Monthly Archives: August 2016

Google First

According to Nick Statt at the Verge, Google is moving on from the Nexus brand in favor of Google branding: Google is dropping the Nexus branding with its two upcoming, HTC-made smartphones. Instead, the company is expected to market the devices under a different name and to lean heavily on the Google brand in the […]

Because the Truth is Less Striking

When I asked if the U.S. media had a political bias, a friend of mine suggested that the media’s bias for narrative is bigger than anything to do with politics. Nearly a decade later, I find this observation holds true and is particularly noticeable during this year’s election between the former Senator and Secretary of […]

Voice Recognition Beats Humans at Typing

From Aarti Shahani at NPR: Researchers set up a competition, pitting a Baidu program called Deep Speech 2 against 32 humans, ages 19 to 32. The humans took turns saying and then typing short phrases into an iPhone — like “buckle up for safety” and “wear a crown with many jewels” and “this person is […]

The Death of Car Ownership?

Commenting on a post on Daring Fireball where John Gruber asserted that design will matter even with self driving cars, Brian Fagioli on Twitter argued that: self driving cars will lead to death of car ownership. Outward appearance won’t matter. Just comfort and amenities. John responded with the following update to his original post. If […]

Tell Me if You Heard This One Before

From Mark Gurman, at Bloomberg: Apple Inc. has hit roadblocks in making major changes that would connect its Watch to cellular networks and make it less dependent on the iPhone, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company still plans to announce new watch models this fall boasting improvements to health tracking. I […]

You Get What You Charge For

From Nick Heer at PixelEnvy: Ads used to be beautiful because they had to be beautiful — if you’re a business paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for a full colour back-page ad, you’re going to want to make it the most memorable and compelling visual it can be. A few years ago, […]

A Deal With the Devil

After yesterday’s post questioning Google’s commitment to open source Android, I found this piece Ars Technica published by J.M. Porup about yet another startup focusing on making Android more secure: Copperhead OS, a two-man team based in Toronto, ships a hardened version of Android that aims to integrate Grsecurity and PaX into their distribution. Their […]

Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish

When news came that Amazon would start selling Android phones subsidized with ads on the lock screen, I quipped on Twitter by asking how long it would take Google to wrest control of the lock screen by making it part of the closed source Google Play. Now less than a month later, Ars Technica is […]

“Not too many things like that.”

From Playing The Long Game Inside Tim Cook’s Apple by Rick Tetzeli, writing for Fast Company: It’s entirely possible that Apple will never introduce a product as universally desired as the iPhone. That doesn’t mean it won’t continue to be a great company. “The iPhone entered a market that was the biggest on earth for […]