The California Department of Motor Vehicles produced a set of testing regulations for manufacturers of driverless cars. Those regulations went through a period of public comment and were then submitted for legislative approval. The regulations were approved this week and will become effective on September 16th, 2014.

Interested in the details? Here’s a link to the regulations.

The vast majority of the first half of the regulations involves making sure anyone testing a vehicle has massive ($5 million) insurance coverage. That’s certainly appropriate, but I worry that there are those who might equate proper coverage with safety. But I digress.

It took me a while to find the key to all this, in a section titled “Prohibitions on Operation on Public Roads”:

A manufacturer shall not permit any of its autonomous vehicles to be operated on public roads in California when the operator is not seated in the vehicle’s driver seat and either: monitoring its operations and able to take over physical control of the vehicle; or, in physical control of the vehicle.

OK, that’s better. Looks like there will always be someone behind the wheel, ready to wrest control from the hive-mind. What could go wrong?

Re/code:

The Internet is filled with tales of frustration from those who have traded in their iPhone for an Android phone only to find their text messages trapped within Apple’s cloud. The issue arises when an iPhone customer trades in his or her phone for, say, an Android device, but keeps the same phone number that Apple’s messaging system recognizes as an iPhone.

iMessage is far from perfect but has gotten much better over the past year (at least from my experience). But that said, there is a point here.

Spurring this little number:

The iMessage problem is now the subject of legal action by a California woman seeking class-action status for a suit against Apple. She charges that Apple’s message-grabbing ways are depriving former customers of the ability to get full value from their wireless service after they give up their iPhone. The suit, filed last week, claims Apple’s actions violate California’s unfair competition law and also interfere with a wireless carrier’s abilities to deliver its promised service to consumers.

Which brings up an interesting point. What responsibility does a tech ecosystem bear to enable customers to easily leave that ecosystem? When an ecosystem is created, do the exit tools need to be created at the same time? Obviously, part of the value of an ecosystem, from a business point of view, is the friction that keeps customers on board. Clearly, there is a disincentive to making it easy for customers to leave.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m an unabashed Apple fan, have been since the Apple II days. Part of what makes me so loyal is Apple’s value of quality over strategy. I think Apple designs every product and service with the loftiest of functional and aesthetic goals. The “friction” problem becomes a “magnetic” solution. People stay because of attraction, not because of the difficulty of leaving.

There seems to be a friction problem here. My guess is, there’s a fix in the works.

“Nest is being run independently from the rest of Google, with a separate management team, brand and culture,” he said in an emailed statement. “For example, Nest has a paid-for business model, while Google has generally had an ads-supported business model. We have nothing against ads — after all Nest does lots of advertising. We just don’t think ads are right for the Nest user experience.”

I really like Nest CEO Tony Fadell. It’s not him I don’t trust, it’s the Google bosses.

While Samsung sold the most handsets, Apple remained the top vendor of U.S. smartphones, claiming 37 percent of smartphones sold outside of the variety of Android and Windows Mobile licensees that Counterpoint analyzed.

Apple accounted for the largest share of smartphones for three of the top four U.S. mobile carriers: 52 percent at AT&T, 51 percent at Verizon Wireless, and 36 percent at Sprint, while taking the second place spot behind Samsung on the more value-oriented T-Mobile/Metro PCS with 24 percent.

The latest version of Facebook for iOS and Android automatically recognizes the song you’re listening to or TV show you’re watching and adds it to your status. The Shazam-like feature is called “audio recognition,” and starts listening as soon as you start typing a new status.

I wonder what this will do to Shazam. Facebook has a lot of users that will use the new feature by default.

EBay Inc. operator of the online-auction site, asked users to change their passwords after a cyber-attack exposed a database with login information and data such as birthdays and phone numbers.

There’s no evidence of unauthorized activity resulting from the breach, EBay said today in a statement. While credit-card numbers are stored separately and encrypted, it’s still best to change passwords, the company said.

Go change them now.

Those who expressed concern about Google’s acquisition of Nest may have have been right: the company has told the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may choose to serve ads on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

You are the product with this creepy company.

I really like the concept behind this iPad case. At first blush, it seems like a knockoff of Apple’s iPad cases. But no, not at all.

The Ergo Book has a big strap that is hidden away until you need it, and your iPad can rotate in the case so you can view or stand it in portrait or landscape mode.

I’m in! Looks like these will be shipping in September. [Via TUAW]

Rene Ritchie gives a nice guided tour of Siri setup. A perfect link to pass along to the less iOS-savvy of your friends and family.

But even if you’re an old hand, scan through the article. This is a current pass through all the settings, good for a refresher. Always a chance there’s something new that you’ve not used before.

For example:

Since Siri is usually activated by just holding down the Home button, it can pose a security risk to the data on your iPhone or iPad. If you are security conscious and have activated a Passcode Lock for your iPhone or iPad, you may want to make sure Siri isn’t allowed to bypass that lock — it’s less convenient, but that’s always the cost of security.

I didn’t know you could bring Siri under passcode protection. Cool.

In 1972, copyright law was amended to cover sound recordings, but not retroactively. Yet there are many pre-1972 songs that are played on streaming and satellite radio, enriching the companies that play them. This issue is coming to a head.

Fantastic article, does a great job laying out the issues/players involved.

A common discussion among app developers involves the pros and cons of developing for both iOS and Android. Among the biggest hurdles in developing for Android is device fragmentation. This is both a software problem (which version of Android is in place) and a hardware problem.

Yesterday, John Gruber linked to a brilliant post showing 7 different Android devices, each running a compass app. The post was also linked in Benedict Evans’ excellent post on Android fragmentation and the cloud.

To sum it up, the compass results were literally all over the place, not something you’d want to see in a compass, especially if you are lost. Gruber ran a similar test using iOS devices. Click here to see his unsurprising results. Steady as a rock, in perfect sync.

This is not about favoritism. This is about the downside of uncontrolled fragmentation.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and Executive Vice President Stephen Elop decided that the product in development wasn’t different enough from rivals and probably wouldn’t be a hit, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans weren’t public. Engineers had been working on the device and had planned to unveil it as early as today at an event in New York, two of the people said.

I can’t imagine how bad it would be using apps on a mini version of the Surface. It was probably a smart idea to kill that.

Very interesting article from Benedict Evans.

Samsung lost an appeal in the Netherlands over its infringement of Apple’s bounce-back patent, resulting in a broad injunction against selling accused devices and all other infringing devices that Samsung has introduced or will introduce.

This is what should happen to stealing scumbags. What’s wrong with the U.S.?

Samsung said that Apple were “jihadist” and that this was “Apple’s Vietnam.” Samsung is fucking crazy.

Jim and Dan return to have a deep analysis of beats, music subscription technology, music discovery, a list of people Jim will destroy, Apple settling with Samsung and Google, iMessages SMS issues, and more.

In a joint filing late Monday, the two companies blamed each other for the failure of the talks initiated on May 5 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.

Good. Sue those copying scumbags into the ground.

I’m going to need to think about this one for a bit. I use services from both companies, but I’m not sure how they fit together.

I’ll be honest, I don’t own a GoPro, but it’s one of those devices that I always think about buying.

The device features a 12-inch screen and kickstand, and supports a stylus. In addition, the tablet comes with support for USB 3.0 and Microsoft’s popular Type-covers in multiple colors. The Surface Pro 3 features an Intel Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 processor to boost its performance compared to the previous Microsoft slate.

They are comparing it to a MacBook Air. That’s an odd comparison for me, almost like Microsoft still doesn’t get what this is all about.

Ember makes it incredibly easy to capture and organize screenshots, entire webpages and other images that inspire you; and syncs them between all your favorite Apple devices.

I’m sure Dropbox sync will be a popular feature.

From the auction listing:

Two original exterior office building signs, approximately 46 x 49 x 1 1/2 inches and 33 1/2 x 36 x 6 inches, each with separate stem piece; the larger sign made of stiff foam with 6 vinyl applied colors; the smaller sign made of fiberglass backed with metal, vinyl applied colors; edgewear to both signs, some colors with slight pealing at transitions, larger sign with one color showing significant craquelure, both with stray marks and outdoor wear.

Provenance: Removed from company headquarters in 1997 and given to a longtime Apple employee.

If only the original pirate flag was up for auction.

For some reason, this just makes me happy.

Korea Times:

Samsung Electronics and Apple have recently agreed to begin talks to settle patent disputes out of court, according to people directly involved with the matter, Monday.

“Samsung has recently resumed working-level discussions with Apple and the key issue is how to dismiss all lawsuits,” they said, declining to be named.

They added that the recent verdict in the U.S. that admitted Apple’s infringement on some Samsung patents made things much better for the resumption of talks.

If true, an interesting development. [Via 9to5mac]