Fracking and fossil fuel infrastructure are devastating our communities from coast to coast. Fracking wells are contaminating our air and water, oil spills are mucking up our waterways, and gas leaks are sickening our families.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Republican National Committee (RNC) often battle each other, but they agree on one terrible point: both refuse to acknowledge the role fracking plays in climate change.
Send a message to the DNC and RNC leadership that enough is enough. They must include a ban on fracking in their party platforms, support keeping fossil fuels in the ground, vow to stop dirty energy projects, and support a quick and just transition to 100% renewable energy.
Author: Paul Jones
Apple Music rumored for a big reboot
I’ve had two experiences recently with Apple Music that are worth sharing:
- I’ve been cutting costs and minding the pennies, just out of good practice, and of my discretionary spending, a small portion goes to Apple. Specifically, iCloud Backup and Apple Music. It’s not quite enough money that I’m considering cutting the services, but it’s just enough money to make me consider if I can do without;
- I recently borrowed a friends’ phone to find a song, instinctively opened Apple Music, only to find they didn’t pay for the service, and so I couldn’t play any music. I felt silly and deflated, I’ve just grown so accustomed to having all of the worlds’ music all of the time that it was a minor shock to suddenly not have that available.
Considering this, I was interested to learn from the Verge that:
Apple is planning to overhaul its Apple Music service to make it “more intuitive to use,” according to Bloomberg News. Citing sources, Bloomberg News claims Apple will also better integrate its streaming and download options, and expand its radio service. Apple is rumored to unveil its updated Apple Music service at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
I don’t have a lot to complain about with Apple Music other than “the small things.” It’s confusing to not know which song is local and which song is “in the cloud”, sometimes songs won’t play, sometimes things are duplicated. What I do have a lot to say about is the broader UX of music on Apple’s platforms, specifically the monolith that iTunes has become.
Parties for WWDC
Parties for WWDC is an aggregator of developers parties happening in San Francisco mostly exclusively for participators of WWDC 2016.
There’s an app to show you all the stuff that goes on during WWDC. I haven’t mentioned it here, but I’m pleased to say this will be a great resource for when I’m attending WWDC this year! Via Ben Collier.
If your smartwatch is slow, they blew it
[The Apple Watch] was slow when it was first announced, it was slow when it came out, and it stayed slow when Watch OS 2.0 arrived. When I reviewed it last year, the slowness was so immediately annoying that I got on the phone with Apple to double check their performance expectations before making “it’s kind of slow” the opening of the review.
Apps are slow, and have been slow since Watch OS first launched. I’m very critical of Apple’s strategy of “the future of everything is apps” approach to the Watch and the TV: the best parts of the Apple Watch and the Apple TV are, in my opinion, not yet the “apps”:
- The Apple Watch’s complications and glances are terrific, they’re fast, up-to-date, and are quicker than my iPhone, and so they’re used. Namely, Fantastical’s calendar complication and Dark Sky’s weather complication are tremendous. The apps are slow, difficult to find, and require me to keep my wrist 90 degrees from my face for too long.
- The Apple TV’s greatest features are that I can ask Siri for anything and I’m taken directly to the content, I don’t care what bin it’s in or what service it’s sourced from, just do what a TV is supposed to and play the thing. Having said that, I’ve had a lot of fun with Flappy Bird but it’s no Grand Theft Auto 5, to be a little unfair.
John Gruber makes a similar point:
The things on Apple Watch that people actually like and use are the things that aren’t slow (notifications, activity tracking and goals, Apple Pay, complications, maybe Glances) and the things that are slow are the things people don’t use (apps, especially). Apple should have either cut the slow features from the original product, or waited to launch the product until all the features were fast.
I’m curious to see how apps play out with the release of the next Watch, whenever that is. Specifically, will we see the ability for third party developers to do more with what has been proven to be good, or will apps somehow be made better? It’s going to be a great WWDC!
Apple’s pitch and under-promising and over-delivering
Here’s John Gruber commenting on Shira Ovide’s piece in Bloomberg:
Shira Ovide, writing for Bloomberg:
Here’s what Cook didn’t say: 1) Apple has been misjudging its own business, and that makes it tough to believe what executives say; and 2) The company failed to prepare investors for an inevitable slowdown in growth — even if that slowdown proves temporary. If one duty of public company executives is to under-promise and over-deliver, Apple has flopped in that job.
This is fair and astute criticism of Cook and Apple’s executive team. The problem isn’t the drop in iPhone sales so much as forecasting them accurately.
- Apple’s guidance has been right, almost hitting directly in the middle, quarter after quarter;
- Since the iPhone, Apple’s brand is predicated on record numbers and staggering innovation: neither Wall Street nor the blogosphere would have been satisfied with “don’t get excited about this quarter” messaging, and that’s quite the catch-22.
Giphy launches ‘Giphy Keys’
There are animated GIFs that makes me laugh every damn time, for instance search for “banana monkey cat” and prepare to have tears stream down your face. However, something that makes me laugh is that Giphy, a search engine for GIFs, has raised $78.95M in 3 Rounds from 8 Investors. Today, Giphy have launched an iOS keyboard:
Giphy today launched its own iOS keyboard, called Giphy Keys, that will let users search for and send GIFs without having to navigate to a separate keyboard application. Once users install Giphy Keys as a new keyboard in settings — and allow it full access — the app can be selected as a keyboard by tapping the globe icon whenever the keyboard is open on iOS.
I have nothing against GIFs or Giphy, but I do find this kind of incredible. There’s just so much money going to something that I can’t tell how to monetize other than “animated GIF ads”, which sound horrible. Never mind the technical problems with GIFs themselves, like only supporting 256 colors, quickly ballooning in size when converting from more reasonable video formats, and transparency problems. Finally, the problem that would keep me up at night if I ran Giphy would be the licensing issues if they end up being profitable and the threat of just using Google or Bing or whatever other image search engine instead of a devoted one for silly GIFs.
Perhaps I’m missing something?
Stop the right-wing’s assault on America’s coastal national parks
A new Senate bill is threatening “Bundy-style” seizures of coastal national parks that would turn coastal marine management over to states, initiating a feeding frenzy of overfishing and development that could permanently destroy these pristine and environmentally delicate areas.
Don’t send cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia
Since cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area, they pose heightened risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. During attacks, the weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, especially in populated areas. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. […]
Urge Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin and Milwaukee Representative Gwen Moore to advocate for a ban on sending these weapons to Saudi Arabia, including in the National Defense Authorization Act, by signing our petition.
Greenpeace leaks big part of secret TTIP documents
Greenpeace has leaked secret documents describing the TTIP deal:
Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents. They underline the strong objections civil society and millions of people around the world have voiced: TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business.
And Cecilia Malmström of the European Commission responds:
It is only normal that both parties in a negotiation want to achieve as many of their own objectives as possible. That does not mean that the other side gives in to those demands. That does not mean that the parties will meet halfway. In areas where we are too far apart in a negotiation, we simply will not agree. In that sense, many of today’s alarmist headlines are a storm in a teacup.
If this were a free trade deal, it would not be so complicated. This is a special interest managed trade deal marketed as a free trade deal. Even if Malmström is right or merely honest claiming these documents represent the initial bid of what both parties want to achieve, it still isn’t free trade and still isn’t in the people’s interest.
Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump oppose this deal.
WhatsApp hit with 72-hour ban in Brazil
WhatsApp has been banned for 72 hours in Brazil:
Brazil has once again opted to temporarily block the popular messaging service WhatsApp in the country. According to Brazilian publication Folha De S.Paulo, the block is scheduled to remain in place for 72 hours, affecting WhatsApp users across the country. The reason for the temporary ban hasn’t yet been revealed, but previous bans have come in response to Facebook’s refusal to comply with federal investigators in in ongoing criminal cases.
I suspect the reason they’re being banned isn’t truly “refusal to comply” but rather “inability to comply.” Not only that, but I wish that government officials would read the Wikipedia page on end-to-end encryption to understand why there’s no way to have any privacy at all with backdoors. Furthermore, the ban of WhatsApp is silly because even if WhatsApp placed a backdoor for Brazilian government officials, some other encrypted communication application will take it’s place.
The government wants your fingerprint to unlock your phone
A major difficulty for government today and ever-growing problem for the government of tomorrow is the rate-of-change of technological advancement. For a axiomatic example, consider this from the L.A. Times via MacRumors:
Even with the limited outlines of the inquiry, Brenner said the act of compelling a person in custody to press her finger against a phone breached the 5th Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. It forced Bkchadzhyan to testify —without uttering a word — because by moving her finger and unlocking the phone, she authenticated its contents.
On my view, this absolutely violates one’s rights against self-incrimination, because I consider one’s phone to be an extensions of one’s mind. As a defense against this sort of government overstepping, I’d like a “Touch Wipe” option to be available, via Robert Graham:
So I propose adding a new technicality into the mix: “Touch Wipe”. In addition to recording fingerprints to unlock the phone, Apple/Android should add the feature where users record fingerprints to wipe (erase) the phone. For example, I may choose my thumb to unlock, and my forefinger to wipe.
Admittedly, the danger here is wiping your phone when you forgot that your index finger wipes and your thumb unlocks. As an alternative, I could see use in having one code for unlocking, one code for wiping. The fear of you wiping your phone may be enough to deter over-zealous government.
Sharing your Instagram feed (or not)
Like many other social media services, your Instagram posts can be public or private, depending on the level of sharing you wish to do. The site’s default setting is public, however — which means that anybody browsing the Instagram site can see your posts and user profile.
Two thoughts:
- Anything on the Internet is public;
- The company that allows files to be uploaded for free to their external server will seek to pay their light bill and cut divided cheques.
Here’s a tech tip: don’t bother uploading to Instagram unless you’re okay with that.
Bernie’s “bad end”
The Democratic capital-D primary is not a democratic lowercase-D process – it’s not supposed to represent the will of the people, it’s supposed to represent the will of Democrats. Consider Paul Krugman on Bernie Sanders’ tone following the commitment of superdelegates:
This is really depressing: Sanders claiming that there will be a contested convention, and suggesting that the nomination fight was rigged. Can someone tell Bernie that he’s in the process of blowing his own chance for a positive legacy?
It’s not depressing, it’s just half true. Bernie Sanders would have won New York in a general election, and if it was against Donald Trump it would have been by wider margins than Trump v. Clinton.
The pitch that Sanders has for superdelegates of the party is not “join me to represent the will of the Democratic capital-D voters”, it’s “join me if you want to win.”
Stand with Verizon employees against CEO greed
I happened to be walking past the Verizon location in Brooklyn, where I saw the CWA striking. Their signs read “Build FiOS, Lower Executive Pay.” One of the reasons I like Bernie Sanders is his support for the CWA:
Verizon wants to take American jobs – call center jobs – out of this country and bring them abroad where people will be paid pennies an hour. That is unacceptable.
The DARK act is a real bill
Any day now, the U.S. Senate could vote on a Big Ag-supported bill known as the DARK Act – for Denying Americans the Right to Know – which would prohibit states from requiring labeling of genetically modified foods.
There’s plenty of science to be done with regards to GMOs and their consequence on health, and I’m not convinced that either genetic engineering is bad (namely because we’ve been doing it, through artificial selection, for generations) or that it’s always safe (because I’ve seen some strawberries that are just, well, too big). Having said that, this bill is called the DARK act, as in “denying American the right to know”, keeping Americans “in the dark.”
Intelligent assistants and the future
There’s a lot of excitement about messaging and virtual assistant technologies today. Facebook have launched a chat API, Google have released their natural language API, Microsoft are poised to bring Project Oxford to market as a product, and Apple still retain tight control on Siri. There’s a lot of opportunity here to create useful applications, and the race is on to be the first with the Next Big Thing:
All appear to be efforts to commoditize both speech recognition and natural language understanding. In this context, “commodity” means “ubiquity,” and that bodes well for the large, incumbent solutions providers like IBM, Nuance, Google, and Microsoft. They all stand to benefit by selling more products and services when people ask for solutions that understand the words they say (in addition to text).
There’s a lot to be excited about here, but I’m skeptical about voice as an interface can ever be as efficient as the loop between physical interaction and updating a screen, namely with a terminal. I wonder if the future holds more technically savvy users that don’t want your dumbed-down interface or broadly available and easy to use computers. Personally, I want a future where everyone runs their own cloud server.
Apple’s growth and value on Wall Street
If you’re a publicly traded company on today’s Wall Street, you’re going to need to cater to an audience I somewhat disparagingly call “growth nerds.” These are investors that know the signs of a business that is on a better-than-linear revenue trajectory, and will throw their money at you if you can show them that. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just the nature of speculation.
There’s another audience on Wall Street, people an organizations that are looking for long-term, slow growth, or reliable dividends. I’ve heard this called “blue chip” or “value stocks”, and these tend to be big, established corporations. Tech companies today are in a unique place: there’s still a lot of growth and instability in companies like Twitter and Uber, but there’s also a lot of stable, value stocks like Oracle and Google. Where I’m going with this is the obsession with “peak iPhone.” Here’s John Gruber on the topic:
[G]iven that you can almost draw a straight line connecting the other four points in the chart, I’m not willing to call it a peak yet. But even if we see a return to growth, it might take several years before we see another Q2 with over 60 million units sold.
I’m a developer that works on Apple platforms and I don’t care if Apple grows in the sense of number of units sold or average selling price or any of those revenue-based growth metrics. If you want to bet on quarter over quarter growth, Android and the web are better for that, at least in part because of Apple’s average selling price. Apple doesn’t need to grow their phone business in my opinion, they need to keep their phones the best in the industry so that users of their products remain engaged. If you want a compelling reason to believe that Apple is a better value stock (and by corollary a safer technological bet) than Google in the long run, look at the metrics around user engagement and purchases within apps. (These metrics are a couple years old, if you find more up-to-date numbers please share them).
Overall, Google Play continues to post huge global download gains and command 60% higher than iOS App Store downloads in Q3 2014. […] In Q3 2014, iOS App Store’s revenue was around 60% higher than Google Play’s.
My point here is that Google’s incentives are better oriented to Wall Street’s growth nerds that’ll appreciate the quantifiable metrics of downloads and taps, and Apple’s strategy has historically been oriented towards capturing a professionals, particularly creatives, and increasingly enterprise clients. I think part of what makes the “peak iPhone” concern so loud is that Apple has been attracting the growth-stock crowd since iPhone’s explosive success. And now that iPhone’s growth phase is at least slowing down, we’re going to see a change in message from Apple, and I think the cautious phrasing of this message from Tim Cook:
Creating value for shareholders by developing great products and services that enrich people’s lives will always be our top priority and the key factor driving our investment and capital allocation decisions.
Namely, that the one “top” priority is creating value for shareholders by creating value for consumers. Of course, creating value for shareholders is often at odds with creating value for consumers in the short term. And while it’s somewhat cliche to say this, but I do get a sense of ethical upstandingness and authenticity from Tim Cook. Considering Apple and Wall Street’s increasingly divergent goals, I recommend considering Chuq Von Rospach‘s recent hypothesis:
Apple announced its dividend and stock buyback programs about 3 years ago. In that time, the number of shares outstanding for the company has dropped almost 15%. That’s a much bigger number than I expected to find.
And that got me thinking… What if Apple has decided to buy a company? But rather than go out and buy a company where integration with Apple’s technology and culture might create their own set of problems, what if Apple decided to buy itself back from Wall Street? What if Apple is planning to go private?
Highly speculative, which is exactly the type of behavior that got Apple here in the first place.
Instagram testing new app design
Instagram is testing a re-design of their app that’s more in line with the iOS 7 aesthetic. While I no longer post to Instagram for copyright and privacy reasons, as a user, I’ve always appreciated their app and its design because it was a bold opinion is a sea of faceless black, white, and blue minimalism. However, as a developer, the faceless minimalism trend is great because it makes my job easier.
Tell American Electric Power: stop funding opponents of the Clean Power Plan
American Electric Power’s power plants are major source of heat-trapping carbon pollution in the United State, so it’s a big deal when the utility company says, “…we recognize the need to responsibly address the issue of climate change.”
But actions speak louder than words. American Electric Power still irresponsibly funds opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, including the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the US Chamber of Commerce.
We need to send American Electric Power’s CEO a message: responsible utilities do not fund special interest groups that oppose the EPA’s action on climate change.
British parliament exempts itself from laundering checks
British MPs have passed a law exempting them from being scrutinized by banks for associations with money launderers, terrorists, and corruption. I’m simply astounded by their shamelessness, some claiming that this was to protect their “grannies” banks. From Guido Fawkes:
George Osborne this afternoon accepted an amendment to the Financial Services Bill which will see some Politically Exposed Persons and their families exempted from these anti-money laundering rules. Ministers will now “exclude… specified categories of persons” from the list of so-called PEPs, as Osborne says it is “disproportionate”for banks to include MPs and relatives on the watch list.
And if this doesn’t just reek of colonialism, classism, and exceptionalism, here’s a line from the Mirror reporting on this:
[Charles Walker] sniffed at the “small amount of money” Mr Cameron had made out of the deal, saying it was only “enough to buy a Skoda Octavia.”
Of course, only little people drive those, it’s easy to afford an Aston Martin when you’re above the law.