How China’s Bytedance became the world’s most valuable startup | The Verge

Maybe read the EULA carefully, if you're signing up for a Bytedance app (unless you have no qualms about potentially sharing all of your profile and activity data with the Chinese government)... Also see TikTok Is a Short-Form Monetized Musical Meme Machine | Wired

"TikTok is inescapable right now, and it’s not just teens paying attention — it’s rocked the business world as well. Bytedance, the owner of the wildly popular short-form video app, is now valued at more than $75 billion following a new round of investment. This means Uber has unexpectedly lost its long-held title of the world’s most valuable tech startup to a low-profile challenger from China.

You could be forgiven for not having heard the name Bytedance before the recent news. The founder, 35-year-old Zhang Yiming, rarely gives interviews, and the company’s Western-facing media presence is close to nonexistent. But the company’s global ambitions are real and so are its chances. Bytedance is the first Chinese internet company with a significant, genuinely engaged following around the world, which means it’s worthy of serious attention."

How China’s Bytedance became the world’s most valuable startup | The Verge

Marriott says data breach compromised info of up to 500 million guests | CNBC

Later in the article: "For about 327 million of the guests, it added, the information includes some combination of a name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences. There are some customers who may have also had their credit card information taken"

"Marriott International said Friday that up to 500 million guests' information may have been accessed as part of a breach of its Starwood guest reservation database, potentially one of the largest hacking of consumer data ever.

The world's largest hotel chain said it first received an alert in September from an internal security tool that there was an attempt to access the database. As part of an investigation, the company discovered there had been unauthorized access since 2014, and that an "unauthorized party" had copied and encrypted information."

Marriott says data breach compromised info of up to 500 million guests | CNBC

Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters | NYT

Political preference is jeanetic...

"Today at a conference in Britain organized by the fashion industry website The Business of Fashion, Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data.

“Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said.

Preferences in clothing and music are the leading indicators of political leaning, he said. The narratives of the great American brands, which play on the myths of the West and the (mostly male) frontier are also the narratives of the Republican right. Those who choose to spend on the former are susceptible to the latter. He mentioned Wrangler and L.L. Bean in particular as brands that Cambridge Analytica aligned with conservative traits. (Kenzo, by contrast, which is designed by Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, the avant-garde duo behind the retail store Opening Ceremony, appealed to liberals, he suggested.)"

Cambridge Analytica Used Fashion Tastes to Identify Right-Wing Voters | NYT

Airbnb will test prototype homes next year | Washington Post

For more details, see Introducing Backyard.

"In a statement, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia cited United Nations projections that global construction will rise at an unprecedented rate over the next 40 years, amounting to a new Paris being built every week.

“The way buildings are made is outdated and generates a tremendous amount of waste,” he said. “In order to meet the demands of the future, whether it be climate displacement or rural-urban migration, the home needs to evolve, to think forward.”

Airbnb’s announcement provides a partial road map of the company’s ambitions. The company touts more than 5 million rental listings on its platform, across nearly 200 countries. Since its founding in 2008, it has upended the hospitality industry and drawn the ire of local governments around the world who say the service aggravates housing shortages and facilitates illegal short-term renting."

Airbnb will test prototype homes next year | Washington Post

The OTT Experience: Understanding Connected Living Room Audiences | Nelsen

So only an average of 2 hours a day of streaming content, for "consumers 13 and older who watch content on connected devices"...

"The evolving media landscape has reshaped how consumers discover content, as more than two-thirds of U.S. homes now have devices that are capable of streaming video content. While traditional linear TV continues to expand with new channels and features, emerging streaming technology and connected devices are also making their mark. Consumers can choose to watch programming anytime, anywhere, and this flexibility is enhancing the viewing experience. In fact, Americans collectively spend nearly 8 billion hours per month consuming content on connected TV devices—such as Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire (1).

Today’s living room is a true multi-platform environment, bringing together both linear and dynamic content. With over-the-top (OTT) video content, buyers and sellers can focus their investments to engage consumers in the midst of this new living room, lean-back experience. According to Nielsen Digital Content Ratings, which provides daily measurement of total-day audiences across digital content types using metrics fully comparable to television, consumers 13 and older who watch content on connected devices spend an average of more than an hour daily, compared to 36 minutes on the computer and 24 minutes on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets (2)."

The OTT Experience: Understanding Connected Living Room Audiences | Nelsen

Connecting People to Local News and Their Communities | Facebook Newsroom

Also see Facebook must police Today In, its local news digest launching in 400 cities | TechCrunch

"We’re making it easier for people to find news and information from their local towns and cities. Today we’re announcing the expansion of a new local section on Facebook called “Today In” and starting a test for local alerts from relevant government pages.

Today In connects people to local news and information about their community. It is now available in over 400 cities in the US, and we have launched our first international test in Australia. In addition, we have started testing Today In in communities located in news deserts, places that have low supply of local news and community information, by supplementing with relevant content from surrounding areas."

Connecting People to Local News and Their Communities | Facebook Newsroom

Apple says the iPhone XR has been its top-selling iPhone since launch |CNET

Interesting times for AAPL investors (mkt cap(AAPL) is again > mkt cap(MSFT)); also see Microsoft Is Worth as Much as Apple. How Did That Happen? | NYT, which reads like a Microsoft PR case study

"Joswiak declined to comment about the Journal report or iPhone demand in general beyond reiterating that the iPhone XR "has been the most popular and best-selling" iPhone since it hit the market.

Apple's stock has tumbled about 20 percent since the company announced its quarterly earnings. The decline has meant Apple's no longer worth more than a trillion dollars, a level it had reached in August. It's also given Microsoft and its soaring stock the opportunity to become the world's biggest publicly traded company.

Earlier this week, Apple's shares again slid after President Donald Trump said he may place tariffs on iPhones and laptop computers imported from China. Joswiak declined to comment about the impact of tariffs on iPhone prices for consumers."

Apple says the iPhone XR has been its top-selling iPhone since launch |CNET

The Digital Maginot Line | Ribbonfarm

Final paragraphs from a timely reality check; also see The Lawfare Podcast: John Carlin on 'Dawn of the Code War' | Lawfare

"We don’t have time to waste on digital security theater. In the two years since Election 2016, we’ve all come to agree that something is wrong on the internet. There is momentum and energy to do something, but the complexity of the problem and the fact that it intersects with other thorny issues of internet governance (privacy, monopoly, expression, among others) means that we’re stuck in a state of paralysis, unable to address disinformation in a meaningful way. Instead, both regulators and the platforms throw up low-level roadblocks. This is what a digital Maginot line looks like.

Influence operations exploit divisions in our society using vulnerabilities in our information ecosystem. We have to move away from treating this as a problem of giving people better facts, or stopping some Russian bots, and move towards thinking about it as an ongoing battle for the integrity of our information infrastructure – easily as critical as the integrity of our financial markets. When it’s all done and over with, we’ll look back on this era as being as consequential in reshaping the future of the United States and the world as World War II."

The Digital Maginot Line | Ribbonfarm

US Army to use Microsoft’s Hololens for combat missions | Engadget

Later in the article: "Only about 50,000 units have been sold so far, according to a recent Microsoft video. By contrast, the US Army might buy as many as 100,000 headsets, essentially tripling sales."

"Microsoft's Hololens has already been used by a number of armies for training, but it's about to go to another level. The US Army has awarded Microsoft a $480 million contract to supply the headset for live combat missions as well as training, according to Bloomberg. The aim, according to a government description, is to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy."

The US Army encouraged non-traditional military suppliers like Microsoft, Magic Leap and others to bid on the contract. It wanted a device that could allow for night vision, the ability to measure breathing and other vital signs, offer hearing protection and monitor for signs of concussion. It's not clear yet how Microsoft will bring those capabilities to Hololens."

US Army to use Microsoft’s Hololens for combat missions | Engadget

Trump’s ‘worldwide network’ is a great idea. But it already exists. | Washington Post

A timely perspective from the director of Voice of America; later in the article: "Yet what is most important isn’t the size of our audience. It’s their trust: Eighty-five percent of our global audience say they trust us. [...] We export the First Amendment."

"“Something has to be done,” President Trump tweeted Monday.

Frustrated by CNN, with which he has an ongoing beef, Trump suggested that the United States create its own “worldwide network to show the World the way we really are — GREAT!”

Despite the proposal’s origin in conflict with the press, it’s a really good idea. So good, in fact, that under another president’s watch — Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 — it happened.

Seventy-six years ago, the world was a dark place. The radio broadcast that eventually became Voice of America was created to give people trapped behind Nazi lines accurate, truthful news about the war, in contrast with Nazi propaganda."

Trump’s ‘worldwide network’ is a great idea. But it already exists. | Washington Post

Can Laurene Powell Jobs Save Storytelling? | NYT

Also see Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective bought Pop-Up Magazine Productions | Recode

"Emerson — which gets its name from, yes, Ralph Waldo and has focused on education, immigration and the environment since it was formally created in 2011 — would not disclose the price it paid for Pop-Up. But it’s small compared to the many other investments its for-profit and nonprofit arms have made over the last two years.

That includes an undisclosed sum to pick up a majority chunk of The Atlantic magazine, along with funding to add 100 employees, including the New Yorker writer George Packer and a former Facebook executive, Alex Hardiman; starting a documentary production company, Concordia Studio, with the Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim; buying a large stake in the production, content and talent management powerhouse Anonymous Content, the maker of “Spotlight”; purchasing another in Macro, which finances media focusing on stories of people of color, like “Fences”; and making investments in the online magazine Ozy, the news site Axios and the podcast-making phenom Gimlet Media."

Can Laurene Powell Jobs Save Storytelling? | NYT

Bitcoin Rises After a Terrible Month, But Don't Call It a Bottom | Bloomberg

It's all relative...

"Bitcoin is headed for the biggest gain since July, providing some welcome relief to battered cryptocurrency investors -- but it may be too soon to call a bottom.

That’s the assessment of Kenetic Capital’s Jehan Chu after the largest digital token rallied on Wednesday, climbing 5.8 percent to $3,987 at 11:23 a.m. London time. Gains in Ether and XRP helped propel the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index to a 6 percent increase, paring this month’s rout to 37 percent.

“What we are seeing is not yet a bottom but a short-term buying opportunity,” said Chu, managing partner at Kenetic Capital, a blockchain investment and advisory company. “Until we have broader adoption of decentralized applications, it will be hard to find a firm floor.”"

Bitcoin Rises After a Terrible Month, But Don't Call It a Bottom | Bloomberg

Countries vowed to cut carbon emissions. They aren’t even close to their goals, U.N. report finds | Washington Post

On a related note, see Trump on climate change: ‘People like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.’ | Washington Post

"On the eve of the most important global climate meeting in years, a definitive United Nations report has found that the world is well off course on its promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions — and may have even further to go than previously thought.

Seven major countries, including the United States, are well behind achieving the pledges they made in Paris three years ago, the report finds, with little time left to adopt much more ambitious policy measures to curb their emissions."

Countries vowed to cut carbon emissions. They aren’t even close to their goals, U.N. report finds | Washington Post

SpaceX's Next Launch Will Spark a Space Internet Showdown | Wired

64 satellites in a single launch -- from 34 companies; also see SpaceX Is Launching a Piece of Art Into Orbit | Wired; on a related note, see AWS Ground Station – Ingest and Process Data from Orbiting Satellites | AWS blog

"Elon Musk has long promised a constellation of thousands of satellites, called Starlink, which Musk hopes will one day handle half of all internet traffic—and earn him billions in access fees. It's one of the ways he hopes to fund his future Mars adventures. SpaceX says two demonstration satellites it built and launched earlier this year already show that internet from space can be as fast and lag-free as people expect from cables on Earth.

Now a SpaceX rocket is poised to launch a raft of internet satellites from a host of startups—but this time, the target audience is machines."

SpaceX's Next Launch Will Spark a Space Internet Showdown | Wired

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty calls consumer tech companies 'irresponsible,' says they should be liable for misinformation | CNBC

Apparently did not offer magical Watson or blockchain technology to help address related challenges...

"Rometty's call focuses on consumer-facing companies in particular. IBM, by contrast, mainly serves other businesses.

"In regulating tech, government needs to focus on fixing the real problem," Rometty said in her prepared remarks. "And that is the irresponsible handling of personal data by a few dominant consumer-facing platform companies. Addressing the weakest link – should not define the digital economy."

Without naming names, Rometty took aim at companies that provide platforms for public opinion, saying they need to be held accountable for the information they distribute."

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty calls consumer tech companies 'irresponsible,' says they should be liable for misinformation | CNBC

Elon Musk says he will probably move to Mars | Washington Post

Also see Elon Musk: To avoid becoming like monkeys, humans must merge with machines | Washington Post (tbd if he'll be upgraded prior to his Mars relocation)

"Despite a high likelihood of dying even before arriving and daily conditions hostile to human life, Elon Musk said in an interview Sunday that he’ll probably move to Mars.

The SpaceX and chief executive said there’s a “70 percent chance” he’ll get to Mars within his lifetime, with plans to permanently resettle on the Red Planet. Musk said his desire to colonize Mars is driven by the same passion that fuels people to climb mountains — for the challenge.

“We’ve recently made a number of breakthroughs that I am just really just fired up about,” Musk said during an interview with “Axios on HBO.”"

Elon Musk says he will probably move to Mars | Washington Post

AWS Designed Processor: Graviton | James Hamilton Perspectives

Also see A rumble in Amazon's jungle: AWS now rents out homegrown 64-bit Arm server processors | The Register

"The AWS Graviton Processor powering the Amazon EC2 A1 Instances targets scale-out workloads such as web servers, caching fleets, and development workloads. These new instances feature up to 45% lower costs and will join the 170 different instance types supported by AWS, ranging from the Intel-based z1d instances which deliver a sustained all core frequency of 4.0 GHz, a 12 TB memory instance, the F1 instance family with up to 8 Field Programmable Gate Arrays, P3 instances with NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs, and the new M5a and R5a instances with AMD EPYC Processors. No other cloud offering even comes close.
The new AWS-designed, Arm-based A1 instances are available in 5 different instances types from 1 core with 2 GiB of memory up to 16 cores with 32 GiB of memory.
I’ve been interested in Arm server processors for more than a decade so its super exciting to see the AWS Graviton finally public, it’s going to be exciting to see what customers do with the new A1 instances, and I’m already looking forward to follow-on offerings as we continue to listen to customers and enhance the world’s broadest cloud computing instance selection. There is much more coming both in Arm-based instance offerings and, more broadly, across the entire of the Amazon EC2 family."

AWS Designed Processor: Graviton | James Hamilton Perspectives

The only currency worse than bitcoin is Venezuela’s | Washington Post

~$3,650 this morning...

"Now, losing a little less value than the worthless currency of a bankrupt government run by an economically illiterate drug cartel has — Venezuela’s ruling class has also gotten into the cocaine trade — might not seem like much of an accomplishment. That’s because it isn’t. It’s something that everyone, even countries like Turkey that are undergoing currency crises of their own, has managed to do. And at the very least, bitcoin has, too. So I guess congratulations are in order: Bitcoin is a better store of value than the worst store of value there is.

Don’t worry, though. This won’t dissuade bitcoin’s biggest fans from being sure that it’s still on its way to displacing the dollar. Bitcoin is the currency of the future and always will be."

 The only currency worse than bitcoin is Venezuela’s | Washington Post

Bill Gates’ new crusade: Sounding the climate-change alarm | Axios

From a recent "Axios on HBO" interview

"Gates also has investments in TerraPower, which is seeking to build an advanced nuclear reactor, and a company called Carbon Engineering, which makes a technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions straight from the sky.

Critics don't like that idea. They say investing in technologies like that could lessen the urgency of cutting emissions — because it creates a way to take them out of the atmosphere later.

But Gates flatly rejected that criticism: “Maybe to encourage people to stop eating too much we should stop doing heart surgery, because it's really letting people develop heart problems.”"

Bill Gates’ new crusade: Sounding the climate-change alarm | Axios

Bitcoin's Deepening Crash Now Approaches Its Worst Bear Markets | Bloomberg

Also see Bitcoin has lost 40 percent of its value in the last two weeks | The Verge

"Bitcoin extended its tumble on Monday after breaking below the $4,000 level over the weekend, putting the 2018 crash within striking distance of the cryptocurrency’s worst bear markets.

The virtual currency, conceived just over a decade ago, slid 7.8 percent from Friday to $3,931, Bitstamp prices showed as of 6:51 a.m. in New York. All nine of its largest peers tracked in real time by Bloomberg fell, with drops ranging as high as 14 percent for Monero."

Bitcoin's Deepening Crash Now Approaches Its Worst Bear Markets | Bloomberg

Short sellers are struggling. Their massive bet against Elon Musk isn’t helping. | Washington Post

Also see Elon Musk says Tesla came "within single-digit weeks" of death | Axios

"For those betting against Tesla, the fight has been particularly tough. Musk wields his 23 million Twitter followers against his critics with rapid-fire tweets and commands a loyal group of believers that can frustrate his critics.

“These people are much more concerned about profits than what’s best for our children,” Ross Gerber, a Los Angeles investor who backs Tesla, said of short sellers. “Morally speaking, you can short Snapchat all you want. Go short Facebook. Tesla’s whole purpose is to create an electric infrastructure so we can address the issue of climate change.”"

Short sellers are struggling. Their massive bet against Elon Musk isn’t helping. | Washington Post

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies | MIT Technology Review

Also see World’s first gene-edited babies created in China, claims scientist | Guardian

"A person who knows He said his scientific ambitions appear to be in line with prevailing social attitudes in China, including the idea that the larger communal good transcends individual ethics and even international guidelines.

Behind the Chinese trial also lies some bold thinking about how evolution can be shaped by science. While the natural mutation that disables CCR5 is relatively common in parts of Northern Europe, it is not found in China. The distribution of the genetic trait around the world—in some populations but not in others—highlights how genetic engineering might be used to pick the most useful inventions discovered by evolution over the eons in different locations and bring them together in tomorrow’s children."

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies | MIT Technology Review

Trump’s Lies Are a Virus, and News Organizations Are the Host | The Atlantic

From a stark Fourth Estate reality check

"As the New York Times journalist Kevin Roose has documented, the top-performing stories on Facebook in the run-up to the midterms were shared by highly partisan websites such as Fox News and rushlimbaugh.com, not traditional, reporting-based outlets. On Facebook in October, 78,000 people shared a fictitious post claiming that Cesar Sayoc, the Trump fanatic who mailed bombs to several of the president’s enemies, was a “false flag” operative trying to steal the election from Republicans. That’s 28,000 more shares than The New York Times’ most viral article of the month.

It is either narcissistic or outdated, or both, for traditional media organizations to pretend that they have a monopoly on the power to amplify news. In the mid–20th century, this might have been a realistic notion. But in 2018, even as The Media have become an all-purpose bogeyman, the media—that is, the sum total of social media, podcasts, newsletters, and the whole international cacophony of information exchange—have entirely swamped the establishment in power and reach. Four times as many Americans saw Russian-influenced content on Facebook (about 130 million) than own a print or digital subscription to an American newspaper (31 million)."

Trump’s Lies Are a Virus, and News Organizations Are the Host | The Atlantic

No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,500 | Bloomberg

Rough week for fictional currencies so far

"Bitcoin gave up a small early gain to slump 7.9 percent as of 9:16 a.m. in London. The largest digital currency, which started the year at more than $14,000, has fallen to $4,409.43. Rivals including Ether, Litecoin and XRP joined the slide, though they pared losses that reached as much as 17 percent.

After months of relative stability, cryptocurrency bulls have been left reeling by a sudden market downturn in November. Digital assets have now lost almost $700 billion of market value since crypto-mania peaked in January, according to CoinMarketCap.com. Trading on futures markets, where investors can bet against Bitcoin, has soared."

No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,500 | Bloomberg

Amazon, Apple and Facebook Once Led the Market. Now They Are Driving it Down. | NYT

All about expectations...

"Apple was worth more than $1 trillion at the start of November. Now, it’s valued at $880 billion.

The mighty tech titans and their seemingly endless pipeline of profits, which powered one of the longest bull markets in stocks, are looking a little less invincible. Shares of Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, are down more than 10 percent since the market peaked, while Facebook and Amazon have dropped more than 20 percent.

Investors’ faith has been eroded by slowing growth and a trade war with China, as well as a steady stream of revelations about privacy lapses, security issues and mismanagement. If tech stocks cannot shake the fears, the rest of the market could feel the pain."

Amazon, Apple and Facebook Once Led the Market. Now They Are Driving it Down. | NYT

New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit | The New Yorker

From a Jane Mayer update; also see Why Britain Needs Its Own Mueller | New York Review of Books

"The possibility that both Brexit and the Trump campaign simultaneously relied upon the same social-media company and its transgressive tactics, as well as some of the same advisers, to further far-right nationalist campaigns, set off alarm bells on both sides of the Atlantic. Damian Collins, a member of Parliament, and chair of its Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which held an inquiry into fake news, told the Observer, which has broken much of the news about Cambridge Analytica in the U.K., that the new e-mails “suggest that the role of Bannon and Mercer is far deeper and more complex than we realised. There’s a big question about whether Mercer’s money was used in the Brexit campaign and it absolutely underscores why Britain needs a proper Mueller-style investigation. There are direct links between the political movements behind Brexit and Trump. We’ve got to recognise the bigger picture here. This is being coordinated across national borders by very wealthy people in a way we haven’t seen before."

The American investigations into foreign interference in Trump’s election, and British probes into Brexit, have increasingly become interwoven. The role of the Russian Ambassador to the U.K., Alexander Yakovenko, has reportedly been the subject of interest both to Mueller’s investigators and to those in the U.K., who have examined his relationship to Banks. The role of Nigel Farage, the former leader of the far-right, Euroskeptic U.K. Independence Party, who has been an ally of Bannon and Trump, has also reportedly stirred the interest of investigators in both countries, especially after he was spotted in 2017 leaving the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, in which Julian Assange has taken refuge. Assange’s media platform, WikiLeaks, published many of the e-mails stolen by Russia from the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election season."

New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit | The New Yorker

The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy | Monday Note

Final paragraph from a Frederic Filloux EU Article 11/Article 13 reality check

"By pushing to the “link tax”, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot three times over. One, there is a tangible risk that Google opt for the Spanish/German jurisprudence. Two, the optics will look terrible: by persisting to collect a small revenue from snippets, publishers will seem to wage a rearguard battle. Three, the news publishing world has more appealing options when it comes to working with Google at improving the economics of their ecosystem. The search giant is already investing hundreds of millions of dollars for technologies that could directly, or indirectly, benefit to the news media. So far, publishers haven’t used the full extent of it. It’s time to “think different”."

The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy | Monday Note

Bitcoin Tumbles Toward $5,000 | Bloomberg

Later in the article: "The cryptocurrency industry has now lost more than $660 billion in value from a January peak, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. Bitcoin is down more than 70 percent from its December 2017 high, the data show."

"Cryptocurrencies resumed their slump on Monday, with Bitcoin falling within 5 percent of the $5,000 mark in the wake of a split of one of the largest major tokens.

Bitcoin touched an October 2017 low and was trading at $5,235.17 at 6:44 a.m. in New York, according to consolidated Bloomberg pricing. Rival coins including Ether and Litecoin also retreated at least 9 percent. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index fell as much as 7.4 percent to a one year-low on a closing basis while XRP, the token associated with Ripple, was the lone gainer among major digital currencies."

Bitcoin Tumbles Toward $5,000 | Bloomberg

In ‘Digital India,’ Government Hands Out Free Phones to Win Votes | NYT

Tbd if this strategy was inspired by the Volksempfänger program...

"The phones themselves also actively promote Mr. Singh, who has run the state for 15 years and is seeking a fourth term.

His smiling face is set as the background image on the home screen, prompting some to nickname it the “Raman mobile.”

The phones come loaded with two campaign apps: one for Mr. Singh that features his news releases and speeches, and a similar one for Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, who also hails from the B.J.P. and is up for re-election next year. When phone users first open the apps, they are asked to grant full access to contacts and to share other personal information with the B.J.P."

In ‘Digital India,’ Government Hands Out Free Phones to Win Votes | NYT

Why innovation isn’t dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert | Washington Post

See The end of the beginning for a video of the full (~24-minute) Benedict Evans presentation

"In another part of his presentation, Evans noted that well-known technology companies that launched in the late nineties and early 2000s, such as Google, Facebook, Yelp or Zillow, have focused on indexing massive amounts of information and presenting it to people in more efficient ways.

Now, he said, a new crop of startups has expanded to delivering services on top of that information-indexing. If Zillow provided real estate listings and comparison shopping, five-year-old startup OpenDoor will buy and sell your house for you, Evans noted in an interview. If Yelp provided a directory of local businesses, today any number of food marketplace apps will give you a similar restaurant search experience - and then deliver the food right to your door. Airbnb isn’t just indexing homes for travelers and Uber isn’t just indexing a directory of cars; they are using the Internet-enabled, location-aware smartphone to create new types of transactions and value in the physical world. Even more recently, startups are now becoming insurers, lenders, and credit providers. Not long ago they would have merely organized financial information."

Why innovation isn’t dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert | Washington Post

Yes, Facebook made mistakes in 2016. But we weren’t the only ones. | Washington Post

From an Alex Stamos op-ed; also see Facebook deserves criticism. The country deserves solutions. | Washington Post

"Yet Facebook’s shortcomings do not stand alone. The massive U.S. intelligence community failed to provide actionable intelligence on Russia’s ­information-warfare goals and capabilities before the election and offered a dearth of assistance afterward. Technology companies can build tools and teams to look inward on their products, but they will never have true geostrategic insight or ability to penetrate hostile countries. This relationship has greatly improved in 2018, mostly due to the initiative of hard-working intelligence professionals. Our elected officials, however, can claim little credit. Lawmakers’ public grandstanding at investigative hearings stands in stark contrast to their failure to establish facts, effectively oversee the executive branch and provide for the common defense.

We must also remember that in the summer of 2016, every major media outlet rewarded the hackers of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) with thousands of collective stories drawn from the stolen emails of prominent Democrats. The sad truth is that blocking Russian propaganda would have required Facebook to ban stories from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and cable news — not to mention this very paper. Since the election of Donald Trump, print and television news organizations have staffed up and provided a critical service to Americans, but they have never adequately grappled with their culpability in empowering Russia’s election interference."

Yes, Facebook made mistakes in 2016. But we weren’t the only ones. | Washington Post

How Plato Foresaw Facebook’s Folly | NYT

A bit deeply nested to read, earlier in the article: "Written words, Thamus concluded, “give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things but will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”"

Fast-forwarding to today:

"Tweeting and trolling are easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measured debate is hard. Texting is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard. Looking stuff up on Google is easy. Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard. Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard. Swiping right on Tinder is easy. Finding love — and staying in it — is hard.

That’s what Socrates (or Thamus) means when he deprecates the written word: It gives us an out. It creates the illusion that we can remain informed, and connected, even as we are spared the burdens of attentiveness, presence of mind and memory. That may seem quaint today. But how many of our personal, professional or national problems might be solved if we desisted from depending on shortcuts?"

How Plato Foresaw Facebook’s Folly | NYT

Pick three people you think will replace Google Cloud CEO Greene, then forget them – because it's Thomas Kurian | The Register

Also see Transitioning Google Cloud after three great years | Google cloud blog

"And stepping up to the plate is Thomas Kurian, brother of NetApp boss George. Thomas's arrival at Google is a somewhat surprising development. We had assumed he would be taking a break after ejecting out of Oracle at the end of September.

Kurian was the database giant's cloud supremo, and oversaw much of its product development. He seems to be a natural fit for Google Cloud: as an experienced enterprise IT vendor executive, he follows in the footsteps of industry veteran Greene in trying to smarten up Google Cloud so it can compete against Azure and AWS for business."

Pick three people you think will replace Google Cloud CEO Greene, then forget them – because it's Thomas Kurian | The Register

Facebook and the Fires | NYT

Check the full article for Kara Swisher's five suggestions for tech companies

"The overall sense of this year is that the brilliant digital minds who told us they were changing the world for the better might have miscalculated.

Dan Lyons, a longtime tech observer and author of the new book “Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us,” recently tweeted: “Nobody in Silicon Valley can solve homelessness or figure out how to hire with diversity, but 11 electric scooter companies have raised VC funding. Oh, and a company that uses robots to make pizza. You wonder why there’s a tech backlash.”

Actually no one wonders that anymore, which is why it’s probably time to think about where the industry goes from here. While I can be hard on tech, I still have hope that it can regain its innovation, inspiration and sunny approach to the future."

Facebook and the Fires | NYT

‘No Morals’: Advertisers React to Facebook Report | NYT

You know it's bad when... See the full article for additional context-setting, e.g., "And after this article was published online, Mr. Tobaccowala called The New York Times to add to his comments. “The people there do,” he said, referring to possessing morals, “but as a business, they seem to have lost their compass.”"

"Several top marketers were openly critical of the tech giant, a day after The New York Times published an investigation detailing how Facebook’s top executives — Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg — made the company’s growth a priority while ignoring and hiding warning signs over how its data and power were being exploited to disrupt elections and spread toxic content. The article also spotlighted a lobbying campaign overseen by Ms. Sandberg, who also oversees advertising, that sought to shift public anger to Facebook’s critics and rival tech firms.

The revelations may be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief growth officer for the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s biggest ad companies. “Now we know Facebook will do whatever it takes to make money. They have absolutely no morals.”"

‘No Morals’: Advertisers React to Facebook Report | NYT

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg: "We absolutely did not pay anyone to create fake news" | CBS

The buck stopped with a nameless communications team member unworthy of senior management awareness, apparently... Also see ‘Alarming’: Soros calls for investigation of Facebook after report of a smear campaign | Washington Post. Sheryl Sandberg also noted, in a Facebook post last night: " I did not know we hired them or about the work they were doing, but I should have. I have great respect for George Soros – and the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories against him are abhorrent."

""We absolutely did not pay anyone to create fake news – that they have assured me was not happening. And again, we're doing a thorough look into what happened but they have assured me that we were not paying anyone to either write or promote anything that was false. And that's very important," Sandberg said.

The Times also reported that the firm tried to tie critics of Facebook to George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist – and frequent target of conservative anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Sandberg said the firm was hired by "the communications team" and that she only learned about its work from the paper."

Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg: "We absolutely did not pay anyone to create fake news" | CBS

Indictment vs. Julian Assange Mistakenly Revealed by Prosecutors | NYT

Also consider this Dan Gillmor tweet: "Whatever contempt one may have for him, please understand that if this prosection [sic] goes forward, the same logic will someday be used to prosecute the Washington Post and New York Times" (check the tweet link for a lively discussion...)

"But even as the Obama administration brought criminal charges in an unprecedented number of leak-related cases, it apparently held back from charging Mr. Assange. Members of the Obama legal policy team from that era have said that they did not want to establish a precedent that could chill investigative reporting about national security matters by treating it as a crime.
Their dilemma came down to a question they found no clear answer to: Is there any legal difference between what WikiLeaks was doing, at least in that era, from what traditional news media organizations, like The New York Times, do in soliciting and publishing information they obtain that the government wants to keep secret?"

Indictment vs. Julian Assange Mistakenly Revealed by Prosecutors | NYT

You've heard of AR glasses, but this startup wants to make them into contact lenses | CNET

See this Mojo Vision press release for more details. Contact lens make my eyes too dry, so I'll just look forward to using Apple AR glasses while waiting for Neuralink to get beyond beta testing...

"Investment in VR has slowed in recent years, SuperData says, amid slow sales growth and struggles by app developers to create the must-have game. AR, by comparison, has already begun attracting businesses that see opportunity in using the technology to bolster customer service or to help repair technicians by letting them work remotely with experts.

Mojo Vision's ambitious project is made all that much more interesting by who's working for the company. Mojo boasts veterans from the tech industry's biggest hitters, including Google, Amazon, HP and Apple, which is hard at work on its own headset, a product, CNET reported, that's scheduled to arrive sometime in 2020."

You've heard of AR glasses, but this startup wants to make them into contact lenses | CNET

Watch Marc Benioff try to explain what he’s going to do with Time magazine | Recode

Check the full post for an interview video excerpt (the full interview will be on MSNBC Sunday night at 10:00 PM ET)

"Swisher: “But what’s your role? What’s your role? You’re not answering my question.”

Benioff: “I’m the inspiring visionary!”

Swisher: “What does that mean? What are you going to do, walk around and say things?”

Benioff: “Yeah, I’m going to walk around and try to inspire a vision for the future of the brand.”

Swisher: “What does that mean? I don’t even understand what that means.”

Benioff: “Well, that is why I’m a visionary leader, Kara, and you’re not.”"

Watch Marc Benioff try to explain what he’s going to do with Time magazine | Recode

Oracle's JEDI mind-meld doesn't work on Uncle Sam's auditors: These are not the govt droids you are looking for | The Register

Also see GAO Statement on Oracle Bid Protest | GAO Press Center; tbd if IBM's similar and still pending protest will be retracted now that IBM is all about multi-cloud solutions...

"Oracle has been fighting to overturn a stipulation in the DoD's request for proposal that states one lucky contractor would have to provide all parts of the deal. Chiefly, Oracle – let's make that clear, Oracle – thinks locking an agency into a single legacy vendor is a bad idea in terms of innovation and security. Secretly, we think, Oracle doesn't want to risk losing it all to Microsoft or Amazon, so in all, Oracle thinks JEDI is a bad idea for Oracle.

Oracle and others also complained that, because JEDI is such a massive project, the one-vendor stipulation means that only huge companies, such as Amazon and Microsoft, can fill it, whereas if it were broken up Oracle would have a fighting chance over the pieces. Oracle had also argued that AWS may have had a hand in crafting the requirement, creating a conflict of interest.

Both arguments were shot down by the GAO on Wednesday."

Oracle's JEDI mind-meld doesn't work on Uncle Sam's auditors: These are not the govt droids you are looking for | The Register

See your messages with local businesses in Google Maps | Google Keyword blog

For another perspective, see Google Maps will let you chat with businesses | The Verge, which notes "It is becoming overburdened with so many features and design changes that it’s becoming harder and harder to just get directions in it."

"Last year we enabled users in select countries to message businesses from the Business Profiles on Google. Sending messages to businesses gives you the opportunity to ask questions without having to make a phone call so that you can order a cake for your mom’s birthday while on the bus or find out if a shoe store has your size without having to wait on hold.
Now you’ll see your messages with the businesses you connect with via Business Profiles within the Google Maps app, where you’re already looking for things to do and places to go or shop. You’ll find these messages in the side menu of both Google Maps for Android and iOS. With these messages in Maps, you’ll never have to worry about accidentally sending “I love you, Mom” to that shoe store you’ve been sending messages to."

See your messages with local businesses in Google Maps | Google Keyword blog

Police think Alexa may have witnessed a New Hampshire double homicide. Now they want Amazon to turn her over. | Washington Post

Also see The Cybersecurity 202: Amazon is now at the center of a debate over public safety versus privacy | Washington Post

"Alexa may have been listening, as she almost always is, when Christine Sullivan was stabbed to death on Jan. 27, 2017, in the kitchen of the home in Farmington, N.H., where she lived with her boyfriend.

But does Alexa remember any of it?

That’s the question state prosecutors are hoping will produce key evidence in the murder case against Timothy Verrill, who is accused of killing Sullivan and her friend Jenna Pellegrini over suspicions that they were informing police about an alleged drug operation. Prosecutors say Alexa, the voice service for Amazon’s Echo smart devices, was sitting on the kitchen counter the entire time."

Police think Alexa may have witnessed a New Hampshire double homicide. Now they want Amazon to turn her over. | Washington Post

Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis | NYT

Another busy week for Facebook's PR department; also see Facebook Cuts Ties With Definers Public Affairs Following Outcry | NYT, Who does Facebook fire after a bombshell New York Times investigation? | Recode, and (in other Facebook news) Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media. But she also helped create it. | Washington Post

"But as evidence accumulated that Facebook’s power could also be exploited to disrupt elections, broadcast viral propaganda and inspire deadly campaigns of hate around the globe, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg stumbled. Bent on growth, the pair ignored warning signs and then sought to conceal them from public view. At critical moments over the last three years, they were distracted by personal projects, and passed off security and policy decisions to subordinates, according to current and former executives.

When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.

And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and it faced a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack."

Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis | NYT

So some people will pay for a subscription to a news site. How about two? Three? | NiemanLab

Must be about time for Apple to launch the next phase of Apple News...

"To be fair, these paid products offer substantially different value propositions, mixing content, membership, and experience. Quartz is keeping its main output free to read and making an interesting education-and-networking play that makes sense for a business site; New York is building a paywall that can flex open or closed depending on a reader’s predicted propensity to pay; The Atlantic is mostly offering a premium experience while leaving the main site open; The New Yorker and Bloomberg offer relatively traditional meters allowing a set number of articles a month.

But only 16 percent of Americans say they are willing to pay for any online news. If someone’s first digital subscription is to the Times or the Post — how many are willing to pay for a second, or a third, or a fourth news site? Especially if that second or third site costs as much or more than their favorite national daily?"

So some people will pay for a subscription to a news site. How about two? Three? | NiemanLab

Trump Is Spreading Bogus Voter Fraud Claims On Twitter. Twitter Says It'll Talk About It In 2019. | BuzzFeed

#NotReassuring; also see Trump, stung by midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties | LA Times, which notes "Publicly, Trump has been increasingly absent in recent days — except on Twitter."

"Despite Twitter's promises leading up to the election that it would "ensure that Twitter provides a healthy space for public conversation that voters can rely on for accurate election news and information," it hasn't done anything about Trump's tweets. Asked by BuzzFeed News if Twitter was considering updating its rules to address Trump's voter fraud claims, the company's vice president of trust and safety, Del Harvey, suggested that the company would wait until 2019 to address the issue, if at all.
"One of our goals for 2019 is to significantly increase transparency around those conversations as well as the principles we draw from when evaluating the impact of potential changes," Harvey tweeted at BuzzFeed News. Pressed for specifics, Harvey declined to provide any examples of what "increased transparency" might look like, noting vaguely that "we have ongoing conversations about these themes broadly.""

Trump Is Spreading Bogus Voter Fraud Claims On Twitter. Twitter Says It'll Talk About It In 2019. | BuzzFeed

Google is absorbing DeepMind’s health care unit to create an ‘AI assistant for nurses and doctors’ | The Verge

See this DeepMind post for more details; also see Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app | BBC News

"More broadly speaking, the news clearly signals Google’s ambitions in health care and its desire to get the most of its acquisition of the London AI lab. There have reportedly been long-standing tensions between DeepMind and Google, with the latter wanting to commercialize the former’s work. Compared to Google, DeepMind has positioned itself as a cerebral home for long-sighted research, attracting some of the world’s best AI talent in the process.

DeepMind Health has produced work with more immediate and practical applications than other parts of the company, which likely made it a tempting target for the new CEO of Google Health, David Feinberg, who was appointed last week. Feinberg’s new mandate is to restructure all of Google’s disparate bets in health, from hardware to algorithms. Apparently, that also includes absorbing other parts of Alphabet if necessary."

Google is absorbing DeepMind’s health care unit to create an ‘AI assistant for nurses and doctors’ | The Verge

How Google and Amazon Got Away With Not Being Regulated | Wired

An excerpt from Tim Wu's latest book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

"In total, Facebook managed to string together 67 unchallenged acquisitions, which seems impressive, unless you consider that Amazon undertook 91 and Google got away with 214 (a few of which were conditioned). In this way, the tech industry became essentially composed of just a few giant trusts: Google for search and related industries, Facebook for social media, Amazon for online commerce. While competitors remained in the wings, their positions became marginalized with every passing day.

If many of these acquisition were small, or mere “acquihires” (i.e., acquisitions to hire employees), others, like Facebook’s takeover of Instagram and WhatsApp, eliminated serious competitive threats. In the 2000s, Google had launched Google Video and done pretty well, but not compared to its greatest competitor, YouTube. Google bought YouTube without a peep from the competition agencies. Waze, an upstart online mapping company, was poised to be an on-ramp for Google’s vertical challengers, until Google, the owner of its own dominant online mapping program, bought the firm in a fairly blatant merger to monopoly. Google also acquired Doubleclick and AdMob, two of its most serious advertising competitors. The government allowed the AdMob acquisition on the premise that Apple might also enter the market in a serious way (it didn’t). Amazon acquired would-be competitors like Zappos, Diapers.com, and Soap.com."

How Google and Amazon Got Away With Not Being Regulated | Wired

How to Teach Artificial Intelligence Some Common Sense | Wired

From a broad AI market dynamics review

"Yann LeCun, a deep-learning pioneer and the current head of Facebook’s AI research wing, agrees with many of the new critiques of the field. He acknowledges that it requires too much training data, that it can’t reason, that it doesn’t have common sense. “I’ve been basically saying this over and over again for the past four years,” he reminds me. But he remains steadfast that deep learning, properly crafted, can provide the answer. He disagrees with the Chomskyite vision of human intelligence. He thinks human brains develop the ability to reason solely through interaction, not built-in rules. “If you think about how animals and babies learn, there’s a lot of things that are learned in the first few minutes, hours, days of life that seem to be done so fast that it looks like they are hardwired,” he notes. “But in fact they don’t need to be hardwired, because they can be learned so quickly.” In this view, to figure out the physics of the world, a baby just moves its head around, data-crunches the incoming imagery, and concludes that, hey, depth of field is a thing.

Still, LeCun admits it’s not yet clear which routes will help deep learning get past its humps. It might be “adversarial” neural nets, a relatively new technique in which one neural net tries to fool another neural net with fake data—forcing the second one to develop extremely ­subtle internal representations of pictures, sounds, and other inputs. The advantage here is that you don’t have the “data hungriness” problem. You don’t need to collect millions of data points on which to train the neural nets, because they’re learning by studying each other. (Apocalyptic side note: A similar method is being used to create those profoundly troubling “deepfake” videos in which someone appears to be saying or doing something they are not.)"

How to Teach Artificial Intelligence Some Common Sense | Wired

Voice tech like Alexa and Siri hasn’t found its true calling yet: Inside the voice assistant ‘revolution’ | Recode

Final paragraphs from an extensive voice assistant reality check

"Voice is much more intuitive than a mouse, but we’re still trying to find ways to make voice work.

“There’s always been a tendency to force the ‘old’ onto the ‘new’ when it comes to emerging technology platforms — the first ads on television, for example, were essentially radio ads, read out loud,” Will Hall, chief creative officer of Rain, a digital agency that specializes in voice, told Recode, regarding early attempts at voice advertising. “Eventually TV ads evolved into multi-sensory stories — images of a car driving down the highway, music blaring — and so will the voice experience.”

Until we find the app, use-case or invention that could only be possible using voice, we’re still just repurposing online content for your ears."

Voice tech like Alexa and Siri hasn’t found its true calling yet: Inside the voice assistant ‘revolution’ | Recode

The Potential Unintended Consequences of Article 13 | YouTube Creator Blog

In other YouTube news, see YouTube helps a majority of American users understand current events — but 64 percent say they see untrue info | NiemanLab

"We have already taken steps to address copyright infringement by developing technology, like our Content ID programme, to help rights holders manage their copyrights and earn money automatically. More than 98 per cent of copyright management on YouTube takes place through Content ID. To date, we have used the system to pay rights holders more than €2.5bn for third party use of their content. We believe Content ID provides the best solution for managing rights on a global scale.
The consequences of article 13 go beyond financial losses. EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times. Those videos come from around the world, including more than 35m EU channels, and they include language classes and science tutorials as well as music videos."

The Potential Unintended Consequences of Article 13 | YouTube Creator Blog

People are going to sell sex in driverless cars, researchers say | Washington Post

Passenger discretion is advised

"“Whenever anyone proposes anything beyond riding in your car and sitting belted in — whether it’s sex or getting a massage or getting your hair cut — all of those suffer from the same reality check,” Cummings said. “You’re still a body that can die in a moving vehicle. ”
Additional services will require extra safety tests.
“There are dangers of collision, of getting thrown around,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who focuses on autonomous vehicles, “and if you’re doing particularly intense activities, you’re going to be at risk of unusual injuries.”"

People are going to sell sex in driverless cars, researchers say | Washington Post

How Brad Parscale, once a ‘nobody in San Antonio,’ shaped Trump’s combative politics and rose to his inner circle | Washington Post

Final paragraphs from a Brad Parscale profile; apparently Minitrue HQ is moving to Virginia; tbd how many Facebook employees will be "embedded" for the 2020 election. On a related note, see Trump’s Interference With Science Is Unprecedented | The Atlantic

"“The whole game will be different” in 2020, said Parscale, who plans to run the operation from an office complex in a Virginia suburb. “We are no longer a grass roots campaign. We are now sitting in the White House. We have a different mission now.”

The last campaign, he said, was about presenting voters with “dreams” of what a Trump presidency could be like. Now, Parscale said, the mission will be to present voters with “facts” that prove those dreams are coming true.

“The old Republican Party is gone,” Parscale said, in his basement office at the RNC headquarters. “It’s now Trump’s party.”"

How Brad Parscale, once a ‘nobody in San Antonio,’ shaped Trump’s combative politics and rose to his inner circle | Washington Post

The Internet Is Splitting in Two Amid U.S. Dispute With China | Bloomberg

Tangentially, see Google in China: When ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Met the Great Firewall | Bloomberg

"Unlike the relatively hands-off American model, the Chinese approach is geared toward one over-arching imperative -- propelling and safeguarding the ruling Communist Party. Anything deemed to undermine that objective, from pornography and addictive games to pockets of dissent, is ruthlessly rooted out when discovered. To wit, China has the lowest level of internet freedom among 65 countries polled by Freedom House.

Critics of the model say players like Alibaba and Tencent thrive because Beijing dampens competition by making it nigh-impossible for global players such as Facebook to operate. They say the government’s heavy hand and unpredictability is counter-productive. Exhibit A: a months-long crackdown on gaming that helped wipe out more than $200 billion of Tencent’s market value this year. That cultivates a pervasive climate of fear, said Gary Rieschel, founding partner at Qiming Venture Partners."

The Internet Is Splitting in Two Amid U.S. Dispute With China | Bloomberg

VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23,000: source | Reuters

Also see New subcompact VW all-electric I.D. Concept vehicle could start at $21,000 | Electrek

"VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany’s auto industry faces extinction.

Plans for VW’s electric car, known as “MEB entry” and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said.

Another vehicle, the I.D. Aero, will be built in a plant currently making the VW Passat, a mid-sized sedan, the source said."

VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23,000: source | Reuters

Google has hired Geisinger's David Feinberg to lead its health strategy | CNBC

Also see Google planning health initiative, appoints leader to organize AI, Nest, & Google Fit interests | 9to5Google

"Feinberg's job will be figuring out how to organize Google's fragmented health initiatives, which overlap among many different business groups.

Among the groups interested in health care are Google's core search team, its cloud business, the Google Brain artificial intelligence team (one of several groups at Alphabet working on AI), the Nest home automation group and the Google Fit wearables team.

One particular area of interest is building out a health team within Nest to help manage users' health at home, as well as to monitor seniors who are choosing to live independently. Nest had been an independent company under Google holding company Alphabet, but was absorbed back into the Google Home team earlier this year."

Google has hired Geisinger's David Feinberg to lead its health strategy | CNBC

Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love With Their Principal Doomsayer | NYT

Inspire different

"“I’m interested in how Silicon Valley can be so infatuated with Yuval, which they are — it’s insane he’s so popular, they’re all inviting him to campus — yet what Yuval is saying undermines the premise of the advertising- and engagement-based model of their products,” said Tristan Harris, Google’s former in-house design ethicist and the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.

Part of the reason might be that Silicon Valley, at a certain level, is not optimistic on the future of democracy. The more of a mess Washington becomes, the more interested the tech world is in creating something else, and it might not look like elected representation. Rank-and-file coders have long been wary of regulation and curious about alternative forms of government. A separatist streak runs through the place: Venture capitalists periodically call for California to secede or shatter, or for the creation of corporate nation-states. And this summer, Mark Zuckerberg, who has recommended Mr. Harari to his book club, acknowledged a fixation with the autocrat Caesar Augustus. “Basically,” Mr. Zuckerberg told The New Yorker, “through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years of world peace.”

Mr. Harari, thinking about all this, puts it this way: “Utopia and dystopia depends on your values.”"

Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love With Their Principal Doomsayer | NYT

Ford joins micro-mobility revolution by purchasing e-scooter start-up Spin | Washington Post

Have you ridden a Ford lately?

"This week Ford, the legacy automaker from Detroit, announced that it has purchased Spin, a San Francisco-based electric-scooter-sharing company focused on the “last-mile” transportation market.

The $40 million purchase means Ford joins companies such as Alphabet, Uber and Lyft -- all of which have poured millions into the upstart e-scooter revolution.

“The number of mobility options available to people has risen dramatically in recent years,” said Sunny Madra, vice president of Ford’s innovations branch, Ford X, in an online statement. “In some situations, people use multiple forms of transportation during a single trip. The fast-paced, often experimental mobility sector requires businesses to keep up with agile and adaptable customers.""

Ford joins micro-mobility revolution by purchasing e-scooter start-up Spin | Washington Post

AI is not “magic dust” for your company, says Google’s Cloud AI boss | MIT Technology Review

From a timely AI reality check

"How big of a technology shift is this for businesses?

It’s like electrification. And it took about two or three decades for electrification to pretty much change the way the world was. Sometimes I meet very senior people with big responsibilities who have been led to believe that artificial intelligence is some kind of “magic dust” that you sprinkle on an organization and it just gets smarter. In fact, implementing artificial intelligence successfully is a slog.

When people come in and say “How do I actually implement this artificial-intelligence project?” we immediately start breaking the problems down in our brains into the traditional components of AI—perception, decision making, action (and this decision-making component is a critical part of it now; you can use machine learning to make decisions much more effectively)—and we map those onto different parts of the business. One of the things Google Cloud has in place is these building blocks that you can slot together."

AI is not “magic dust” for your company, says Google’s Cloud AI boss | MIT Technology Review

What the iPad Pro Enables Matters More Than What It Replaces | Tech.pinions

Also see this Benedict Evans Twitter thread, which starts with "I remain *puzzled* by reviews of the new iPad that describe use cases that apply to 1% of the PC base, point out that the iPad does not cover them, and then declare that it can’t replace a laptop for ‘most people’"

"We can argue as much as we want about whether or not an iPad Pro is a PC or not but I think we cannot argue with the premise of what the next computing experience is likely to include:

• a mobile, not a portable device that is always connected
• a more versatile operating system that transcends product categories
• multiple input mechanism: touch, pen, and voice
• “satellite” experiences driven by other devices such as AR glasses, wearables, IoT devices and sensors

Because of these characteristics, new workflows will be created, and old ones will evolve. Like for other industries, like the car industry, these changes will happen over the course of many years and impacting, people differently based on their line of work, their disposable income, the market availability in their region and most importantly their entrenched behaviors. Who gets there first does not get a medal but gets to show the way to others by showing what works and what does not."

What the iPad Pro Enables Matters More Than What It Replaces | Tech.pinions

There Was No Midterm Misinformation Crisis Because We've Democratized Propaganda | BuzzFeed News

Final paragraphs:

"Our public square is being redefined by platforms that ruthlessly prioritize and reward sensationalism. The soapbox has been replaced by an advertising system — one that rewards our least dignified impulses and empowers anyone willing to embrace them. And the result is a transformation of political discourse and the establishment of a new insidious vernacular — of division, deceit, of victory at all costs. And since there appears to be little desire to rethink the incentives that govern these platforms (attention!), it’s not hard to see the last two years as a trial run for the next cycle.

“We’ve democratized propaganda, made gaming distribution the key skill required to reach and influence people,” DiResta said of the realignment. “We have a powerful, still-young infrastructure for speech and persuasion, and I don’t think we’ve adapted yet.”"

There Was No Midterm Misinformation Crisis Because We've Democratized Propaganda | BuzzFeed News

This is Samsung’s foldable smartphone | The Verge

Also see Samsung's Folding Smartphone Concept Bends All the Rules | Wired

"Samsung isn’t the only phone maker working on foldable devices, though. Huawei reportedly plans to release a foldable handset next year. Lenovo and Xiaomi have also started teased their own prototypes, and LG is also working on flexible OLED displays and TVs that roll up into a box.

Microsoft is even working on a multiscreen device, which could be a modern take on the old Courier concept. Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay previously revealed that a pocketable Surface device is “absolutely my baby.” Phone makers you’ve probably never heard of are also experimenting with tablet-like devices that fold into a phone form factor, so expect to see a lot more of these handsets in 2019."

This is Samsung’s foldable smartphone | The Verge

Facebook Had a Good Election Day. But It Can’t Let Up Now. | NYT

From a timely Facebook reality check

"It’s worth asking, over the long term, why a single American company is in the position of protecting free and fair elections all over the world. But that is the case now, and we now know that Facebook’s action or inaction can spell the difference between elections going smoothly and democracies straining under a siege of misinformation and propaganda.

To Facebook’s credit, it has become more responsive in recent months, including cracking down on domestic disinformation networks, banning particularly bad actors such as Alex Jones of Infowars, and hiring more people to deal with emerging threats.

But Facebook would not have done this on its own. It took sustained pressure from lawmakers, regulators, researchers, journalists, employees, investors and users to force the company to pay more attention to misinformation and threats of election interference."

Facebook Had a Good Election Day. But It Can’t Let Up Now. | NYT

Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip | Ars Technica

From a detailed review

"Apple has come to dominate in mobile SoCs. In a lot of ways, though, Qualcomm has been an easy dragon to slay. Should Apple choose to go custom silicon route on the Mac platform, Intel will not be quite as easy to beat. But the rapid iteration that has led to the iPad Pro's A12X makes a compelling case that it's possible.

Apple won't talk about its future plans, of course. You could say that's all in the future, but when you have a 7nm tablet chip that rivals the CPU and graphics performance of most laptops and beats two out of five of the modern gaming consoles on the market with no fan at barely over a pound and less than a quarter-inch thick... it feels a bit like at least some particular future is now."

Apple walks Ars through the iPad Pro’s A12X system on a chip | Ars Technica

You Already Email Like a Robot — Why Not Automate It? | NYT

Tbd when Cortana-powered Clippy++ will appear... (Or maybe not; see Goodbye, Cortana: Microsoft's Javier Soltero leaves, putting the digital assistant's future in doubt | PCWorld)

"Depending on what your current inbox looks like, this might not require much imagination at all. A study conducted in 2016 by researchers at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business in Canada tried to understand the role email had come to play in the modern office. They surveyed “highly educated baby boomer or Gen X” subjects who were mostly “managers or professionals” working in office jobs and found that they spend on average a full third of their workweeks “processing” email. Whatever their titles, they are — like many office workers — to a large extent professional emailers. Even if their roles are otherwise highly specialized, in this significant way they are not. They are their own assistants.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote that, thanks to new efficiencies, workers of the future could expect “three-hour shifts or a 15-hour week.” He guessed that this would happen within a century. Automation and the abundance it produced has indeed led to countless economic changes, but it did not negate or replace the entire order. Asked for evidence of the success of this newest tool, Google says that Smart Compose is already “saving people a billion characters of typing each week.” This statistic supports one half of what Keynes might have predicted at the dawn of automated communication — the abundance and the glut — but is tellingly silent on the other half, the same half he couldn’t quite see the first time. Self-automation can free us only to the extent that it actually belongs to us. We can be sure of only one thing that will result from automating email: It will create more of it."

You Already Email Like a Robot — Why Not Automate It? | NYT

Blockchain-based elections would be a disaster for democracy | Ars Technica

Another timely blockchain reality check

"An important property for an election is finality: you want a well-understood process that makes people confident in the result. The paper-based process used in most states today isn't perfect, but it's pretty good on this score. Each vote is recorded on a paper ballot that's available for anyone to look at. Everyone understands how paper ballots work. People can observe the vote-counting process to verify that no ballots were altered. So not only does the process usually lead to an accurate count of peoples' votes, it also builds public confidence in the integrity of the result.

Blockchain voting would be much, much worse. Hardly anyone understands how a blockchain works, and even experts don't have a good way to observe the online voting process for irregularities the way an election observer does in a traditional paper election. A voter might be able to use her private key to verify how her vote was recorded after the fact. But if her vote wasn't counted the way she expected (or wasn't counted at all) she'd have no good way to prove that she tried to vote a different way."

Blockchain-based elections would be a disaster for democracy | Ars Technica

Tim Berners-Lee unveils 'contract' to protect and strengthen the web | CNET

See this page for the core principles

"The same spirit of collaboration will be used to shape and negotiate the contract as a document using the guiding principles the Web Foundation has laid out. Berners-Lee envisages working groups and discussions that will allow people across the whole spectrum of internet users to have a say on subjects from openness and accessibility to anonymity and hate speech.

"It's all about everybody talking together," he said. The contract should be finalized and ready to sign by May 2019.

Facebook, Google and the French government are three of around 60 early backers of the contract -- a list that includes tech companies, political figures, and non-governmental and digital rights organizations."

Tim Berners-Lee unveils 'contract' to protect and strengthen the web | CNET

Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know (and Nag You) | NYT

Tbd when there will be a new app store category for shaming apps

"I know these details not because the dentist, the bookseller and the accountant volunteered to share their voting histories with me. I found out from VoteWithMe and OutVote, two new political apps that are trying to use peer pressure to get people to vote Tuesday.

The apps are to elections what Zillow is to real estate — services that pull public information from government records, repackage it for consumer viewing and make it available at the touch of a smartphone button. But instead of giving you a peek at house prices, VoteWithMe and OutVote let you snoop on which of your friends voted in past elections and their party affiliations — and then prod them to go to the polls by sending them scripted messages like “You gonna vote?”"

Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know (and Nag You) | NYT

Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 in Two Locations | NYT

 HQ2/2

"After conducting a yearlong search for a second home, Amazon has switched gears and is now finalizing plans to have a total of 50,000 employees in two locations, according to people familiar with the decision-making process.

The company is nearing a deal to move to the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. Amazon is also close to a deal to move to the Crystal City area of Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb, one of the people said. Amazon already has more employees in those two areas than anywhere else outside of Seattle, its home base, and the Bay Area."

Amazon Plans to Split HQ2 in Two Locations | NYT

Chinese Web giant Tencent rolls out toughest gaming restrictions amid crackdown on industry | Washington Post

From a gaming market dynamics reality check

"While China has taken a notably drastic approach, video game addiction has garnered international attention and criticism lately for players of all ages. In June, the World Health Organization added video game addiction to its International Classification of Diseases. But the designation specifies that “gaming disorders” — where gaming eclipses all other desires for a period of more than a year — are very rare, affecting at most 3 percent of gamers. The American Psychiatric Association identified Internet Gaming Disorder as an area for further study in the 2013 version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the central resource for identifying and diagnosing disorders in the United States. It has yet to be officially added.

The online game Fortnite, which hosts tens of millions of players and generates more than $1 billion in revenue, has been at the heart of the gaming addiction debate in the United States. As parents struggle to manage their children’s playing time, professional sports coaches are facing a similar battle with their players, worrying that time spent playing video games is eroding the pro athletes' practice and sleep regimens."

Chinese Web giant Tencent rolls out toughest gaming restrictions amid crackdown on industry | Washington Post

The Supreme Court won’t take up net neutrality | Washington Post

Getting a bit deeply nested...

"But even as the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take up the appeal, the FCC under Republican chairman Ajit Pai moved to rescind those very rules. The new FCC in 2017 voted to reject much of its authority over Internet providers, and handed much of the responsibility for net neutrality to a sister agency, the Federal Trade Commission. The repeal went into effect this summer.

The GOP-led effort to repeal the FCC’s net neutrality rules set off a separate round of litigation, as tech companies and consumer groups sued to block the deregulation. That suit, which is also pending before the D.C. Circuit, is quickly becoming the center of the legal battle over net neutrality now, with the Supreme Court deciding not to hear its net neutrality case. The Justice Department has also agreed to suspend its recent suit against California over the state’s new net neutrality law, at least until the case before the D.C. Circuit is resolved."

The Supreme Court won’t take up net neutrality | Washington Post

The Pen(cil) is Mightier Than the Mouse | Tech.pinions

For some mouse-fan perspectives, see Apple iPad Pro Review 2018: The Fastest iPad is Still an iPad | The Verge and Nope, Apple’s new iPad Pro still isn’t a laptop | Washington Post

"While in it’s early stages, I contrast this with Microsoft’s Windows Pen/Ink support. With Windows a mouse is still available to use as a precision pointer, meaning most people will still choose this method by default. The presence of a mouse/trackpad enables the user to stay in their comofort level rather than embrace a new paradigm. The implication is the pen is likely only used for pen use cases and not in a position to become the new mouse. The lack of a traditional mouse pointer/trackpad is precisely the reason Apple has the potential to innovate and encourage software to be built around new precision input paradigms instead of old ones.

It will be very interesting to see how Apple continues to develop the gestures feature on Pencil and what developers do with it. I’d love to see Microsoft run with this idea and explore new Office experiences focusing on the pen as a new type of precision input that can go beyond just ink/drawing.

From a use case standpoint, when you need a precision input tool, there is not that much different in motion than taking your hand off the keyboard and using a trackpad then picking up the pencil. And, I’d argue that what can be enabled by pencil, gestures, and software, will take precision input to a level not possible with a trackpad/mouse."

The Pen(cil) is Mightier Than the Mouse | Tech.pinions

Apple’s Social Network | Stratechery

From a wide-ranging Apple reality check

"“Engaged” is an interesting choice of words, as engagement is an objective normally associated with social networks like Facebook. The reasoning is obvious: the more engaged users are, the more they use a social network, which means the more ads they can be shown. Social networks accomplish this by aggregating content from suppliers as well as users themselves, and continually tweaking algorithms in an attempt to keep you swiping and tapping, and coming back to swipe and tap some more.

This is a world that has always been foreign to Apple: its past attempts at facilitating social interaction on its platforms are memorable only as the butt of jokes (iTunes Ping anyone?). This isn’t a surprise: Apple’s culture and approach to products is antithetical to the culture and approach necessary to create and grow a traditional social network. Apple wants total control and to release as perfect a product it can; a social network requires an iterative approach that is designed to deal with constant variability and edge cases.

This, though, is why Today at Apple is compelling, particular Ahrendts’ reference to bringing people together in a “real social way” — and she could not have emphasized the word “real” more strongly. Apple is in effect trying to build a social network in the real world, facilitated and controlled by Apple, and betting that customers will continue to pay to gain access."

Apple’s Social Network | Stratechery