Are you familiar with “The Trolley Problem?” It’s an ethical thought experiment with a central moral dilemma.
An observer must decide whether to switch a trolley track when either choice will result in negative consequences for innocent bystanders. If he intervenes more lives are saved [practical] but he has then taken an active role in who lives or dies [immoral]. If he leaves the switch alone he is moral but more lives are certainly lost. There is no unequivocal “right choice” – especially as the scenario becomes more complex.
Interesting post that touches on Aasimov’s three laws of robotics and MIT’s moral machine web experiment.
The first 10 second of this video are the end result. The rest of the video shows how it was done. I love the mechanics behind this shot, the fact that some of it was hand designed and 3D printed, and the obvious care that went into this. Bravo!
Australia’s anti-trust regulator on Friday said it would not grant the country’s three biggest banks interim approval to collectively negotiate with Apple Inc to install their own electronic payments applications on iPhones.
Australia’s three biggest banks, including the number one lender National Australia Bank (NAB), last month lodged a joint application seeking permission to negotiate as a bloc from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The ACCC said that its decision not to grant the banks the interim ruling was not indicative of whether the full ruling, expected in October, would be successful or not.
And:
Apple, which operates its own Apple Pay mobile wallet, does not allow third-party electronic payment apps to be loaded onto to the hugely popular smartphones. The banks are seeking to be able to negotiate jointly for access to Apple’s phones without themselves being accused of violating anti-competition law.
The three Australian banks contend that while Apple allows apps on iPhones using other commonplace technology, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, restricting the technology through which mobile wallets function – known as Near Field Technology – constitutes anti-competitive behaviour.
Again, this is an interim decision. The full ruling will occur in October. Hard to say whether this is in any way a good indicator.
The latest numbers from research firm Gartner reveal that the smartphone industry continues to be a virtual two-horse race between iOS and Android. The operating systems combined for a record 99.1% worldwide market share in the second calendar quarter of 2016, compared to 96.8% in the year-ago period.
That’s amazing to me. Just a bit more than nine years ago, neither company (Apple for iOS, Google for Android) had a horse in this race. And now, everyone else is gone or, at best, window dressing.
Earlier this year, we announced we had suspended more than 125,000 accounts since mid-2015 for violating our longtime prohibition on violent threats and the promotion of terrorism and shared the steps we are taking as a company to combat this content. Since that announcement, the world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe. We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform.
While our work is not done, today we are announcing that we have suspended an additional 235,000 accounts for violating our policies related to promotion of terrorism in the six months since our February 2016 post. This brings our overall number of suspensions to 360,000 since the middle of 2015. As noted by numerous third parties, our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter.
Read the blog post for details. Combine this with Twitter’s work on a quality filter setting and you get the sense that there’s real movement here, a focus on some of the deeper problem areas for Twitter.
Various editions of iOS 9 are currently installed on 87 percent of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, a one-point gain versus a month ago.
And:
By comparison, Google’s official stats have Android 6.0 Marshmallow powering 15.2 percent of smartphones and tablets, with the two-year-old Lollipop (5.0-5.1) OS found on more than one-third of Android hardware (35.3 percent).
Travis Kalanick has to get Uber’s bet on self-driving cars right.
“It starts with understanding that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous,” he told Business Insider in an interview.
“So if that’s happening, what would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way.”
As much as I may not like autonomous cars, from a business perspective, it’s hard to argue with his reasoning.
The source of the delay is that current cellular chips consume too much battery life, reducing the product’s effectiveness and limiting user appeal, according to three of the people. Apple has begun studying lower-power cellular data chips for future smartwatch generations.
This is an incredibly difficult problem, but anything that negatively affects battery life will be a non-starter for a lot of users. Most days, I have plenty of battery life remaining when I go to bed, but I wouldn’t want to be in a situation where I was running out of power early in the day.
Last year we began testing a quality filter setting and we’re now rolling out a feature for everyone. When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior. Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience. It does not filter content from people you follow or accounts you’ve recently interacted with – and depending on your preferences, you can turn it on or off in your notifications settings.
Twitter certainly has a lot of work to do, but anything that can help my feed is welcome.
After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.
The partnership will allow the Swedish-based carmaker, owned by China’s Geely, and ride-hailing service Uber to pool resources into initially developing the autonomous driving capabilities of its flagship XC90 SUV model. The investment will be shared roughly equally by the two companies.
I don’t think I’d ever want a fully autonomous car, but if we’re talking about driver-assisted technologies, I trust Volvo and Mercedes.
With Apple’s sales tumbling, the Chinese government’s support waning and a new iPhone coming out, Mr. Cook is on a goodwill mission: meeting with government officials, touring Chinese Apple stores and speaking with local residents. Mr. Cook pledged to increase investment in China in a meeting with Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli in Beijing on Tuesday. He continued to the central Chinese city Chongqing on Wednesday, where he toured an Apple store with the mayor.
Side note: Chongqing is one of the five Chinese national central cities. An important place for Tim Cook to visit.
Top Chinese leaders have expressed concern over declining iPhone sales. At a meeting in May between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and technology executives in the southern Guizhou province, Mr. Li had only one question for Terry Gou, the chairman of Apple’s main contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, according to people who attended the meeting.
The premier asked Mr. Gou if production this year would decline. After trying to deflect the question, Mr. Gou confirmed that “the general trend” was downward, the people said.
This Chinese trip is obviously an important visit and comes at a critical time for Apple.
Hayley Tsukayama, writing for the Washington Post:
There’s a good reason to sell the iPad Pro as a “computer” rather than a tablet. Tablet sales have been slowing. And while computers are also in a sales slump, there is growth in the “detachables” category — devices that blend the tablet and the traditional laptop and have, well, a detachable keyboard. Casting the iPad Pro this way is important to Apple to catch the eye of businesses and business people, who may want something light but still functional for work.
Balanced with this quote from Steve Jobs:
What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and if enough of them say ‘yes,’ we get to come to work tomorrow. That’s how it works. It’s really simple. With the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused.
And:
The business market has changed in ways that blunt Jobs’s old criticisms. He didn’t like that enterprise devices weren’t personal; that’s no longer the case in a BYOD world. Even when there’s a set list of devices approved by a workplace, it almost always includes an iPhone, an iPad or at least some iOS-friendly apps.
And businesses are a great market for the tablet and the “post-PC” vision that Jobs envisioned with the introduction of the iPad. With a more mobile workforce, the iPad and the iPad Pro — along with the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and other 2-in-1 devices — make a lot of sense for moving from hotel room to living room to board room.
“We’ve reached the point where we’ve realized that there are other, better ways to achieve the same kind of community discussion around the issues we raise in our journalism,” he said, with money, and spending it efficiently, part of the issue. More than 5 million people each month engage with NPR on Twitter, compared to just a fraction of that number in the NPR.org comments. “In relative terms, as we set priorities, it becomes increasingly clear that the market has spoken. This is where people want to engage with us. So that’s what we’re going to emphasize,” he said.
Interesting. This is not about trolling and the high cost of moderation. Instead, it’s recognizing that engagement is moving to social media, like Twitter.
Apple Inc.’s sales of iPads, iPhones and other devices fell 20 percent at Target Corp. stores during the second quarter, confirming Apple’s struggles with a global slowdown in smartphone demand and waning interest in its out-of-date gadgets.
Hmmm. Out-of-date gadgets?
Target CEO Brian Cornell said the weakness in Apple’s sales at the retailer was “across the product suite,” and that the company is putting plans in place to better capitalize on the new devices when they hit the shelves.
“Our guests come to us looking for those products,” Cornell said on a conference call to discuss earnings. “They’re looking for the newness and the innovation. We’re putting together plans with Apple and our merchandising teams to make sure we’re ready to take advantage of that in the back half of the year.”
Hard to tell where this is Target shifting blame for poor sales and actual evidence of an Apple-specific slump. But the out-of-date gadgets stings, at least in part because of the aging MacBook Pro and Mac Pro lineup. But are those gadgets? I certainly wouldn’t call the iPhone or iPad out-of-date.
AT&T is continuing to simplify pricing with new plans that eliminate data overage charges for our wireless customers.
The new Mobile Share Advantage plans are available Aug. 21. Consumers and businesses alike can gain a wireless experience, without overage charges. Instead of overage charges, after customers use all of their high-speed data amounts, all data usage will be reduced to a maximum of 128 kbps for the rest of their bill cycle.
In effect, once you hit your data cap, your data speed will slow to a relative crawl.
From the fine print:
No charge for overage. After all your high-speed data allotments are used, all data usage is slowed to a max of 128 Kbps (2G speed) for the rest of the bill cycle. You will have basic data use for viewing a web page or checking email. Audio and video streaming, picture and video messaging, select apps and other services, as well as other usage, including sponsored data, will be impacted and may not be fully functional.
I’m assuming you can pay to add more high-speed data for the month, so this seems like a positive development.
Most people have only a vague notion of what “body donation” even means. The thought alone frightens, or even disgusts, many people. And scandals involving the illegal sale of body parts, and other snafus, have inspired distrust in body donation programs.
But a closer look reveals the process as both strange and wonderful, clinical and deeply human. A donated organ can save a life, but a body provides the foundation to save many more.
Many of us are understandably squeamish about cadavers but the story of how much good we can do after our death is a good one to know. One of my favorite books is “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” (affiliate link) by Mary Roach.
For those who want a less advanced DSLR, the Japanese manufacturer has others such as its new D3400. This entry-level shooter features a 24.2-megapixel CMOS sensor (DX-format) alongside the Expeed 4 processor, which Nikon claims brings improved auto white balance performance and better image quality in low-light scenarios. The D3400 also boasts an ISO range of 100-25,600, 11-point autofocus system, 5-fps continuous shooting and 1080p video at up to 60 fps. These are the sort of specs you’d expect from beginner DSLRs, but the lack of 4K recording will be a downside for some people.
The D3400 will hit stores in “early” September for $650, in a kit that includes an AF-P DX Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens.
This looks to be a nice beginner camera as long as you don’t need/want 4K recording or wifi connectivity (which is still a sore spot for me).
In March, Slack engineer Erica Baker fired off a quick series of tweets about the upcoming presidential election.
“Ok VCs, CEOs, and company decision makers who follow me. Start planning now to make November 8 a day off. We need people to be able to vote,” Baker wrote, adding, “The fact that Election Day isn’t a national holiday is in and of itself an act of voter suppression.” Although the election was still months away, the idea took off, and dozens of tech companies agreed over the course of the summer to make Election Day a holiday for employees.
We Canadians are always surprised to hear that Americans don’t get time off to vote. In Canada, your employer must give you four hours off to go to the polls.
A team of Italian geoscientists published a paper called “Modeling the Failure Mechanisms of Michelangelo’s David Through Small-Scale Centrifuge Experiments.” That dry title concealed a terrifying story. The paper describes an experiment designed to measure, in a novel way, the weakness in the David’s ankles: by creating a small army of tiny David replicas and spinning them in a centrifuge, at various angles, to simulate different levels of real-world stress. What the researchers found was grim. If the David were to be tilted 15 degrees, his ankles would fail.
The seed of the problem is a tiny imperfection in the statue’s design.
The opening photo of this long article is fantastic. I saw David many years ago in Florence and was absolutely captivated by the statue.
In January, it decided against imposing a five-minute wait time for rides on customers of services such as Uber, which allows customers to book and pay for a taxi on their smartphones, but said that it would bring in measures including compulsory language tests.
Kirk McElhearn walks you through the process of showing lyrics on your Mac and iOS device. Love this.
Lyrics have been part of iTunes for a long time. Here’s Kirk on what’s new here:
You have always been able to add lyrics to files in iTunes, but iTunes didn’t display them other than in the Info window. On iOS, you could display them by tapping album artwork, if you had added lyrics to your files. So what’s new is the display in iTunes, in the Up Next popup, or in the MiniPlayer.
In addition, iTunes and iOS will now search for lyrics that you haven’t added to your tracks. This is new, and involves some sort of licensing, most likely with Gracenote.
Apple Inc., the world’s richest company, is making a documentary with Cash Money Records, one of the world’s most successful hip-hop labels.
Cash Money is home to Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj and Drake, with whom Apple already has an exclusive deal. Co-founder Bryan Williams, who performs under the stage name Birdman, posted a picture to his Instagram account on Tuesday alongside Larry Jackson, the head of Apple’s original music content, with both executives holding their chins pensively. The photo celebrated Apple agreeing to fund a documentary for the label, according to people familiar with the deal. It is not, as many had speculated after the photo, an agreement to secure all of Cash Money’s new albums exclusively, the people said.
This is Apple continuing to dip their toes in the water.
Apple Inc will boost its investment in China, one of its largest but increasingly challenging markets, and build its first Asia-Pacific research and development center in the country, Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Tuesday.
Cook made the pledge during a trip to China, at least his second in four months, as demand for Apple’s iPhones has plummeted in the world’s second-largest economy and the government remains wary about foreign technology.
Apple’s new research and development center will be built by the end of the year, Cook told Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, one of China’s most senior officials, according to CCTV, the official Chinese state broadcaster.
The center will unite Apple’s engineering and operations teams in China and is also intended to deepen the company’s ties to partners and universities, it said in a statement.
Also read this article from China Daily with coverage of Tim’s recent visit to China.
Solid read, based on analysis by Horace Dediu. At the heart of this analysis is this chart. Spend a few minutes wrapping your head around it. Note that it does not include hardware sales.
A few weeks ago, Apple put out this iPad Pro commercial, notably asking the question, “What’s a Computer?”
Microsoft has an answer, a new commercial (shown below) that reminds me of the “I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” ads of a decade ago, though this time with the roles reversed.
At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, Intel architects Brad Saunders and Rahman Ismail sketched out a coming USB audio standard that could help push the 3.5mm jack aside. The new specification, due this quarter, adds features to ensure a USB headphone doesn’t drain too much battery power and defines how buttons for pausing music or lowering volume work.
This is an interesting fork in the road for the 3.5mm audio jack. One rumored path is the elimination of the 3.5mm jack from the upcoming iPhone 7, in combination with a potential lightning to 3.5mm headset adapter for legacy headsets.
This USB-C push would be another path, another adapter for legacy headsets.
Seems to me, all roads lead to wireless headphones as the future. The short term is the replacement cycle, similar to what we went through with the elimination of the floppy drive, the CD/DVD drive, and the changeover to the lightning cable. Sturm und drang, followed by acceptance.
Apple® today announced a significant commitment by major supplier Lens Technology to run its Apple operations on entirely renewable energy. This unprecedented commitment, combined with zero waste compliance from all final assembly sites, furthers Apple’s efforts to help manufacturers lower their carbon footprint and reduce waste in China, helping to advance China’s transition to a new green economy.
Lens Technology has committed to power all of its glass production for Apple with 100 percent renewable energy by the end of 2018, as part of Apple’s industry-leading supply chain clean energy program announced last year. Lens is the first supplier to make a clean energy commitment for all of its Apple production, and will meet its goal through an unprecedented power purchase agreement with local wind projects.
Lens Technology is the first Chinese supplier to sign such a power purchase agreement, a notable first step in an important push by Apple. This will take time.
More immediately:
Apple is working with suppliers to help transform the environmental landscape in China, and is proud to announce all 14 of its final assembly sites in China are now compliant with UL’s Zero Waste to Landfill validation. The UL standard certifies all of their manufacturing waste is reused, recycled, composted, or, when necessary, converted into energy. Since the program began in January 2015, the sites have diverted more than 140,000 metric tons of waste from landfills.
And:
Apple has taken significant steps to protect the environment by transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy. Today, the company is powering 100 percent of its operations in China and the US, and more than 93 percent of its worldwide operations, with renewable energy.
I can’t think of another company of size with this sort of self-awareness, this commitment to doing the right thing. Much respect, Apple.
