Links

Oct 24, 2012 ∞

Invention as Art

This is a great article on patent drawings and models, as selected for Co.Design by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan.

Oct 23, 2012 ∞

iPad mini - Every inch an iPad.

Everyone is shitting their pants over this thing, but I’m more excited by the new MacBook Pro.

Oct 23, 2012 ∞

FTC Publishes Facial Recognition Guidelines

Carl Franzen, of TPM Idea Lab:

There are two cases where the FTC believes that companies need to get a consumer’s “affirmative express consent,” that is, an “opt-in,” before using information captured via facial recognition: When identifying anonymous individuals to third parties that wouldn’t otherwise know who they were, and when using any data or imagery captured via facial recognition for purposes outside of what was initially stated by the company.

This is good news because it signals awareness on the part of the FTC that this is an issue. Mr. Franzen provides some good context in his article, so if this stuff interests or worries you, click through to read his analysis. You can also find the FTC’s press release on the issue here, the report itself, in PDF format, here, and the dissenting statement of Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch, also in PDF format, here.

Oct 23, 2012 ∞

Amazon outage takes out Reddit, Foursquare, Heroku

Lee Hutchinson, writing at Ars Technica:

These kinds of outages are a jarring reminder of the true nature of “the cloud”—it’s still just servers in data centers.

Amazon’s market power in ebooks leads to some questionable behavior, as well as some anti-competitive business practices.

Now it is becoming increasingly clear that reliance on Amazon by some of the internet’s most popular services could be a liability. Their cloud hosting services, which, to be fair, are well known for affordability and reliability, look like an attractive single point of failure for the things we use on the internet every day.

Oct 23, 2012 ∞

Introducing the New Entertainment Experience from Xbox

Yusuf Mehdi, Chief Marketing Officer for Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Division:

[…] we will rapidly accelerate the reach of Xbox entertainment from more than 67 million consoles to literally hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. Also this week, we will take our biggest step ever to increase our global reach, extending Xbox entertainment experiences to 222 countries from 35.

Looks good. The only question now is whether it will work as well for me as it did for this well-coiffed engineer. Even if the only thing I get out of this update is the ability to use a phone or tablet keyboard to enter text on my Xbox, it will be the greatest thing that ever happened to the Microsoft console.

Oct 22, 2012 ∞

Amazon's "phantom" 20% VAT for UK ebook sales

Amazon’s “phantom” 20% VAT for UK ebook sales

Ian Griffiths and Dan Milmo of The Guardian, quoting ” a contract seen by the Guardian,” presumably between Amazon and one of its UK publishing “partners”:

If the base price exceeds the base price … provided to a similar service then … the base price hereunder will be deemed to be equal to such lower price, effective as of the date such lower price comes into effect.

That’s a good deal, especially coupled with the recent ebooks settlement.

The US antitrust regime is focused on protecting consumer interests. That means that as long as Amazon’s book selection continues to rise and their prices continue to fall, they’re unlikely to see any problems on the competition law front.

That’s probably not good for consumers in the long-run, especially given Amazon’s DRM and control over your devices and library. I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Amazon will face some antitrust scrutiny of its own in the next year.

Oct 22, 2012 ∞

Sloppy SSL implementation begets Android app vulnerabilities

Dan Goodin at Ars Technica explains how researchers found that 8% of apps in a 13,500-app sample were susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks. Hopefully developers will revisit their SSL implementations or, better yet, Google will update future versions of the Android SDK to disallow some of the poor coding decisions that cause these vulnerabilities.

Oct 20, 2012 ∞

Online release of Boy Scouts’ ‘perversion files’ breaks decades of secrecy

Despicable.

Oct 19, 2012 ∞

Nebraska court strikes down restrictions on internet use for sex offenders on free speech grounds

Professor David Post of Temple Law served as an expert for the plaintiffs — yes, sex offenders — in this case. His focus, as he points out in his Volokh Conspiracy post, was on the overbroad nature of the statute barring internet use by sex offenders, which he believes, and the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska agreed, was beyond what the First Amendment allows.

Your first thought might be “who cares about a sex offender’s free speech rights?”

The answer, of course, is that the Constitution cares, particularly after they have served prison time and otherwise complied with constitutionally sound penalties for their crimes.

The core of the court’s holding lies in the following passage:

The ban not only restricts the exchange of text between adults; it also restricts the exchange of oral and video communication between adults. Moreover, the ban potentially restricts the targeted offenders from communicating with hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of adults and their companies despite the fact that the communication has nothing whatsoever to do with minors.¹

This looks to me like a well-meaning statute, meant to keep sex offenders away from kids online, that was very poorly drafted. You could achieve the desired goal using far narrower provisions. I hope someone proposes a corrected statute to that effect.

The decision, filed on October 17, is not yet “reported,” but it can be accessed by those with Westlaw access using the cite Doe v. Nebraska, 8:09CV456, 2012 WL 4923131 (D. Neb. 2012), and Professor Post also uploaded a PDF here. ↩

Oct 19, 2012 ∞

Brazilian newspapers leave Google News en masse

Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto, president of Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, on his association’s withdraw from Google News:

Google News’ presence in the Brazilian market is small. We believe (the loss of traffic) is an acceptable price to protect our content and brands.

The linked article, by Isabela Fraga at the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog, offers good background on the issue.

I never go to Google News without clicking on at least three stories I wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. Maybe I’m the exception and not the rule. But if Google News’ presence is really that small, isn’t the potential or actual harm they claim necessarily small as well?

This decision looks petty and short-sighted, particularly in light of Newsweek's recent announcement.

Oct 19, 2012 ∞

Alto: Aol's attempt to redesign email

Alto: Aol’s attempt to redesign email

Austin Carr, writing at Fast Company's Co.Design blog:

It’s actually proved to be a more modern and nimble alternative to many of its mainstream counterparts, and boasts many novel features that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, even with its beautiful redesign of Outlook, should all heed lessons from.

His review has some images and a really good explanation of how Alto feels. Fast Company's Adam Bluestein spoke with Alto's team leads, and that article is also worth a look.

The articles compare Alto to Pinterest, but it looks to me more like Evernote, with note titles and summaries on the left and notebooks in a larger “stack” layout pane on the right. Regardless, it looks elegant and functional, which is what I want from websites and apps. I’m really impressed by how it looks and the philosophy behind what they did, including empowering an insular team to build it outside of Aol’s larger structure.

In fact, Alto looks so well-designed that, if I was in charge at Aol, I probably would have had them launch without much of a mention of Aol at all. It’s unfortunate but true that the Aol brand is really a handicap to anyone trying to do something as bold as redesigning how we use email. Some people may see “Alto, by Aol” and skip it altogether. I almost did.

Alto works with many popular email services, including Gmail, so I’m excited to see how it works. You can request an invite here. I’ll write something more in-depth when I get the chance to try it out.

Oct 18, 2012 ∞

Verizon Activated 3.1 Million iPhones In Q3 2012, But Only 651K Were iPhone 5s

MG Siegler, commenting on the TechCrunch post by Chris Velazco, linked above:

In other words, the iPhone 5 was on sale for just nine days before the quarter ended. And it was supply-constrained the whole time.

Mr. Siegler and Mr. Velazco pointed out the nine-day sales window the iPhone 5 had before these quarterly numbers were announced, but neither came right out and said what I find to be the most impressive expression of it:

Verizon activated over 72,000 iPhone 5s per day during the nine days ending the quarter.

Oct 18, 2012 ∞

2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: DOMA violates Equal Protection

Larry Neumeister, for AP:

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its 2-to-1 ruling only weeks after hearing arguments on a lower court judge’s findings that the 1996 [“Defense of Marriage Act”] was unconstitutional.

This is good news. The holding was based on the intermediate scrutiny constitutional standard and declared DOMA violative of Equal Protection.

The dissent in the 2-1 decision came from Judge Chester Straub, who said “courts should not intervene where there is a robust political debate because doing so poisons the political well, imposing a destructive anti-majoritarian constitutional ruling on a vigorous debate.”

It is the duty of a court to intervene where legislation violates constitutional protections, and that is exactly what DOMA does with regard to same-sex marriage.

There is no valid argument to the contrary.

If the Supreme Court fails to strike this law down when it comes to them some time in the next year, and fails to confirm that our Constitution disallows discrimination with regard to who citizens love solely on the basis of a majoritarian religious belief, it will be the darkest legal day in my lifetime thus far.

Oct 18, 2012 ∞

New $249 Samsung Chromebook

This is certainly interesting. And at half the price of an entry-level Microsoft Surface, it even comes with a keyboard!

Oct 18, 2012 ∞

Wireless attack could fatally turn pacemakers against patients

Patrick Gray, writing at The Register:

Jack also warned of a worst-case scenario in which a worm could infect multiple devices, spreading from patient to patient, re-flashing the devices with malicious code as it foes. This code could be programmed to deliver fatal shocks to patients implanted with vulnerable implants at a scheduled time.

So many lives depend upon the safe operation of a device like a pacemaker, including some of my dearest family. The good news here is that the researcher who discovered the vulnerability is ready and willing to work with manufacturers to design around the security weaknesses in these devices.

But perhaps more importantly, what about devices that have already been implanted in patients? I hope the corrections can be made via a software update so that even current patients can receive the fixes.

As an aside, this technology could also be used in the cyberwarfare arena for exceptionally clandestine assassinations.

Oct 18, 2012 ∞

White House review: no active spying by Huawei

Joseph Menn, quoting an anonymous source for Reuters:

We knew certain parts of government really wanted” evidence of active spying, said one of the people, who requested anonymity. “We would have found it if it were there.

I don’t know enough about this specific issue and the problem of cyberwarfare threats generally. My time in International Law this semester and previous courses like Cyberlaw and Cyberprivacy are coalescing in my mind into a strong area of interest, though, so I expect to follow this and similar issues closely and (hopefully) develop more substantive opinions about them over the next two months.

Oct 15, 2012 ∞

The Plain Text Problem

Michael Schechter, writing at his blog A Better Mess:

They want to take their backlog of DOC, DOCX and RTF files and convert them into either Markdown files or plain text files with Markdown formatting. At the moment, there’s no solution that’s viable for average computer users.

I write my articles for this site in Markdown syntax because it’s easier to read and write. I can work with scripts and other geeky implementations when I have enough time to research how they work, but I rarely have that time. I would love a tool like the one Schechter calls for in the linked post. I hope someone takes him on the suggestion.

Oct 15, 2012 ∞

SoftBank buys 70% stake in Sprint

Michael J. De La Merced and Neil Gough, in The New York Times:

In a statement on Monday, SoftBank, a big Japanese telecommunications company, said it would pay $8 billion to buy newly issued Sprint stock worth about $5.25 a share. It will then pay $12.1 billion to buy existing stock from other investors at $7.30 a share, a premium to current levels.

This could be a very big deal. Sprint just became a strong third place again to Verizon and AT&T.

Oct 13, 2012 ∞

Richard Branson on Design

And if you’re building a spaceship company like Virgin Galactic, you might as well build the sexiest beast ever built—the sexiest spaceship, the sexiest mother ship, the sexiest space port. Getting every little bit of the design right is so important.

Love this guy.

Oct 12, 2012 ∞

Deli sues feds for refusing to trademark its 'Philadelphia's Cheesesteak'

Deli sues feds for refusing to trademark its ‘Philadelphia’s Cheesesteak’

Michael Hinkelman, writing at the Philadelphia Daily News:

Campo’s claims in its civil complaint that its sandwich is “so superlative” and “gloriously gluttonous” that only it could be called “Philadelphia’s Cheesesteak.”

This fellow doesn’t have a chance in hell, but it’s a fun story. “Philadelphia’s Cheesesteak” is sufficiently similar to previous marks (mentioned in the article) and sufficiently generic cialis online with regard to geography (also mentioned in the article) that rejection of the mark is valid on its face. Federal court isn’t going to decide it differently.

In fact, pursuing the issue may alert the holders of the previously-granted similar marks and lead to infringement suits against Campos. I assume he and his attorney have discussed that possibility, but that would certainly be a frustrating turn of events for the steak-slinger.