Pinboard (guardiantech)

Transport regulation: if this were finance, Uber would be behind bars >> Nemo's Blog

guardiantech — 2014-05-14T20:34:24+00:00

There are other services out there that provide smartphone bookings to Taxis and do not flount the law: Ingogo, Gocatch, Hailo and others. The problem is that at this point in time not breaking the law is a major competitive disadvantage due to the numbers above and regulators seem to be in Uber’s sweet spot of being too gutless or incompetent to regulate similar businesses in a similar way by getting rid of exorbitant rents, ensuring whatever safety / quality of concerns they have are addressed and then letting the market sort itself out. The confused response of the [New South Wales, Australia] state government to Uber adopting a Lyft like model is case in point. It will be very sad if regulators cannot see the forest for the trees here and do the right thing – it will set a precedent of telling regulators to get stuffed, getting away with it and being handsomely remunerated. I run an asset management business: I am guessing that if I decided I didn’t want to file reports because I thought the filings were poorly formatted, arbitrary and of marginal value to regulators (they often are) then that would not go down too well even if I was right and made sensible suggestions about how “this would all be way better with my new API”. Why is the regulation of finance so deadly serious and transport such a joke? To that end Transport regulators need to answer a few questions.

Google has most of my email because it has all of yours >> copyrighteous

guardiantech — 2014-05-12T17:56:45+00:00

Benjamin Mako Hill:

Despite the fact that I spend hundreds of dollars a year and hours of work to host my own email server, Google has about half of my personal email! Last year, Google delivered 57% of the emails in my inbox that I replied to. They have delivered more than a third of all the email I’ve replied to ever year since 2006 and more than half since 2010. On the upside, there is some indication that the proportion is going down. So far this year, only 51% of the emails I’ve replied to arrived from Google. The numbers are higher than I imagined and reflect somewhat depressing news. They show how it’s complicated to think about privacy and autonomy for communication between parties.

Five stages of data grief >> Open Data Institute

guardiantech — 2014-02-17T07:55:33+00:00

Jeni Tennison:

In our last ODI [Open Data Institute] Board meeting, Sir Tim Berners-Lee suggested that the data curators need to go through was something like the five stages of grief described by the Kübler-Ross model.
So here is an outline of what that looks like.

The Economist explains: How might your choice of browser affect your job prospects? >> The Economist

guardiantech — 2013-04-14T21:04:30+00:00

Among other things, its analysis found that those applicants who have bothered to install new web browsers on their computers (such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome) perform better and stay in their posts for 15% longer, on average, than those who use the default pre-installed browser that came with their machine (ie, Internet Explorer on a Windows PC and Safari on an Apple Mac). This may simply be a coincidence, but Evolv's analysts reckon that applicants' willingness to go to the trouble of installing a new browser shows decisiveness, a valuable trait in a potential employee.

Presents a problem for Chromebook users wanting to impress. (Thanks @vassal for the link.)

Travis Shrugged: The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley’s Cult of Disruption >> PandoDaily

guardiantech — 2012-10-25T09:00:27+00:00

Paul Carr:

Laws don’t exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society. Back home in London (where such statistics are available), 11 women a month are attacked in unlicensed cabs, and unlicensed drivers are responsible for a horrifying 80 percent of all stranger rapes. If Uber doesn’t have to follow licensing laws, then neither does any Tom, Dick, or Harry who chooses to paint the word “TAXI” on the side of his car, and start offering rides via the Internet. A disruptive CEO will shrug (and there’s a foreshadowing word) and insist that it’s not his fault that such criminals exist. “Just because there are people who want to rape, murder, or rob you shouldn’t prevent me from making another million dollars,” he’ll argue.
Remarkably, a large part of the Internet community — by which I mean that tiny number of social media fanatics who spend their days on Twitter, looking for the next cause to rally behind or the next bad guy to boycott — will agree with him.

(Thanks @jseths on Twitter for the link.)

How the professor who fooled Wikipedia got caught by Reddit >> The Atlantic

guardiantech — 2012-05-17T05:31:28+00:00

A great read, but important too for understanding why some parts of the internet are weak for fact-checking:

If there's a simple lesson in all of this, it's that hoaxes tend to thrive in communities which exhibit high levels of trust. But on the Internet, where identities are malleable and uncertain, we all might be well advised to err on the side of skepticism.

Incremental change wins Apple big gains >> TidBits

guardiantech — 2012-04-02T16:59:52+00:00

Glenn Fleishman:

Those competing with Apple have to advertise every new device and computer as being substantially different enough to justify a quicker upgrade cycle. If Apple makes $400 from a low-end MacBook Air that might be in use for five years, and Dell makes $50 (after paying Microsoft for Windows) for a low-end laptop, how quickly does Dell need to sell that person another device? During those five years, Apple might get $29 two or three times for updates to Mac OS X; Dell gets nothing from any Windows upgrades. Apple may also now reap additional dollars from Mac App Store purchases, too. Dell? Nothing.

Intriguing argument which implies that Dell has to keep growing even to survive - though of course for Dell having a big installed base to pick from *should* mean it would reach a point where constant renewal of machines guarantees a given revenue and profit.

But maybe that's what's gone wrong. (Fleishman also blogs for The Economist.)

September 2010: In search of tablet computers' sweet spot: screen size and battery life >> Guardian Technology

guardiantech — 2012-03-19T15:14:56+00:00

Since everyone and their dog is burbling on about potential Google Nexus 7in tablets, here's a link back to an article which asked: why exactly did Apple choose 9.7in for the iPad screen? And how did Samsung's 7in screen measure up? Check out the comments too: apparently Apple was rumoured (on Gizmodo and Macrumors) to be about to launch a 7in iPad "in time for Christmas". Some rumours never go out of date.

Why the iPad Is the most hated gadget (but not by consumers) ever >> Cult of Mac

guardiantech — 2011-12-19T07:30:13+00:00

Hated, that is, by those trying to compete with it, or which have found their businesses overrun by it. "The success of the iPad made HP and RIM vastly over-estimate demand…" But makes in vertical markets, PCs, netbooks - they all have reason to grind their teeth too.

Why Apple is cheap >> Asymco

guardiantech — 2011-12-16T06:18:44+00:00

"Imagine it’s late 2005. Apple’s fiscal year just ended and they reported their performance. You’re an analyst whose job includes forecasting the company’s performance for next year. This is a weighty responsibility. Your forecast will be blended with those of your peers and used as a “consensus” average. That consensus for the next year will be used to measure the current value of the shares in a ratio called the forward PEG or Price/Earnings/annual earnings Growth." This hilarious - really - narrative shows how apparently rational choices don't always lead to good forecasting.

TDL4 – Top Bot >> Securelist

guardiantech — 2011-06-30T05:30:46+00:00

So far, it has infected 4.5m PCs: "The malware detected by Kaspersky Anti-Virus as TDSS is the most sophisticated threat today. TDSS uses a range of methods to evade signature, heuristic, and proactive detection, and uses encryption to facilitate communication between its bots and the botnet command and control center. TDSS also has a powerful rootkit component, which allows it to conceal the presence of any other types of malware in the system.
"Its creator calls this program TDL. Since it first appeared in 2008, malware writers have been perfecting their creation little by little. By 2010, the latest version was TDL-3, which was discussed in depth in an article published in August 2010.
"The creators of TDSS did not sell their program until the end of 2010. In December, when analyzing a TDSS sample, we discovered something odd: a TDL-3 encrypted disk contained modules of another malicious program, SHIZ."

Bad news all round.

A rising tide does not lift leaking ships >> Asymco

guardiantech — 2011-05-11T11:43:23+00:00

Dediu on the latest market numbers for smartphones. As he says, it's hard to get seasonality out of the growth. Prize for best blogpost title, though.

Which analysts are the biggest sandbaggers - charted >> Deagol's AAPL model

guardiantech — 2011-04-17T21:43:20+00:00

With Apple's financial results coming up this week, bloggers tracking Apple's numbers do far better than professional analysts; Deagol is one of the best.

"It's amazing to me that such a highly regarded analyst as Gene Munster, and considered by many the most bullish on Apple, has managed to underestimate EPS by a whole 5 bucks and a half over less than 3 years. That's a whole $100 worth on AAPL if you price it at an 18x multiple. And that's our bullish guy. Mr. McCourt on the other hand, managed to misplace almost 5 bucks in only a year and a half. Give it another year and he'll easily be 8 bucks behind, or near $150 on the stock by a conservative multiple. But he'll go on giving interviews on CNBC and such."

Why "post PC" doesn't mean "sans PC" >> Michael Gartenberg

guardiantech — 2011-04-11T20:50:58+00:00

Michael Gartenberg, who has seen tons of consumer gadgets come and go: "So, why so much hype about the post-PC world? Because historically, as PCs have become increasingly sophisticated, they’ve also become increasingly complex. Users become empowered by new features while simultaneously being forced to contend with complex systems..
"This is one reason why devices like the iPad have become popular. No, they can’t do everything a PC can do today—but that’s not a bad thing. The iPad performs some tasks quite well, all while keeping those tasks simple—and that means an iPad can replace that second or third PC someone was thinking of buying.
As we transition into a post-PC world, the ability of devices to balance new technology and features against complexity for a given set of functions will help drive purchases. The key will be for users to figure out just what device best matches the appropriate skill set or need. Need to decode the human genome? There’s no app for that just yet."