tech
- software developer for driving computer
- component designer/manufacturer of driving computer
- technician who performed final calibration of driving computer
- technician who installed driving computer
- creator of simulation software used by technician to test computer
-
I like my headline (above the quote) better than Mr. Popper’s, which is “A month after Google killed its beloved Reader, the market for paid RSS tools is booming.” His is more informative, but for some reason mine just feels better. Arrogance? ↩
Mac turns 30
Steve Jobs, in 1985:
We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people — as remarkable as the telephone.
The remarkable thing is that, at least for people my age, ~30, as old as the Mac itself, the computer is far more remarkable than the telephone ever was. We were raised with the telephone as a commonplace thing, the way our children and nephews and nieces are growing up with iPhones and iPads.
Our computers used the telephone as merely a means to an end, a mode of connectivity. Think about that for a moment: the previous household’s most advanced piece of technology (except perhaps for the television, which is an interesting argument) ended as just a feature in the next generation’s most advanced pieces of technology.
I don’t know whether that’s good or bad for society taken in the aggregate, but the ability of technology to truly and ineffably amaze is gloriously unrelenting. I see no difference, no separating line, between technology and art. Each is made to convey meaning, to delight, to terrify, to teach, to challenge perceptions, and to inspire those who come after us.
Technology and art, or technology as art, or art as technology, are always examples of the same thing:
Humans dreaming, and then building the dream.
What a neat idea.
CrunchBase and People+ settle
A TechCrunch reporter had this to say about his employer’s sister product:
Put another way: The CrunchBase team ended up looking like it didn’t really understand how Creative Commons worked, or at least that’s what the vast majority of online commentary suggested.
Mutually agreeable settlement is always the best outcome. Although judging by the comment from CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman near the bottom of the TechCrunch post I linked to, Aol still doesn’t understand Creative Commons at all.
Stephen Wolfram is building a ghost for the machine
Stephen Wolfram is building a ghost for the machine
Stephen Wolfram, putting modesty aside as he often and justifiably does, to discuss his most ambitious project to date:
The level of automation is incredibly higher than people could ever have before – it’s incredibly powerful. Anything that WolframAlpha knows your app knows.
This can be the beginning of a vastly more accessible world of bespoke, personal programming, or it could be very, very bad.
AOL lawyers don't understand Creative Commons. At all.
AOL lawyers don’t understand Creative Commons. At all.
David Kravets writes at Wired about AOL’s demand that an app called People+ stop using a complete replica of AOL’s tech company database.
AOL’s CrunchBase is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution:
We provide CrunchBase’s content under the Creative Commons Attribution License [CC-BY].
However, the terms of service for the same product say, with my emphasis:
CrunchBase reserves the right in its sole discretion (for any reason or for no reason) and at anytime without notice to You to change, suspend or discontinue the CrunchBase API and/or suspend or terminate your rights under these General Terms of Service to access, use and/or display the CrunchBase API, Brand Features andany CrunchBase content.
Actually, as AOL attorneys should know (but apparently don’t), the company cannot reserve any such right at all, at least as to any data accessed, used or displayed while the Creative Commons license is still in effect, which it is as of November 6, 2013.
AOL can legally prohibit future access, use and display, but once content is under a Creative Commons attribution license one reserves no rights whatsoever, except the right to attribution.
It’s baffling that AOL lawyers would assert otherwise.
Pivot while there's still time
Pivot while there’s still time
Bobby Ghoshal, co-founder of the now-defunct social news app Flud:
A year after pivoting to the enterprise we were out of business […] because we ran out of money and investors didn’t have enough data to make a decision to jump on board.
I buy this reasoning. I read a lot about venture capital investors and how they conduct their due diligence.
Investors want to (as they should) gorge themselves on data before even discussing the possibility of backing your startup.
But if the first iteration of your idea falters and you’re too late to accept it or notice it or implement a pivot, getting to the next phase of development won’t save you because, as Ghoshal notes, the data won’t be there to convince investors to sign on the line which is dotted.
Of course, passion and user engagement is important when you’re building an app with a backend service. But all passion and users usually get you is a meeting.
It’s data that closes deals.
States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reform
States cite lack of federal progress in pursuit of privacy reform
Special interest groups oppose federal privacy reform to prevent onerous new regulations.
But this effort must, at some point, become counterproductive.
A multitude of state-specific privacy frameworks that, by (federal) law, can’t operate between states, must, at some point, become at least as onerous as new federal regulations.
Google "zealously" private about mystery barge
Google “zealously” private about mystery barge
I thought this was interesting but not really worth mentioning here, until the Coast Guard visited, apparently, as USA Today reports, under a presumably Google-imposed gag order.
I’m an avid Google user, incredibly open on the internet, and something of an apologist for the utility of systems that know a ton about me. But I still think it’s rich that, as Michael Winters writes in the article, Google “is zealously guarding its privacy” around the barge.
So rich.
UPDATE: It’s a party barge. No, seriously.
Whose Fault Is a Driverless-Car Crash?
Whose Fault Is a Driverless-Car Crash?
Some possibilities not contemplated in this brief Time piece:
In fact, car manufacturers and passengers are probably less likely to be at fault than any of the folks I list above.
After all, when a computer messes up in the present, it’s not really messing up: it’s telling you a human messed up in the past.
John Gruber on the convergence of smartphones and tablets
John Gruber on the convergence of smartphones and tablets
John Gruber:
Better, I think, not to treat smartphones and tablets as separate categories, but merely as different sizes of the same thing.
I think he is absolutely right, but even a year ago I would have argued like a lunatic against that very point.
How reality caught up with paranoid delusions
How reality caught up with paranoid delusions
it was not in the least like losing one’s reason… I was rationalising all the time, it was simply one’s reason working hard on the wrong premises.
— novelist Evelyn Waugh, speaking retrospectively of his own psychotic episode
This is a fascinating article, discussing at times the sometimes blurred line between fiction and mania, and generally looking at how paranoid delusions keep impressively abreast of modern technology.
Welcome to Google Island
If you follow one link from my blog this week, make it the one above. It’s well-written and disturbingly possible-seeming.
Facebook Testing VIP App With Some Celebs
Facebook Testing VIP App With Some Celebs
In case you thought I was becoming a Facebook fanboy, let me just say that this celeb crap is something Zuck will be adding to his list of regrets within the year.
Granted, that’s probably a very short list, but this VIP thing is a distraction an a gimmick and it’s going nowhere.
And yes, I’m prepared to try some claim chowder if I’m wrong. I’m just pretty confident I’m not.
101 million of Facebook's 128 million daily U.S. users are on mobile devices
101 million of Facebook’s 128 million daily U.S. users are on mobile devices
My headline says it all.
If you still had any doubt about the importance of mobile to anyone doing anything on the Internet, this stat should disabuse you of that uncertainty.
Amazing.
Fast Company's Austin Carr profiles Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley
Fast Company’s Austin Carr profiles Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley
This profile of Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley by Austin Carr at Fast Company does a great job of humanizing the app and its maker.
That’s probably because the man behind the location-sharing and, more recently, stuff-to-do discovery app, has put so much of himself into Foursquare. There are many profiles written about business and tech personalities, but few intrigued as much as this one does.
I think it’s because Carr really communicates how Crowley is finding himself at a cross-roads not only with Foursquare as a company, but with his life’s direction and essence.
A Day In The Life Of An iPhone Factory Worker
A Day In The Life Of An iPhone Factory Worker
This is something everyone should read. Apple isn’t the only company benefiting from working conditions like this, and that makes it worse, not better.
The dominant press narrative is that Apple is profiting from the misery of toiling foreign workers.
The truth is that much of the electronics industry, not to mention the apparel and the toy industries, are also built on the underpaid and overworked backs of non-Americans all over the world.
How the death of Google Reader is saving RSS
How the death of Google Reader is saving RSS
Ben Popper, at The Verge1:
Some Reader partisans may have given up on RSS after the shutdown, but the majority seem to have migrated to other platforms. In the weeks following the announcement, Feedly saw 3 million Google Reader refugees sign up and Newsblur says it now has 25 times the paid subscriptions it did in March.
Interesting. It looks like Google inadvertently revived the very market Reader killed when it debuted.
I’m still relying on Feedly right now, and they’re the paid option I’m most likely to go with whenever they begin offering a premium tier, but the options are admittedly plentiful.
And there’s no denying that the death of Reader, in retrospect, was probably the best thing to happen to RSS since, well, the birth of RSS.
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Tim Stevens is no longer editor-in-chief at Engadget
Two years is a good run, and the site looks and reads far better than it did before his reign, but Tim Stevens’ exit from his role as editor-in-chief at Aol property Engadget is bad sign for the site and it’s owner.
It’s never a good sign, in business or blogging (and especially when your product is a hybrid), when a leadership role is vacated before a replacement is appointed.