Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. Perhaps analysts have a legitimate role to play in the consumer electronics industry, but this statement doesn’t support that thesis:
"I think Google doesn’t necessarily know what it’s going to do until Google has done it," said Gartenberg, the Gartner analyst. "I’m sure there’s going to be some experimentation here."
Google, the data-driven engineer’s paradise knows what it’s doing before it has done it. Experimentation is not, in Google’s world, akin to musical improvisation. Experiments in any setting are, if done right, rigorously planned and researched, and then executed with careful precision.
Google will heed the data, and the market climate, and the reaction to rumors about a commingled Android/Chrome OS, and myriad other factors. And they will definitely know what they’re doing before they do it.
Actually, it's not our data at all
Actually, it’s not our data at all
It may illustrate your shopping habits and your life events, but the data about what you do online and with customer loyalty cards effectively belongs to the companies that sell it. And it makes them a lot of money.
Don’t forget that.
'Babble' to consolidate Google's chat tools under one brand
‘Babble’ to consolidate Google’s chat tools under one brand
Geek.com's Russell Holly:
Google’s recent decision to block non-native XMPP requests is the first step towards building their own closed communications platform. In order to use Google’s chat service, especially the new Babble service, you’ll need to be using it the way Google wants you to use it.
This doesn’t sound very open. John Gruber of Daring Fireball has been tracking this issue for a while, most recently citing Google’s abandonment of CalDAV.
Google isn’t doing themselves any favors on the “open” front. I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandonment that mantra altogether going forward.
Prenda Law's dismissing some cases following ID theft claim
Prenda Law’s dismissing some cases following ID theft claim
This stuff just gets better and better. It feels like Lady Justice Herself is suddenly trolling the trolls.
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fans
Google+ lead asks for advice from Google Reader fans
Google+ architect Yontan Zunger meant well, but Google+ will never be sufficient as a reader. Brands maintain a curated presence there for audience outreach and building purposes, not to provide readers with a convenient way to determine what content in that brand’s firehose of updates readers may wish to read further.
Note: I cross-posted this from a comment I wrote on Google+.
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behavior
Porn troll Prenda Law angers judge with shady behavior
Earlier this week I mentioned that the EFF was going to represent a couple of anti-trolling websites in a case brought by porno copyright troll Prenda Law.
The Ars Technica article by Megan Geuss is well-written and really conveys the absurdity of the situation in which Prenda has put itself. I urge you to click the link in this post’s title to go give her piece a full read.
Also, if you’re interested in keeping up with the latest in potential troll-stomping, consider keeping an eye on the Ars series "Who’s behind Prenda Law?". They always do great work at Ars and this series is no exception.
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
Transitioning from Google Reader to feedly
From the Feedly blog:
We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.
Feedly is my top contender for a Reader replacement right now: multi-platform, ready to clone my Reader feeds, and prepared to essentially take over much of Reader’s core subscribe-and-sync functionality when Google pulls the plug.
Also, I can’t help but assume that they’re calling it Normandy because there are tens of thousands of Google Reader users suddenly storming their shores.
Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook's hashtag implementation news?
Dear Wall Street Journal: Why is Facebook’s hashtag implementation news?
I love that this is “news” at the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps the only news-worthy aspect of this story is that it’s one of those rare instances where Facebook is the one keeping up with the Joneses, instead of the other way around.
When will this vaunted hashtag implementation be completed? No one knows, despite WSJ's having talked to some of those ubiquitous and ever-informative “people familiar with the matter.”
What I think is really wonderful about this non-story is that it took not one but two people at WSJ to produce it, Evelyn M. Rusli and Shira Ovide. I don’t pretend to know the usual caliber of those journalists’ work, but I hope, for their sake, that the topic of this blurb is uncharacteristically dull.