Ged Carroll

Category: technology | 技術 | 기술 | テクノロジー

It’s hard to explain to someone who didn’t live through it how transformation technology has been. When I was a child a computer was something mysterious. My Dad has managed to work his way up from the shop floor of the shipyard where he worked and into the planning office.

One evening he broad home some computer paper. I was fascinated by the the way the paper hinged on perforations and had tear off side edges that allowed it to be pulled through the printer with plastic sprockets connecting through holes in the paper.

My Dad used to compile and print off work orders using an ICL mainframe computer that was timeshared by all the shipyards that were part of British Shipbuilders.

I used the paper for years for notes and my childhood drawings. It didn’t make me a computer whiz. I never had a computer when I was at school. My school didn’t have a computer lab. I got to use Windows machines a few times in a regional computer labs. I still use what I learned in Excel spreadsheets now.

My experience with computers started with work and eventually bought my own secondhand Mac. Cut and paste completely changed the way I wrote. I got to use internal email working for Corning and internet connectivity when I went to university. One of my friends had a CompuServe account and I was there when he first met his Mexican wife on an online chatroom, years before Tinder.

Leaving college I set up a Yahoo! email address. I only needed to check my email address once a week, which was fortunate as internet access was expensive. I used to go to Liverpool’s cyber cafe with a friend every Saturday and showed him how to use the internet. I would bring any messages that I needed to send pre-written on a floppy disk that also held my CV.

That is a world away from the technology we enjoy now, where we are enveloped by smartphones and constant connectivity. In some ways the rate of change feels as if it has slowed down compared to the last few decades.

  • iPhone Xs launch

    Random notes as I watched the iPhone Xs, iPhone XR and Apple Watch Series 4 launch.

    Phil Schiller

    Watching the introductory clip, this felt like an event designed mostly for an internal audience. The events have become a parody of themselves with very well worn tropes.

    Company and eco-system update

    • Apple stores: 500,000,000 visitors per year. The stores have free wi-fi and classes, so this isn’t just about purchasing or building loyalty with customers. It has become public private space.
    • 2 billion iOS devices – many users will have replaced at least three devices so the community of likely iOS users is probably closer to 600 million. iPad tend to end up being communal devices in family homes and so have a longer life.
    • Apple Watch is the number one watch – I found this clip suprising. I find that hard to believe given the ubiquity of the Casio G-Shock range, or the F-91W family of basic digital watches

    Apple Watch series 4

    It is clever in some of the engineering: mass producing a ceramic back. the way Apple has managed to squeeze an ECG function in there. But there is a lot not to like about the watch
    The case design preportions seem off in the video, it may look better in real life. I am guessing that part of the move is about the cellular aerial, but then you have the ceramic back

    • They still haven’t sorted the crown positioning and protection – it will still fire up Siri for no apparent reason
    • The device is only minimally waterproof
    • The awful information design in the face used on Apple Watch hero images

    apple-watch-series4_watch-front-training_09122018
    Which got me rooting through old copies of Wired magazine. They used to have a ‘Future of’ section on the back inside cover. And lone behold
    watch

    iPhone Xs

    I was really unimpressed by the iPhone Xs. Don’t get me wrong it looks ‘nice’ and takes a lot of engineering. There isn’t an upgrade reason for X users. I find the AR applications are gimmicks rather than necessarily being regularly used apps. The notable exception would be the measuring tape app included in iOS 12

    Screen pixel counts are now getting ridiculous – you won’t be able to see the difference in terms of pixel refinement. Contrast may improve in HDR.

    The sound on the device doesn’t recognise that consumers use headphones. It was all about louder speakers.

    For iPhone 6/7/8 users the battery life descriptions for the new iPhone Xs devices were weasel language that would make me be wary of upgrading on this cycle.

    Facial recognition but no in screen biometric touch sensor means that you still have a notch. It also means that there is a dissonance in experience between the touch sensors on the latest MacBook Pro models and iPad models. How will Apple be handling websites that have integrated Apple Pay validation?

    As a MacBook Pro user, this told me to hang on to my current device. Wait and see if Apple changes the authentication again on the next round.

    A12 Bionic chip. 20 years ago five trillion instructions per second would have been impressive as this would have been a super computer. Now it is pretty much in line with what one would expect in Moore’s Law. Intel are squeezing double the rate fo computing power out of FPGAs. You’ve got all that power and you get animojis…

    How the software handles the paralellism of the chip is key. That is something that Sony found in the Cell architecture of the Playstation 2. Don’t expect that power to be obvious in 3rd party applications. The addressable memory claim surprised me. Its a 64 bit processor, so of course it could address 512GB of memory.

    • How much of the A12 chip is required to get FaceID to work?
    • How will the software get the most out of the cores?
    • There isn’t modem integration which helps rivals with their circuit board designs.

    iPhone camera ‘breakthroughs’ seem to come from intellectual property that Lytro developed?

    Dual SIMs – it is definitely a minority interest. It is likely to annoy carriers in mature markets with the exception of challengers like T-Mobile US.

    The SIMs are all non-standard formats which is a pain in the backside. eSIMs are only supported by EE and Vodafone in the UK. The nano-SIM is yet another smaller format of SIM which will be hard to sell to carriers. The most attractive model is the China market one with two physical SIMs.

    This could be:

    • Because China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom wouldn’t get on board with eSIMs
    • To screw with the Chinese grey market for iPhones (which is on the decline anyway
    • An unfortunate side effect is that it makes the China models more desirable for a (minority) consumer like me. So the grey market is likely to go the other way

    iPhones are coming with a USB rather than USB C cable in the box, which raises questions about the longer term commitment to Thunderbolt 3…

    iPhone Xr

    Why did Apple create so many colour versions. It has too many colour variations. One of Apple’s historic strengths has been keeping a tight leash on the product portfolio.

    More Apple related content here.

  • NYPD surveillance + more things

    IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color – you might feel a bit squeamish about the application but this is established image recognition that Google (and Yahoo!) search engines used 12 years ago rather than anything new. We shouldn’t be surprised that the NYPD surveillance search system doesn’t use all aspect of physical attributes that might turn up in a witness statement.

    eBay builds its own customized servers to ‘replatform’ its data center infrastructure | SiliconAngle– surprised that they weren’t doing this already

    Luxury Daily | eBay extends authentication program to high-end watches – Paywall

    Immersive art – JWT Intelligence – In China, where fine art isn’t typically part of a school curriculum, art collectors and curators have been working with mall developers and brands for a number of years to create crossover opportunities among Chinese audiences, fueling interest and building a culture around art. Zheng’s approach is to focus on making his visitors the protagonists in his exhibitions to help them “accept art as an element in their lives.”

    WE ARE IN AN EFFICIENCY BUBBLE – BBH – at the expense of effectiveness. Just good enough commotised creative

    The Path Ahead: The 7th Forum on China-Africa Cooperation | China Africa Research Initiative – (PDF)

    Cryptocurrency exchange Changelly admits it can steal users’ Monero (if it wanted to) – I think this is over egging the opportunity and underestimating challenges

    WeChat, Alipay to Block Crypto Transactions on Payment Platforms – CoinDesk – surprised that this is taking so long

    JD CEO’s arrest steps on governance landmine – Breakingviews – (paywall) it shows how tenuous ‘foreign’ shareholding in Chinese entities are. According to The New York Times he has some form for these kind of events

    Manipulation, Chinese style – Nikkei Asian Review – cunning and clever. This should be compulsory reading for anyone doing lobbying or in corporate communications. It mirrors some of the Russian philosophy on information warfare, but the Russians take it in a much more kinetic direction.

    The “experiential advantage” is not universal – the less well-off get equal or more happiness from buying things – Research Digest – really interesting finding on consumer behaviour and retailing

  • Colin Kaepernick + more things

    Colin Kaepernick 

    If you work in marketing, you’d have had to hidden in a remote jungle outpost to avoid all the industry big opinion pieces and social discussion over Nike’s latest brand campaign. The outrage was over a social image of Colin Kaepernick supporting the video content below

    Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

    Everything has become political. New Balance got the whip end of it from liberals during the early part of the Trump administration because of its domestic manufacturing plants and his focus on American jobs. The New Balance CEO made positive remarks about the president focusing on domestic manufacturing and liberals burned their sneakers on social media.

    So from the beginning Nike was in the ‘not Trump camp’ because of its business model. The question would be should it put its head above the parapet or not? From a marketing history that has worked with directors like Spike Lee – this is almost a non question.

    Nike also has demographics on its side, banking on the African American community and urban kids over aging Trump supporters. This will also play well in western European markets.

    Nike has trends behind it at the moment. Hypebeast style is on the ascendency, even in preppy lookbooks you are likely to see the blazer and chinos paired with a pair of Air Max in a colour scheme that pops.

    In my mind working with Colin Kaepernick was inevitable because it was such a Nike thing to do. Down the road Kaepernick is going to make a stylish articulate spokesperson, think Michael Jordan but with more of a ‘thinking man’ image. (Yes I know Michael Jordan is sharp as a button but he’s got more swagger).

    From Nike’s perspective it was a good tactical move. The timing was ideal to get out ahead of the NFL season, rather than being seen as a reaction to it. Scott Galloway went as far as to call it the ‘gangster marketing’ move of 2018. But no it wasn’t particularly brave on the part of Nike. From a Nike point-of-view this kicks the inevitable liberal media cyclical discussion about Nike and children working in third-world sweatshops a bit further down the road. I guess Nike won’t have to worry about yet another set of shoe brands like Starbury, Patrick Ewiing or And1 coming up anytime soon. Commentators tend to forget that they emerged because Nike was seen to be using black athletes to gouge poor consumers out of excess cash and fuelling criminality to have the ‘right’ shoes. What a difference a president makes.

    Secondly, there is an issue of has bravery become an overused word?

    • By using it to sell sneakers and track tops are you cheapening the sacrifices of fallen first responders, civil rights activists or military personnel?
    • Where do whistle blowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden fit into it?
    • And what does it say about America when you have to be brave to use your constitutional rights?

    Everything has become weaponised, how do we step back from this? More on Nike here.

    its a rare one of the columns when I am dealing with two pretty grim subjects in a week. The Register broke the news about western intelligence services declaring a new war on privacy – its a even more alarming when you think about how populist politics has blown up in the past few years. This is the best written reaction that I have seen to it. Schneier is a online security expert and I’d trust his judgement over any politicians: Five-Eyes Intelligence Services Choose Surveillance Over Security – Schneier on Security. Go and have a read, I’ll still be here when you come back.

    As you can understand I’d like to lift the mood a bit. The reaction of Japanese people to western swear words once they are explained to them is priceless.

    NASA on the Cray super-computers that they used in the mid-1980s

    My former colleague Haruka is doing a daily illustration challenge, creating artworks on 1 inch x 1 inch paper square. (An inch is 25.4mm)

     

     
     
     
     
     
    View this post on Instagram
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     

    A post shared by Haruka (@haruka.illustrations) on

  • Autocorrect + more things

    I Invented Autocorrect. Sorry About That; You’re Welcome | WIRED – More than 10 years after the initial release of the iPhone, the state of the art now is much as it was then. Even with recent advances in AI and machine learning, the core problem remains the same: Software doesn’t understand the nuance of human communication. – autocorrect seems to have been poisoned by the data set used in its machine learning. T9 of yesteryear provides a better autocorrect experience. There is no easy fix for smartphone autocorrect woes any time soon

    Johann Rupert: the man on a mission to save Europe’s artisanal skills | How To Spend It – Concurrent with his observations about the speed at which new fortunes are made are his fears about the extinction of the middle class. “I don’t know where AI and machines are going to end up. But if we as humanity are going to preserve jobs and culture, we need to be smart.” He recognises that his success is “based upon people with culture and skills. And when their livelihoods are affected by machines, we’ve got to fight back.”

    Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption | Australian Government – Department of Home Affairs – no privacy, no secure crypto basically – UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and US are making a new push to come after cryptography in consumers hands. Interesting how little coverage that this has received until The Register pushed it

    The US-China Cold War is now playing out in Pakistan — Quartz India – Pakistan hopes that China and Saudi Arabia might offer the financial relief that would provide an alternative to the IMF and American pressure. Although this is not the kind of role that China wants, an IMF bailout would lead to a disclosure of the highly secretive terms of CPEC deals, leading to renegotiation or even cancellation and undermining Beijing’s geo-economic goals.

    Experts Call for Transparency Around Google’s Chinese-Made Security Keys – Motherboard – I was waiting for this shoe to drop. I would make more sense to do the assembly outside China with a Taiwanese supplier. This the approach that BlackBerry used to do with its devices prior to licensing its name to TCL. Apple has to do a lot of proprietary work and inspections to keep its devices secure and there is no sign that Google has done this

    Baidu launches EZDL, an AI model training platform that requires no coding experience | VentureBeat – interesting visual programming approach

    Chinese bike-share group Ofo sued for alleged $10m in unpaid bills | Financial Times – Shanghai Phoenix Bicycles, an old and venerable bicycle brand in China, has petitioned a Beijing court over an unpaid supplier contract worth Rmb68m ($9.9m) with a unit of Beijing-based Ofo, according to an exchange filing by Phoenix’s parent company late on Friday. 

    Ofo previously faced the threat of having 3m of its bicycles immobilised due to a dispute over alleged unpaid debts to a smart-lock producer, which had threatened to “freeze” the locks if it did not receive payment. Ofo said later the dispute had been resolved. 

    Peak Valley? – AVC – Fred Wilson makes the defence case for Silicon Valley….

    Watch the ‘Real’ Magic Leap Whale Take Flight in ‘Helio’ Web Experiment – Road to VR – hype versus reality

    With New London Store, Stüssy Flexes Its ‘Tribe’ | News & Analysis, News Bites | BoF – Stüssy’s brand identity is built on a “tribal ethos” that extends from its inner circle to its customers. Their stores function as community hubs where young (and not so young) shoppers gather. This fosters a strong, consistent, and authentic connection with clients. Essentially, wearing a Stüssy item allows customers to feel like they’re participating in something bigger and understand the brand’s unique appeal.. –  more related content here.

  • Knee surgery + more things

    What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem – WSJ – no idea of costs and processes – why things are done. The thing that concerns me more is that knee surgery (and other medical processes) need more sensitive work than what business transformation consultants brought to industry. Otherwise it will be kneecapping Belfast-style rather than knee surgery going on

    Struggling Chinese firms offloading assets means property bargains galore for foreign investors | South China Morning Post – Under Chinese law, overseas investors cannot directly buy assets in China. They either have to buy a stake in a company involved in a project, or acquire debt portfolios, mostly from one of the four main managers of distressed assets – a quick change in Chinese law could leave these investors screwed, this looks like a trap to me

    The psychology of popular media culture Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg – American Psychological Association – PDF white paper on trends in media use covering a 40 year period. More media related content here

    China is clear leader in the 5G race – Deloitte | Telecoms.com – interesting, but what about Korea, Singapore etc? I suspect that this is very China vs. US focus

    Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents – Foreign Policy – how the CIA will be able to build trust with agents in the future is going to be a challenge

    Adversaries Could Have Fiddled With US Satellites: DoD IG « Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – If Chinese and Russian spies have been doing their jobs well, they might well have been able to compromise some of America’s most important satellites, including the missile launch detection birds known as SBIRS.  A report out today from the Pentagon’s Inspector General says that Air Force Space Command’s failure to safeguard its supply chain means that “an adversary has opportunity to infiltrate the Air Force Space Command supply chain and sabotage, maliciously introduce an unwanted function, or otherwise compromise the design or integrity of the critical hardware, software, and firmware.”

    Macau: the incredible poverty at the heart of world’s richest place | South China Morning Post – the Gini coefficient must be higher than Hong Kong or the US surely?

    Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger – sources | Reuters – The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance – not terribly surprising. If they manage to achieve this could the method be applied to Signal? Also would there be a precedent to break Apple’s resolve?

    How Björk robots influenced the way we think about the future. | Slate – continues a long patterN – Star Trek communicator and the cellphone, Minority Report and touch interfaces, Neuromancer’s influence on VR – there is a continual feedback loop. It is interesting how much recent sci-fi feels very much rooted in the present

    There’s one thing that some virtual assistants can’t do – understand an Irish accent – Independent.ie – or a regional British accent for that matter

    Robot to star in new Tony Kaye movie 2nd Born – CNET – looking forward to a new Tony Kaye film

    Y Combinator to Set Up China Arm With Ex-Baidu Exec as CEO – Bloomberg – interesting move, I met Yu back at Yahoo! where I found him to be highly strung