The iPhone's new chip should worry Intel - The Verge

Later in the article: "By straying into the performance waters previously reserved for Intel’s laptop CPUs, Apple is teasing us with the question of why not inject the A10 (or its successors) into actual laptops?"

"Now, before you accuse me of being high on my own metaphorical supply, I’m not saying that Intel will be crippled or surpassed anytime soon. But I am arguing that the chip giant is under a substantial threat, the likes of which it hasn’t faced for a long time, maybe ever. A quick look at the Geekbench scores attained by the iPhone 7 quantifies a staggering achievement: the single-core performance of Apple’s latest generation of smartphone processors has basically caught up with Intel’s laptops CPUs. The A10 chip inside the iPhone 7 comfortably outpaces its predecessors and Android rivals, and even outdoes a wide catalog of relatively recent Mac computers (including the not-so-recent Mac Pro). The iPhone’s notoriously hard to benchmark against anything else and this is just one metric, but it’s illustrative of Apple’s accelerating momentum and mobile focus."

The iPhone's new chip should worry Intel - The Verge

Oracle’s Ellison Takes Shot at Amazon With New Cloud Services - Bloomberg

Also see Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Talks A Big Game Against Amazon Web Services (Fortune)

"Oracle Corp. unveiled new services that help customers take advantage of cloud computing as the company takes more direct aim at rival Amazon.com Inc.
The company announced “Cloud@Customer,” which takes the latest gear from its own data centers and puts that hardware on customer data centers, Executive Chairman Larry Ellison said Sunday during a presentation at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. Customers won’t need to buy the technology -- and can instead subscribe to the service on a monthly basis, just like they would do if they were buying from a distant data center. He also announced what he said were more powerful products at a lower cost than Amazon, the leading public cloud provider and the company’s No. 1 competitor in infrastructure.
“Amazon’s lead is over,” Ellison said during the presentation. “Amazon’s going to have serious competition.”"

Oracle’s Ellison Takes Shot at Amazon With New Cloud Services - Bloomberg

Artificial Intelligence Software Is Booming. But Why Now? - The New York Times

Later in the article: "“No one really knows where the value is,” said Marc Benioff, co-founder and chief executive of Salesforce. “I think I know — it’s in helping people do the things that people are good at, and turning more things over to machines.”"

"This is the year artificial intelligence came into its own for mainstream businesses, at least as a marketing feature.

On Sunday, Salesforce.com, which sells online software for sales and marketing, announced it would be adding A.I. to its products. Its system, called Einstein, promises to provide insights into what sales leads to follow and what products to make next.

Salesforce chose this date to pre-empt Oracle, the world’s largest business software company, which on Sunday evening began its annual customer event in San Francisco. High on Oracle’s list of new features: real-time analysis of enormous amounts of data. Oracle calls its product Oracle A.I."

Artificial Intelligence Software Is Booming. But Why Now? - The New York Times

Twitter in retweet | The Economist

Excerpt from a stark Twitter reality check

"But Twitter’s share price has fallen by half since Mr Dorsey returned, to around $18. And the reasons to be pessimistic are multiplying. The first problem is Mr Dorsey himself. Considering the firm’s challenges, it needs a full-time boss if it is to have any hope of rebounding. Yet Mr Dorsey continues to split his time between Twitter and Square, another public company he co-founded which manages financial payments (and which has also struggled of late). Far more of his net worth is tied to Square’s performance than to Twitter’s. Having a boss who shows up part-time affects morale at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, say people there. Because he is often working at Square, many managers arrive late, depart early and generally show up just to “punch the time card”, says one former senior executive who has sold all of his shares."

Twitter in retweet | The Economist

Three-hit wonder | The Economist

From a brief Medium overview

"Mr Williams’s latest venture, Medium, which launched in 2012, is a clean, elegant-looking destination for essays, open letters and “big think” pieces. It is trying to become the central hub for writing by the public at large, as YouTube is for amateur videos. Journalists, business executives and heads of state, including Barack Obama, have all published on Medium. When Amazon disagreed with a New York Times article on the e-commerce giant’s apparently brutal work culture, a senior executive from the firm wrote a long retort on Medium. Small papers and digital-media firms, such as the Pacific Standard and The Ringer, are using it to publish content.

 As in Hollywood, it is easier to sell a sequel in Silicon Valley. In 1999 Mr Williams co-founded Blogger. The startup helped popularise the concept of blogging and the word itself by making it simple for people to post their musings without needing to code. After Google bought the company in 2003, Mr Williams worked on a podcasting firm called Odeo that ended up launching a text-messaging service, which became Twitter. “Anyone who has changed the world twice, I would bet on a third time,” says Jeff Jarvis, a professor of journalism at City University of New York."

Three-hit wonder | The Economist

Tesla Wins Utility Contract to Supply Grid-Scale Battery Storage After Porter Ranch Gas Leak - Bloomberg

The energy company that also makes cars

"Tesla just won a bid to supply grid-scale power in Southern California to help prevent electricity shortages following the biggest natural gas leak in U.S. history. The Powerpacks, worth tens of millions of dollars, will be operational in record time—by the end of this year.
Tesla Motors Inc. will supply 20 megawatts (80 mWh) of energy storage to Southern California Edison as part of a wider effort to prevent blackouts by replacing fossil-fuel electricity generation with lithium-ion batteries. Tesla's contribution is enough to power about 2,500 homes for a full day, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. But the real significance of the deal is the speed with which lithium-ion battery packs are being deployed."

Tesla Wins Utility Contract to Supply Grid-Scale Battery Storage After Porter Ranch Gas Leak - Bloomberg

iPhone Fever Sets Up Apple’s Biggest Weekly Gain in Years - Bloomberg

A strong leading indicator...

"Apple Inc.’s shares are poised for their first weekly gain of 10 percent or more since 2013 as the company gets ready to start selling its newest smartphones, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. The stock reached a high for the year on Thursday, adding to gains on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. A double-digit percentage advance for the week would be the 10th since the iPhone was introduced in January 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg."

iPhone Fever Sets Up Apple’s Biggest Weekly Gain in Years - Bloomberg

Ted Cruz Fights Internet Directory’s Transfer; Techies Say He Just Doesn’t Get It - The New York Times

Back to his day job...

"“Imagine an internet run like many Middle Eastern countries, that punish what they deem to be blasphemy,” Mr. Cruz warned in a Senate hearing he led earlier this week. “Or imagine an internet run like China or Russia, that punish and incarcerate those that engage in political dissent.”

Technologists and administration officials say Mr. Cruz simply does not understand how the web operates. The government’s current job of domain name administrator is largely clerical and cannot influence editorial decisions on the web, they say.

“It sounds like a fairy tale to anyone who understands how the internet works,” said Andrew Sullivan, chair of the Internet Architecture Board, a nonprofit group of network engineers and tech firms such as Google and Cisco."

Ted Cruz Fights Internet Directory’s Transfer; Techies Say He Just Doesn’t Get It - The New York Times

Review: ‘Snowden,’ Oliver Stone’s Restrained Portrait of a Whistle-Blower - The New York Times

Final paragraph:

"At times, I found myself wishing that it would go further — that it would feel angrier, crazier, more frightening. But that would have made it easier to shake, and perhaps also to dismiss. This movie won’t necessarily dazzle or enrage you, and I’m not sure that it wants to. What it wants — what Mr. Snowden himself always claims to have wanted — is to bother you, to fill you with doubt about the good intentions of those who gather your data and tell you it’s for your own protection."

Review: ‘Snowden,’ Oliver Stone’s Restrained Portrait of a Whistle-Blower - The New York Times

These Microsoft veterans are on their way out | ZDNet

Among the recent exits: Bill Laing, Rick Rashid, Chuck Thacker, and Dave Campbell

"A few long-time Microsoft managers are on their way out, with some retiring and some hinting they're moving on to new things. Here are five of the most prominent."

These Microsoft veterans are on their way out | ZDNet

Google sees Evernote as an 'innovation partner' as note-taking service moves to search giant's cloud - GeekWire

A noteworthy win for Google Cloud Platform; see Evernote’s Future Is in the Cloud (Evernote blog) for more details; in other Evernote news, see Exclusive: Phil Libin and Max Levchin Leaving Evernote Board (Fortune)

"Google plans to be an “innovation partner” with Evernote, the popular note-taking and productivity service that today said it will move from its own servers to Google’s cloud, said Diane Greene, senior VP of Google Cloud Platform, in an onstage interview.

“At an engagement, when we can get our engineers together, they see we’ve got everything they need,” Greene said at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference in San Francisco. “The security of Evernote’s data is paramount, and we worked to show them how they can rely on us.” Evernote, with 200 million users and five billion notes, was founded eight years ago, when there was no public cloud, Greene observed. “Now they’ll be able innovate faster in their business, with us innovating for them on the back end.”"

Google sees Evernote as an 'innovation partner' as note-taking service moves to search giant's cloud - GeekWire

'Edward Snowden did this country a great service. Let him come home' | US news | The Guardian

Snowden week continues

"Writing in the Guardian, the runner-up in the race to become Democratic presidential candidate argues that Snowden helped to educate the American public about how the NSA violated the constitutional rights of citizens with its mass surveillance program. Sanders argues that there should be some form of resolution that would acknowledge both the “troubling revelations” that he had brought to light and the crime that he committed in doing so, that would “spare him a long prison sentence or permanent exile”.

Sanders joins 20 other prominent public figures – from Hollywood actors and rock musicians to politicians, professors and Black Lives Matter activists – who call on Barack Obama to find some way of allowing Snowden to return home to the US from exile in Russia. The Guardian’s voices are raised in the week that Oliver Stone’s film, Snowden, is released in the US and that a coalition of groups including the ACLU and Amnesty International launch a new campaign for a presidential pardon before Obama steps down."

'Edward Snowden did this country a great service. Let him come home' | US news | The Guardian

Edward Snowden makes 'moral' case for presidential pardon | US news | The Guardian

Oliver Stone may help build support for his case

"Edward Snowden has set out the case for Barack Obama granting him a pardon before the US president leaves office in January, arguing that the disclosure of the scale of surveillance by US and British intelligence agencies was not only morally right but had left citizens better off.

The US whistleblower’s comments, made in an interview with the Guardian, came as supporters, including his US lawyer, stepped up a campaign for a presidential pardon. Snowden is wanted in the US, where he is accused of violating the Espionage Act and faces at least 30 years in jail."

Edward Snowden makes 'moral' case for presidential pardon | US news | The Guardian

Mossberg: Choosing the iPhone 7 is tougher than in the past - Recode

Final paragraphs from a Walt Mossberg review; also see iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review: Great annual upgrades with one major catch (Ars Technica)

"The iPhone remains an outstanding smartphone, and this latest model makes it even better in many ways. And, unlike rival Samsung, Apple isn’t beset with the very serious problem of exploding batteries. But the whole audio jack thing makes choosing the iPhone 7 more difficult than it might have been.

You won’t go wrong buying the iPhone 7 if you can tolerate the earbud issue, especially if you’re on an installment plan like Apple’s that just gets you a new iPhone every year. You could get the iPhone 7 and then the big redesign next year, as long as you keep paying the monthly fee.

But despite the undisputed improvements, this new iPhone just isn’t as compelling an upgrade as many of its predecessors. Some might want to wait a year for the next really big thing — and maybe a better audio solution to boot."

Mossberg: Choosing the iPhone 7 is tougher than in the past - Recode

HP Inc. to Buy Samsung Electronics’ Printer Business - The New York Times

Seeking to revitalize the dead-tree part of the IT industry

"HP Inc. said on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Samsung Electronics Company’s printer business in a deal valued at $1.05 billion.

The deal, HP said, would position it to disrupt and reinvent the $55 billion copier industry by mounting a push to replace office copy machines with multifunction printers.

The company said the sector required innovation, describing copiers as “outdated, complicated machines with dozens of replaceable parts requiring inefficient service and maintenance agreements.”"

HP Inc. to Buy Samsung Electronics’ Printer Business - The New York Times

Apple Offers Free App to Teach Children Coding (iPads Sold Separately) - The New York Times

A Swift move for education

"Apple’s app, called Swift Playgrounds, introduces basic computer programming concepts, like sequencing logic, by asking students to use word commands to move cartoon avatars through a fanciful, animated world. Unlike some children’s apps, which employ drag-and-drop blocks to teach coding, the Apple program uses Swift, a professional programming language that the company introduced in 2014.

“When you learn to code with Swift Playgrounds, you are learning the same language used by professional developers,” Brian Croll, Apple’s vice president of product marketing, said in a telephone interview. “It’s easy to take the next step and learn to write a real app.”"

Apple Offers Free App to Teach Children Coding (iPads Sold Separately) - The New York Times

Meet New Glenn, the Blue Origin Rocket That May Someday Take You to Space - The New York Times

A new chapter in the Bezos/Musk space race

"Blue Origin, the secretive space company created by Jeffrey P. Bezos, offered a look at its newest rocket design on Monday — and, by extension, its ambitions to make space travel more frequent and inexpensive.

Both the rocket and the ambitions appear to be big.

The rockets, named New Glenn after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, are almost as large as the Saturn V rocket that NASA used from 1966 to 1973, before rockets started being built smaller. The two-stage version that could venture to low-Earth orbit will be 270 feet tall, and the three-stage version, which could fly outside Earth’s orbit, will be 313 feet tall. Both will be 23 feet in diameter, packing seven BE-4 engines, which are developed by Blue Origin, and lifting off with 3.85 million pounds of thrust."

Meet New Glenn, the Blue Origin Rocket That May Someday Take You to Space - The New York Times

The Apple dream car might not happen - Recode

More "Project Titan" speculation

"“Dozens of employees” in Apple’s car project “have departed in recent weeks,” the FT reports. The company has had more than 1,000 people working on its so-called “Project Titan,” but “it has struggled to make progress,” according to the New York Times, noting that a series of layoffs was part of a “reboot.”

Under its new boss, returning veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield, the project has shifted “from an emphasis on designing and producing an automobile to building out the underlying technology for an autonomous vehicle,” the NYT’s Daisuke Wakabayashi and Brian X. Chen report."

The Apple dream car might not happen - Recode

The Extraordinary Link Between Deep Neural Networks and the Nature of the Universe (Technology Review)

Check the full article for details

"But there is a problem. There is no mathematical reason why networks arranged in layers should be so good at these challenges. Mathematicians are flummoxed. Despite the huge success of deep neural networks, nobody is quite sure how they achieve their success.

Today that changes thanks to the work of Henry Lin at Harvard University and Max Tegmark at MIT. These guys say the reason why mathematicians have been so embarrassed is that the answer depends on the nature of the universe. In other words, the answer lies in the regime of physics rather than mathematics."

The Extraordinary Link Between Deep Neural Networks and the Nature of the Universe

Elon Musk says rocket explosion is the most “difficult and complex” failure SpaceX has ever had - The Washington Post

The SpaceX explosion mystery continues

"The spectacular explosion of a SpaceX rocket turned into a full-blown mystery Friday after Elon Musk took to Twitter to say the company is so baffled about what happened it needs help from the public.

There was a mysterious bang of unknown origin seconds before ignition, he noted. There was no apparent source of heat that could have ignited the blast, he said. And then he refused to rule out the rampant Internet speculation that something--a drone? UFO?--may have crashed into the rocket, fueling rumors of sabotage. He did, however, seem to rule out alien involvement."

Elon Musk says rocket explosion is the most “difficult and complex” failure SpaceX has ever had - The Washington Post