The Avalanches: Wildflower Album Review

Posted on by Paul Jones

Wildflower_Avalanches_cover_art The Avalanches finally released a new album, Wildflower, and it is flagrantly weird while ceaselessly captivating. Every track is a melodic hodgepodge of samples, beats, raps, singing, odd instrumentation, and sonic experimentation. Sometimes it makes you bob your head, other times it makes you dance, and much of the time you’re not exactly sure what you’re listening to: but it’s always a lot of fun. Wildflower is evocative of Daft Punk, The Beatles’ deeper cuts on The White Album, and even Jay Z/Kanye style soul beats, all while retaining that goofy charm from The Avalanches’ first album, “Since I Left You.” The album’s tone is silly and serious, pointless yet hints at a meaning, often familiar but still so foreign: it’s a celebratory, self-aware musical enigma.

“Because I’m Me” is the first full song on the album, and it’s a strut-worthy hip-hop track with catchy horns and am excitingly trippy chorus. But the straightforwardness doesn’t last long, as the ensuing song, “Frankie Sinatra”, immediately throws you right into the deep end, indicative of their track “Frontier Psychologist”, with stream-of-consciousness vocals over a Sgt. Peppers horn beat. It only gets weirder from there, and by the time you reach “The Noisy Eater”, you realize the bizarre genius of the album. It’s has an overall childish atmosphere, yet it’s occasionally performed on Baroque instruments, like sonic graffiti. In the end, while you’re listening to “Saturday Night Inside Out”, you’ll have enjoyed yourself, but have some elusive discomfort. The Avalanches took their successes from the first album and distilled them into extremely listenable and equally alien sophomore success: go listen to Wildflower.

Alleged iPhone 7 leak has no headphone jack and a big camera

Posted on by Paul Jones

It’s a very grainy, short video, but MacRumors discovered a video purporting to display the iPhone 7. Here’s the big camera:Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 7.36.36 PM

And here’s the lack of a headphone jack:

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 7.37.08 PM

This runs against the speculation that there’d be two camera sensors, however I imagine it is possible that this leak could be of the regular instead of the Plus size, which could be different.

This also suggests to me that if Apple do not ship with a headphone jack, they’ll ship with an in-the-box alternative. There’s no way consumers are going to be satisfied with a $700 device which doesn’t have headphones in the box. However, as a user of the tremendous Bose QC-35s, which are wireless and noise canceling, I can attest that Bluetooth is firmly “good enough” now, much like WiFi was when it achieved critical mass.

Allo goodbye – why you shouldn’t use Google’s new messenger app

Posted on by Paul Jones

At their respective yearly developer conferences, Apple and Google both announced changes to their messaging platforms that compete with Facebook Messenger and Snapchat. All of these services now have features like stickers, photo editing, wacky themes, zany message styles, and other fun features. Under this glossy veneer of oversized emoji lies some serious privacy considerations, however. The security risks of Messenger and Snapchat are well–documented, but given that Google have announced a new app, it warrants further investigation.

Consider that Google makes money when you engage with an advertisement. In order to increase their chances of you doing this they develop free services like Gmail and Search. They take this opportunity to serve you those targeted ads, but also to collect metrics on your behavior, which in turn improves targeting. I suspect that the reason that Allo is not encrypted by default is that Google is analyzing your messages to further build out a profile on you, determine what type of ads you’re likely to click on, and serve them to you from the highest bidder. This profile will include products your considering buying, health conditions you mention, plans you have for the future, and more. Google “knows” these facts about you and uses that knowledge to sell advertisements. This would not be possible if the messages were encrypted end-to-end, because only the sender and receiver would have the digital keys required to see the contents of the messages.

If it were the government or someone you knew that intercepted your communications to pry into your business or secrets, it’d be rightly called unwarranted surveillance or just plain creepy. Consider that the analog equivalent of this behavior may be, say, reading your post-office delivered mail, which is a federal crime finable of up to $5,000 and punishable up to 5 years in jail. The turn of phrase at the start of this paragraph, to “pry into the business or secrets of another”, is exactly the wording of federal law 18 U.S. Code § 1702, and yet it seems that this is exactly what technology companies have convinced their users to be complacent with. There will be some that respond to this with, “I have nothing to hide.” Perhaps this is the case for some that make this claim, but if asked, I doubt most people would allow anyone to download their search history in full, forward all of their emails to somebody, or have their recent text messages read aloud in a public place (even if it was done anonymously, I suspect). Further, the mere existence of an incognito mode in Allo admits that there are messages that users do not want to share with Google and be profiled for.

This is a concession, a compromise. It’s because Google, like Facebook, realizes that consumers are wising up about the importance of privacy, and they are attempting to appeal to them. But it’s not a compromise that you have to make considering competing end-to-end encrypted chat services like WhatsApp or iMessage. A much stronger rebuttal to my claim that Allo is surveillance and creepy is that Google’s server do not in fact store the chat logs (it does, however, “read” them). Among other reasons, storing these messages is a liability they must manage with law enforcement agencies (remember Apple vs. the FBI?). As evidence of this, here’s Dieter Bohn from the Verge interviewing Google executives on the launch of Allo:

[Messages sent with Allo] are read by Google’s servers, but Kay assures me that the data is stored “transiently,” which is to say that Google doesn’t keep your chat logs around to be subpoenaed. And Fulay adds that Google doesn’t assign identity to the chat logs on those servers even then.

On storing messages “transiently”, this is not re-assuring. To re-use the previous metaphor: it’s akin to someone reading all of your mail, storing copious notes on the contents, and referring to those notes later to take guesses at your future behavior. Considering that in that period of time the message are stored on Google’s servers, they are run through the world’s most sophisticated machine learning algorithms to glean information from them. The reason they don’t store them is not to protect your privacy, it’s because they’re finished harvesting information from the message. And with regards to Google “not assigning identity ” to messages, the process of “de-anonmyizing” data has been well-documented at MIT and the Universitè Catholique de Louvain. The way it works is cross-referencing “anonymous” data with publicly available or leaked information. Not only that, but the data isn’t much use to Google unless they can use it to target ads to individuals, which makes me skeptical of this claim. Perhaps Google today is secure, both from external hackers and internal leakers, but there’s no guarantee that this will always be the case. Quite the contrary, the recent purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft and LinkedIn’s frequent leaks show that your data can end up in different hands than you anticipated (though the terms of service users “agreed” to allows it).

The trade-offs involved with using Google’s Allo messaging service are not worth the value they provide. In particular, Allo’s off-by-default end-to-end encryption policy makes it inconvenient to secure your conversations, Google’s motives to profit is opposed to their user’s best interests, and the engineering countermeasures to limit the scope of this are at least unknown, perhaps superficial, and definitely not required considering the competition. However, there are number of really great ideas in Allo that are very popular amongst users of trendier messenger apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, and Facebook Messenger. (For the record, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted by default, it doesn’t seem to like WeChat even uses over-the-wire encryption, and Facebook stores all of your messages.) If you’re an Android user, stick with another chat service that encrypts by default like WhatsApp or Signal. If you’re an iOS user, many of the features from Allo were announced to be coming to iMessage, which is encrypted end-to-end, in the Fall.

Pokemon Go, Nintendo’s market value, and intellectual property

Posted on by Paul Jones

Like seemingly everyone near my age and many people below and above it, I’ve been playing Pokemon Go. It’s fun, and the nostalgia is palpable. It isn’t particularly well-done, however, the most innovative products perhaps necessarily rushed, and so, my criticisms:

  • I hate having to give access to my full Google account to some shady subdivision without the public oversight and reputation of Google proper;
  • It makes me sad to throw out Pokemon I trained since the beginning or caught in meaningful locations for much more powerful and otherwise identical Pokemon I find on my commute;
  • It destroys battery (but to be fair, the GameBoy was pretty awful at that too).

The news of Pokemon Go made it to Wall Street, and Pavel Alpeyev and Yuji Nakamura (via John Gruber) report for Bloomberg that they like what they see:

The company has added more than $7 billion in market value since last week’s debut of a new smartphone app for its Pokemon fantasy monster character franchise. The game, which lets users track down virtual monsters in their vicinity, has topped the free-to-download app charts for Apple in the U.S. and Australia since its release on July 7, according to market researcher App Annie.

Nintendo’s shares responded with their biggest intraday jump since at least 1983, when the stock started trading in Tokyo, climbing as much as 25 percent on Monday. Investors are taking Pokemon’s early success as a sign of things to come for a company that has yet to commit the most popular characters from its Mario or Zelda franchises to mobile gaming apps.

The lesson I see here is not necessarily that this is a tipping point for AR/VR but rather that it’s still exceedingly good business to be in intellectual property. Consider that Niantec released an AR app before this that was met with a whimper, but when some IP from 1999 is added, a whole generation loses their collective mind and goes outside. The success of Pokemon Go is a powerful reminder of why companies like Marvel, Games Workshop, and Nintendo defend their IP so fervently: it can add $7 billion to your market value even 10 years after its inception.

I also caught an Electabuzz I’m quite proud of, and have a viciously high-level Pinsir.

Spotify launch new radio stations

Posted on by Paul Jones

Music is an art, a commodity, a lifestyle, a business, and more recently, an app. People used to pay for physical media in a way they didn’t pay for digital music, probably because it doesn’t feel like you’re receiving “a thing” when you download a file. As an alternative, music businesses developed around streaming, either on-demand or as “radio” (programmatic content). The way this was monetized was with advertisements and paying to remove them. This was to the benefit of the companies that were first in music streaming to generate the large scale required to be very profitable, and to the detriment of content producers that couldn’t generate that scale. Up to this point, I understand completely, armed with the amazing power of hindsight. But when Apple announced Beats 1, I was stupefied. When we have all the music we want available for immediate play, why would anyone want to go back to the Byzantine distribution method of programmed radio?

Perhaps it’s a significant differentiator, however, because here’s Rich McCormick from the Verge:

Swedish streaming service Spotify is launching two new radio shows today, both of which feature musicians talking about the kind of music that they like listening to while they’re making their art. The first, AM/PM, will feature artists like electronic music pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre and Terry Hall of ska icons The Specials talking about the music they listen to in the mornings before work, and in the evenings after a day spent creating. The second, Secret Genius, speaks to the songwriters and producers behind major songs, and features the actually-pretty-well-known James Blake, among others.

Perhaps it will be clear in time, but I don’t know what the appeal of this is when we have all the music available (almost) all the time.

 

Safari 10 implements native browser extensions

Posted on by Paul Jones

Daniel Dilger, writing for Apple Insider, via Dave Mark:

On both macOS Sierra 10.12 and today’s El Capitan 10.11.5 (when Safari 10 is installed), Safari will support App Extensions built from a combination of JavaScript, CSS and native code written in Objective-C or Swift.

[…]

More importantly, the new App Extensions architecture enables developers to distribute Safari Extensions as part of their app through the App Store.

A clear trend in this year’s WWDC was the number of different extension points and distribution channels Apple is opening up: iMessage Apps, Maps extensions, Safari extensions, third-party Siri, to name just a few. The Safari Extensions, in particular, are a new approach to distributing browser plugins compared to both Chrome and Firefox, as you can write compiled code for them!

Apple discontinue the MacBook, then the Thunderbolt Display

Posted on by Paul Jones

On Monday, Apple discontinued the legacy MacBook Pro:

Apple Stores are beginning to remove the 13-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro from their showfloors, in what may be a sign the company is preparing to completely phase out the product with a spinning optical disc drive, AppleInsider discovered on Monday.

Now, they’ve discontinued the very underpowered Thunderbolt Display:

Apple today announced that it is discontinuing its Thunderbolt Display, the large external display many use to connect to MacBooks or other Macs for extra screen real estate. This is very likely to fuel speculation (which has been ongoing) that Apple will soon launch a 4K or 5K version of the display.

Both of these are excellent news for people that want new hardware! To be conservative, I’m calling new MacBooks and a 5K external display at least by September but potentially as early as late-July.

Obvious, low-tech, anti-spyware

Posted on by Paul Jones

A key feature of Orwell’s dystopia was the ever-present screens that can never be turned off and were also always recording. Wanting to turn the devices off was met with suspicion. I used to use a sticky note, but now I have a cute bit of swag I got from a meet up. It’s two pieces of plastic, one which slides to cover the camera, with two tiny adhesive strips to keep it comfortably in place. I cover the camera because I’ve occasionally been in front of my computer when I receive a FaceTime call, and my image pops up on the screen. Of course it’s not transmitted, but it’s unpleasant enough of an experience that it made me want to be in control of that. In recent news, Marc Zuckerberg was shown to have tape on his camera and microphone. John Gruber found a 2013 study that found you could hack the camera:

Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, said in a recent story in The Washington Post that the FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years.

You should cover your cameras, because you have your privacy to lose and nothing to gain from having it exposed.

Removing the headphone jack

Posted on by Paul Jones

There’s a lot of buzz around the next iPhone not having a headphone jack. In particular, John Gruber responded to Nilay Patel’s arguments against removing the port:

Nilay Patel, “Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid”:

But just face facts: ditching the headphone jack on phones makes them worse, in extremely obvious ways. Let’s count them!

And let’s compare them to arguments against removing floppy drives from the iMac in 1998.

They both miss the mark, in my opinion. Replacing the headphone jack with another jack doesn’t significantly change user experience, it’s just another way of doing the same thing. In fact Nilay’s right, if it’s just a matter of replacing the jack, it’s kind of stupid.

What I find more interesting is this portion of the discussion:

2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great

Totally agree. But the rumor is that the new iPhone will ship with wired Lightning earbuds.

Getting rid of the headphone jack and shipping with great wireless headphones would significantly improve the experience. The biggest problem, as is often the case, is charging the headphones, although perhaps the iPhone could charge the headphones?

Perhaps this is one reason I’m not in charge of the next iPhone, but as the owner of Bose wireless headphones, I can tell you that charging your headphones is a small cost to pay for wireless convenience.

Apple’s unique political independence

Posted on by Paul Jones

Hayley Tsukayama from the Wall Street Journal makes the case that Apple is uniquely disposed to take political stances because, unlike Facebook and Google, people don’t look to Apple for neutral information, they buy Apple’s hardware:

Apple, however, is still largely a company that makes phones and the personal stuff that comes with them, rather than dealing in information. Although Apple is making inroads into the publishing business with Apple News, its platform doesn’t have nearly the reach of Facebook or Google — and therefore, people don’t look to it to be an arbiter of information in the same way. And so, despite the growing activism of Apple chief executive Tim Cook, there are still plenty of people who use iPhones and don’t agree with Apple’s stances on political issues.

Before we place Apple on a moral pedestal, be warned that doing business with any of the tech giants is a moral compromise. For instance, while Apple’s political independence and stance on privacy stem from their making hardware, so does their treatment of the makers of that hardware. This independence also grants them the ability to fight against paying corporate taxes.

Being principally a hardware manufacture is part of Apple’s independence in the political sphere and the public eye, but this produces the stronger reason of Apple’s not being incentivized to compromise their users. This is what I think is exceptional about Apple.

Twitter launches Engage

Posted on by Paul Jones

Anecdotally, I think Twitter may be the highest-profile company which makes zero dollars. Its logo sits right next to Facebook on nearly every piece of marketing, and yet Twitter is nowhere near its competitors with regards to profit margin. Today, they announced a new app, which John Vorhees describes for MacStories:

[…] Twitter is different things to different people. For some it’s a public forum for chatting with friends. For others, Twitter is a broadcast medium. For still others, Twitter is all about marketing. Engage is designed to help you maximize the reach of your tweets through analytics. If that’s not your thing, you may view the app as useless, but that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed out of hand.

It’s an excellent service and this app shows the tremendous engineering and product brainpower they have at Twitter. Ideologically, I dislike where this is going: I wish companies would devise business models which didn’t rely on surveillance. The terms “public forum” and “broadcast medium” make me think Twitter should be owned by the people, kept completely neutral, devoid of surveillance, and run at a loss paid for by a taxes. I don’t see a way forward for this approach however, and I don’t have any hope for Twitter convincing people to pay for the service, however much it ended up being to be sustainable (per Tweet? per Kb?).

Edit: Here’s John Gruber’s take:

Even with a verified account and a fair number of followers, I find this app almost totally useless. Anything you want to actually do, like respond to a tweet, it shoots you over to the official Twitter app. I fear for Twitter — they’re just spinning their wheels.

Exactly. I worry for Twitter. I wonder if this is a play at becoming indispensable to “influencers” in hope for charging them in the future. I struggle to see how this will make them money, even if it seems “kinda cool.” If Gruber’s take is shared amongst high-profile bloggers, this app may go the way of #Music.

WWDC Diary Day 1: Keynote, Platform SotU, and Design Awards

Posted on by Paul Jones

This is my first WWDC, and I’m impressed by how efficiently the 5000 person event runs. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium comfortably hosted every executive, press person, and developer with room to spare. I got a great seat for the keynote, being right up at the front on the second level, and the sound, lighting, and presentation system made the event a pleasure to watch. Everything from the food to the WiFi to releasing the session and lab schedule to making the betas available appeared to happen effortlessly. I’m sure a lot of work went on behind the scenes to make this happen, which I’m grateful for.

Moving on to the content, this WWDC showcased Tim Cook’s Apple at its absolute best: all four of the category-defining products moved forward in titanic leaps. Before we dive into the software, there was no new hardware. This is a grand shame, but I understand why: WWDC is a software event (and Apple are going to refresh their whole Mac line with a press release very soon, right? Right? RIGHT?). In terms of the software, all of iOS, (the newly renamed) macOS, watchOS, and tvOS have many great new features, APIs, and opportunities for app developers.

Let’s go platform-by-platform.

watchOS 3

Glances are gone, long app start up time is gone, and the “Dock” takes advantage of these two changes. The idea here is that apps are now so fast to start that a multitasking tray with the live first screen of your app. Also, there is now a new input style called Scribbles which lets you “write” letters on the watch and it will translate them into letters. Additionally, there are now dedicated watchOS apps for Reminders and Find My Friends, an emergency feature called “SOS”, and Activity sharing.

The structural changes to the interaction model for watchOS is right on point: previously, if I wanted to check the weather, I could: look at the complication, open the glance, or open the app. Now, if the complication isn’t present or doesn’t have enough information, you tap what was previously the “friends” button to reveal the Dock, and you can immediately see new information, or go into the app if you need to interact with it.

The Scribble input method is a welcome change that I’ll need to use to see if it can be useful. If it’s fast and accurate enough for writing short messages without tiring my arm, I’ll be a fan and use it a lot. I don’t think I’ll use Activity sharing at all, in part because I don’t use the Watch for fitness as much as a notification management tool, so I don’t have much to add there. I’ll use Reminders, probably not Find My Friends, and hopefully not SOS.

tvOS 10

Now it’s possible to sign-in to your cable provider once, and all apps get access to that authentication now. In addition to allowing more streaming of previous shows and revealing all the apps provided by your cable deal, they’ve added more live streams. For those people that find the Apple TV interface too bright at night now have the option to turn the interface dark. There was some controversy when the Apple TV first came out that the Remote app didn’t work, which Apple quickly patched while promising a fuller experience, and have now shipped that full Siri Remote app. Finally, there are some improvements to Siri.

Perhaps Apple was hoping to supplant cable providers and so purposely didn’t ship single-sign-on on day one, but as a heavy user of Apple TV, it was by far the biggest pain point that every new app required getting my computer to get up and running. It wasn’t that big a deal, my roommates and I got pretty good at working together every time an app decided we had to authenticate again, but I certainly look forward to not doing that anymore. I also look forward to finding out what other apps are available through the cable service, it’s difficult to discover apps I can use today.

The new Remote app with accelerometer and Siri support is great. It means that any iPhone owner is now the owner of a fully featured remote for the tvOS games. The tone and style of the games on tvOS reminds me of the Wii – casual party games. I hope this catches on with users and the games become more fun, akin to Mario Party. Less casual games also have reason to be excited too, as you can now require that the player of your game have a standard game controller type too. This sacrifices some fragmentation to allow apps to be more varied and take best advantage of whatever hardware they need, and I think it’s a compromise worth making.

macOS 10.12 Sierra

The features that stood out to me about the newly renamed macOS were:

  • Unlock with an Apple Watch;
  • Apple Pay in Safari;
  • Picture-in-picture for videos;
  • Automatic syncing of desktop to iCloud;
  • Automatic syncing of clipboards across devices;
  • Storing unused files in iCloud to download on-demand;
  • Tabs everywhere;
  • and Siri!

It seems to me like macOS lives in the shadow of iOS: these features are great, but I’d argue more drastic improvements are needed. For instance, it didn’t make the keynote, but Apple are updating the filesystem from HFS+ to their new APFS, which is great news. To be fair, the Siri SDK and functionality is exactly the sort of improvement the Mac needs, but it does feel quite late, especially considering that it’s been on iOS so long, and that Cortana and Google Now have long since shipped. I dislike the automatic syncing and optimizing to iCloud features because I like having more direct control and access to my files, but I’m sure people will love those features (I do recommend keeping a separate hard drive and a backup instead, however). This release is a great start, but there is much more that needs to be done: updating OpenGL, modernizing AppKit (have you ever tried using NSTableView?). and making the hardware and software usable by professionals in virtual reality, video, and other fields.

iOS 10

This is a mammoth release for iOS. The biggest focus was in the Messages app, where you can now:

  • Send handwritten notes;
  • Add animations to your messages;
  • Add “likes” to messages;
  • Annotate images before sending them;
  • Attach stickers to messages or images;
  • Automatically replace words with emoji;
  • Download and create apps that run within iMessage.

Messages, more specifically iMessage, has become a platform that strives to compete directly with Facebook’s Messenger. I look forward to using this version of iMessage, and I’m curious about what is possible in iMessage apps. The one fatal downside today of iMessage as a platform is the single-platform-edness of it (Apple platforms). There were rumors that Apple was going to announce iMessage for Android, and there is precedent for something like that now with Apple Music for Android. However, I don’t think iMessage for Android will ever happen, because it’s not a service Apple makes money on and I think it keeps many people on iOS. However, long-term, I’d argue having a truly competitive messaging platform would be good for Apple. Consider that selling apps and services on a cross-platform iMessage would probably make more money long-term than keeping users captive and not having developer interest. This feature will be great for people who only know people with iPhones, but I can’t blame Apple for not expanding one of their most valuable apps to competitors’ products.

Other improvements include:

  • Creating extensions for selling stuff within the Maps app;
  • Improved traffic handling in Maps;
  • Search for stuff on the way during navigation in Maps;
  • A new Home app for controlling your connected home products;
  • Revamped Apple Music;
  • Raise your phone to wake up the OS;
  • Increased use of 3D Touch throughout the system;
  • Interactive notifications withs views;
  • Better predictions above the keyboard;
  • A redesigned news;
  • AI powered Photos improvements;
  • Apple Pay in Safari;

These are all magnificent improvements that users will love, I think Apple did a great job in all-around improving iOS. The iMessage improvements are topical, fun additions that will convince people to upgrade, and the OS-level improvements and new APIs are a welcome change for power users and developers.

Independent podcasting

Posted on by Paul Jones

Podcasting is the new radio, where the convenience of “listen to it on your own time” and “find exactly what you want to hear” beat out “listen to it live”. From my experience, the demand for podcasts far outweighs the supply, and it’s an ample time to get into podcast publishing. The beautiful thing about podcasting today is that if you do want to do it, it’s easy. Create a WordPress or Squarespace, get the template you want, and record with whatever microphone you probably have, like on your phone or laptop. The reason it’s this easy is that while the largest aggregator of podcasts, Apple, does approve being listed in their Podcast app, Podcasts are just RSS feeds, an open standard. But as the big producers of podcasters want to make more money, they have demands of the platform. Here’s the New York Times:

Interviews with over two dozen podcasters and people inside Apple reveal a variety of complaints. The podcasters say that they are relegated to wooing a single Apple employee for the best promotion. That sharing on social media is cumbersome. And that for podcasters to make money, they need more information about their listeners, and Apple is in a unique position to provide it. The problems, they say, could even open up an opportunity for a competitor.

I’m not convinced these were the reasons given to Apple in that meeting, because frankly I think they’re weak, but let’s take this point-by-point:

  1. That podcasts “are relegated to wooing a single Apple employee for the best promotion” is wrong because that’s what you need to do to get publicity in Apple’s podcast store, but I’d argue that you’d be better off publicizing your podcast using other channels, namely the web. Rather, I think improving the positioning options available to publishers will probably benefit big players to the detriment of indie publishers, and so I think it’s a net loss for the platform.
  2. “That sharing on social media is cumbersome.” Yes, it is, arguably because sharing on social media is just another platform to lock yourself into. But even if you deem sharing on social media is a good thing to do, which I very much doubt, podcasts are still an open enough standard that you can create a link which has timestamp information on it and takes a user straight to the content you want them to see, no middle man, and go get your podcast if they like what they hear.
  3. That “they need more information about their listeners”. Users are smart. They know they’re being spied on. They see that they search for a spork on Amazon 3 years ago, have been flagged as being a user that’s interested in alternative-dining options, and that you’ve continued to programmatically serve them ads across websites. They don’t like it. To bring programatic, unskippable ads to podcasts would be more damaging than lucrative, and so I would implore publishers to find alternative business models, namely sponsorship.

Marco Arment made a similar case:

Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple’s app. We’ve seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don’t want that.

It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple’s dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web’s last open media ecosystems.

Remember I was talking about how you can just fire up an WordPress instance and get to podcast publishing? If it was more of a “platform”, we’d see the same problem’s that the App Store is struggling with: that the top 1% of the podcasts earn 99% of the profit. The reason for this is that big publishers would be better equipped to negotiate with Apple or whoever the platform owner is. It may be harder to earn a buck in today’s podcast ecosystem, but I am convinced that it’s better than centralizing control.

Federico Viticci gives his two cents for MacStories:

The great thing about the free and decentralized web is that the aforementioned web platforms are optional and they’re alternatives to an existing open field where independent makers can do whatever they want. I can own my content, offer my RSS feed to anyone, and resist the temptation of slowing down my website with 10 different JavaScript plugins to monitor what my users do. No one is forcing me to agree to the terms of a platform.

I understand why the web tends towards centralization today: owning and running a server is a naturally centralized relationship, especially considering that the knowledge has yet to disseminate to everyone. That won’t last forever, I am convinced that one day the barrier for entry for running your own server will be so low and the dissemination of technical knowledge will be so great that these arguments will become obsolete.

In the mean time I plan on complaining as loud as I can in order to defend indie producers.

Apple Music in iOS 9.3

Posted on by Paul Jones

Apple are publicizing their new APIs for Apple Music in iOS 9.3:

Provide controls for Apple Music within your app. iOS 9.3 now supports playback of any song for Apple Music members.

This is a good move, because controlling and managing music is so personal to people. For instance, listeners of classical music (I’m told) don’t necessarily prefer “artist” to be the top level entity, instead preferring the performer. This is an opportunity for 3rd party app developers to get in on the success of Apple’s music streaming service by filling niches that Apple are struggling to cater to with the one-size-fits-all Music app.

“Could children one day sue parents for posting baby pics on Facebook?”

Posted on by Paul Jones

I find myself both envious of the technology that children grow up with these days and contradictorily thankful that my childhood wasn’t as public as it might’ve been today. Furthermore, I find it oddly uncomfortable and saddening to see how infants react to being filmed with a smartphone, because their eyes immediately fix on the camera, like they know it’s important but they’re not sure why. On that note, France has created a precedent which would allow babies to sue their parents for violations of privacy:

That photo of your toddler running around in a nappy or having a temper tantrum? Think before you post it on Facebook. That’s the advice from French authorities, which have warned parents in France they could face fines of up to €45,000 (£35,000) and a year in prison for publishing intimate photos of their children on social media without permission, as part of the country’s strict privacy laws.

Can children or infants consent to being recorded? Are parents responsible for managing their child’s privacy? What’s the harm in posting your baby pictures for your baby? I’d argue that most infants don’t understand privacy, that in fact the consent does fall upon the parents to manage (for better or worse), and that the harm is that before your child comes to the age of consent, they have already irrevocably lost a part of their privacy. In a way, it’s akin to smoking around your child, became through no fault of the child, little parts of their well-being are gone forever. Of course, people will disagree, especially considering that those pictures likely bring great pleasure to social-media-savvy grandparents.

“Paul Ryan” and the Trump fail

Posted on by Paul Jones

Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan:

Actually existing Ryan has always been a con man — someone playing the part of Serious, Honest Conservative, but never doing a very good job of it. His budgets were always fraudulent in obvious ways, full of trillion-dollar magic asterisks and spectacular evasions. But he has consistently been portrayed in news reports and analysis as an earnest policy wonk. Why?

Krugman thinks that the reason he’s portrayed as honest comes from within the Republican strategy, but I’d argue that more blame lies with the news agencies themselves. Corporate news are corporations too, and they want to policies that are equitable to them and their affiliates and subsidiaries. So they portray politicians that are sympathetic to them in similarly sympathetic light.

As much as I loathe Trump’s public lies, racism, sexism, and casual fascism, his sentiment towards the Republican establishment is well placed, and because of their years of deceiving the people with wedge issues, they deserve every bit of the mess he made of their primary and legitimacy.

John Doe’s Manifesto

Posted on by Paul Jones

The whistleblower behind the Panama Papers has released a manifesto under “John Doe.” It’s powerful. Read the whole thing, here’s the conclusion:

The collective impact of these failures has been a complete erosion of ethical standards, ultimately leading to a novel system we still call Capitalism, but which is tantamount to economic slavery. In this system—our system—the slaves are unaware both of their status and of their masters, who exist in a world apart where the intangible shackles are carefully hidden amongst reams of unreachable legalese. The horrific magnitude of detriment to the world should shock us all awake. But when it takes a whistleblower to sound the alarm, it is cause for even greater concern. It signals that democracy’s checks and balances have all failed, that the breakdown is systemic, and that severe instability could be just around the corner. So now is the time for real action, and that starts with asking questions.

Historians can easily recount how issues involving taxation and imbalances of power have led to revolutions in ages past. Then, military might was necessary to subjugate peoples, whereas now, curtailing information access is just as effective or more so, since the act is often invisible. Yet we live in a time of inexpensive, limitless digital storage and fast internet connections that transcend national boundaries. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots: from start to finish, inception to global media distribution, the next revolution will be digitized.

Or perhaps it has already begun.

Atlanta Mayor’s column ripping Sanders drafted by lobbyist

Posted on by Paul Jones

From stretching campaign finance rules, to stretching campaigning near voting booth rules, to clinching super delegates in states lost by well over double digits, the Clinton campaign has really been disappointing me. And now there’s this:

A few days before the Georgia primary, influential Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed published a column on CNN.com praising Hillary Clinton and ripping her opponent, Bernie Sanders. Reed attacked Sanders as being out of step with Democrats on gun policy, and accused him of elevating a “one-issue platform” that ignores the plight of the “single mother riding two buses to her second job.”

But emails released from Reed’s office indicate that the column, which pilloried Sanders as out of touch with the poor, was primarily written by a corporate lobbyist, and was edited by Correct the Record, one of several pro-Clinton Super PACs.

Clinton’s politics is more of the same, and right now is not bad for some people, especially the wealthy, moreso the politically wealthy. But her moral barometer is clearly broken, and her campaign is one the most unimaginative in modern Democratic history (which I don’t understand because she’s been planing this for decades!). The reason, in my opinion, for this level of desperation is that the Democratic establishment know that Sanders’ message is resonating with people, and that scares them, because $27 a person is a lot less than $2,700 (for people) or unlimited amounts (to SuperPACs).