Links
Want to learn to code? Start here.
Want to learn to code? Start here.
Zack Shapiro offers some great advice for those interested in learning to code as a means to build something. I’m one of those people he mentions who are using Code Academy but I make it a part of my weekly routine and it’s helping.
I wrote a post almost a year ago about how code relates to the law, and I stand by it: it’s a great way of learning to think critically. Even if you don’t learn to build what you have in mind, you’ll get some useful lessons out of the experience.
HBO exec laments piracy of low-quality editions of 'Game of Thrones'
HBO exec laments piracy of low-quality editions of ‘Game of Thrones’
HBO programming president Michael Lombardo, speaking to Entertainment Weekly's James Hibberd:
The production values of this show are so incredible. So I’m hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up.
More good news for those of us hoping something will change as far as non-cable TV subscription access to the massively popular show and the HBO stable in general.
2nd Circuit: Aereo streaming of individual over-the-air TV feeds via internet doesn't violate copyright law
The Second Circuit has held in WNET v Aereo (PDF) that sending a unique stream of over-the-air TV signal to customers via the internet isn’t a copyright violation.
Aereo assign each of its subscribers their own personal antenna and stream to comply with a previous Second Circuit decision. In other words, Aereo could provide its service with one antenna, but it needs to use one for every subscriber. The use of one antenna for all subscribers, as the Second Circuit held in its 2008 Cablevision opinion, would likely constitute an unlawful public performance.
Judge Chin says in his dissent that he isn’t pleased by this technique:
Aereo’s “technology platform” is, however, a sham. The system employs thousands of individual dime-sized antennas, but there is no technologically sound reason to use a multitude of tiny individual antennas rather than one central antenna; indeed, the system is a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law.
Aereo’s technology isn’t an attempt to avoid the reach of the Act. It’s an attempt to comply with the Second Circuit’s own characterization of the Act’s meaning and purpose. The absurdity of the situation arises not from Aereo’s attempt at a “sham,” but from the outdated Copyright Act itself.
A quick glance at the rest of Judge Chen’s dissent suggests he may make some reasonable points distinguishing Aereo from the DVR service at issue in Cablevision, so I’ll withhold my own final thoughts on this case until I’ve read the Aereo opinion through.
But copyright law needs fixing. It was written during a time when the cost of copying was non-trivial, and copies were typically finite and controlled centrally by the rightsholder. There is no longer any non-trivial cost to copying. Whether between servers or from a server to your computer, the internet is nothing more or less than a giant copy-making machine. This doesn’t mean we need to weaken copyright law (although shorter terms would be more in line with copyright’s Constitutional imperative), but we do need to adapt it to the modern world.
Professor David Post, whose copyright class I took at Temple Law, signed an amicus curiae brief in this case late last year—here’s my post about it.
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 Keep isn't an Evernote killer
Evernote will be just fine, despite Google’s recent announcement of a new note-taking app called Google Keep, currently available for the web and Android. Keep allows for text, audio, and images to be added to a single notebook and synced between the web and Android devices. You can even add stuff via Google Now. It’s neat, but it’s no Evernote killer.
The two products cater to very different use cases, and Keep will not be able to replace Evernote for its core customers. Evernote had 1.5 million premium subscribers in November 2012. At 45$/year, that’s around $67 million annually, and the number of subscribers has been rising for years.
It doesn’t make them profitable, at least at the moment, but it helps. Coupled with Business accounts and other endeavors, Evernote isn’t worried. For those premium users, who pay because they make the most of Evernote’s vast feature set, Keep won’t be good enough. And I suspect that even if every user of Evernote’s free tier left the product, Evernote would hardly notice from an operational standpoint (if anything, operational costs would decrease).
Instead, makers of task management apps should be concerned. Google Tasks is as neglected as Google Reader was, and we all know what happened to Reader. Keep looks like an elegant upgrade to Google Tasks, and while Evernote has hinted at its own task management solution, I don’t think the future of their business will depend on it.
It’s worth remembering: there just aren’t as many zero-sum games in the apps and services spaces as many, especially in the tech press, would have us believe. Design, feature set nuance, and adaptability to users’ current workflow all allow for multiple apps to be successful in the same space. The Keep/Evernote dichotomy is no different.
This article was adapted from a comment I left on The Next Web’s post about Keep.
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.