Start up: China’s coming smartphone crash, Boston Globe v readers, Google Glass is back!, and more

A bucket with ice water: much cheaper, though it doesn't have Bluetooth. Photo by mediadeo on Flickr.

You can now sign up to receive each day's Start Up post by email. You'll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam. (If you signed up and didn't receive, please let me know in the comments here.)

A selection of 9 links for you. They are what they are. I'm charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Dark patterns by the Boston Globe » The Rationalist Conspiracy

Alyssa Vance:

»After years of falling revenue, some newspapers have resorted to deception to boost their subscription numbers. These dishonest tactics are sometimes called "dark patterns" – user interfaces designed to trick people.

For example, this is a Boston Globe story on Bernie Sanders:

Before you can read the article, there is a pop-up ad asking you to subscribe. By itself, this is annoying, but not deceptive. The real dark pattern is hidden at the top – the 'Close' button (circled in red) uses a very low contrast font, making it hard to see. It's also in the left corner, not the standard right corner. This makes it likely that users won't see it, causing them to subscribe when they didn't have to.

One the 'Close' link is clicked, deception continues:

At the bottom, there's a non-removable, high-contrast banner ad asking for a paid subscription. Again, this is annoying, but honest. However, the circled text "for only 99 cents per week" is not honest. It's simply a lie, as later pages will show.

«

Turns out that 99c is actually $6.93 per week, and you can only unsubscribe by phone. So wicked.link to this extract

The blockchain menu » net.wars

Wendy Grossman:

»The Internet of Things is such an established concept that I'm startled to note that week's (Lego) prototype was my first. Three cars want to park…somewhere. Their owners have preset the maximum they will pay. The system locates the nearest parking space, and they bid. The winner is directed to the space, and the fee is automatically deducted from the car's balance. A display showed the auction in real time. All very nice until I injected reality by grabbing a car and plunking it in the space before bidding ended.

"Usurped" the contested space was now tagged. "You'll be fined," Consult Hyperion's demonstrator said. Who will that stop in Manhattan, where friends have missed two successive movie showings because no parking space? This may be an entertaining solution wishing for a problem.

In that, it was not alone at this week's Tomorrow's Transactions Forum, Dave Birch's quirky annual event where ideas about the future of money are smashed together like particles to see what happens.

«

I love the idea of app developers thinking people would be well-behaved and wait for their app to tell them where to park, while Noo Yawkers just PARK THE DAMN CAR THERE IN THE STOOPID SPACE.

But the article is actually about blockchains, which in a similar way are mostly a solution in search of a problem.link to this extract

China's crowded smartphone market heads for an epic shakeout » Bloomberg

David Ramli:

»The startup Dakele looked pretty smart when it released a phone in China four years ago. The market was doubling annually, and the company put brand-name components inside a device that cost a fraction of the iPhone.

That $160 gadget went on sale just four months after Dakele opened its doors, and soon the company, which translates as "Big Cola," made inroads against Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. Buzz was building for the Dakele 3 model last year, with online reviews calling it the best Apple Inc. clone.

Then the sizzle started to fizzle. Huawei spent $300 million on marketing, Xiaomi cut prices and clones of the clone appeared. Troubles with a supplier and raising money prompted Dakele to shut down last month—and it likely won't be alone. China's herd of 300 phone makers may be halved in 12 months by competition, a sales plateau and economic growth that's the slowest in a quarter-century, according to executives and analysts.

"The mobile-phone industry changed more quickly and brutally than expected," Dakele Chief Executive Officer Ding Xiuhong said on his Weibo messaging account. "As a startup, we couldn't find more strategies and methods to break through."

«

I can't decide whether the smartphone market is telescoping a decade of the PC market into two years, or just going through the same as happened in 1985-9 in about the same length of time.link to this extract

Kickstarter's biggest shitshow somehow got even messier » Motherboard

Jaason Koebler:

»A decidedly not chill development for 36,000 Kickstarter backers of the "Coolest Cooler": Coolest is now considering asking people who haven't yet received their coolers to pay an additional $97 for "expedited delivery" of the long-past-due all-in-one disaster, a prospect that has allegedly led some backers to threaten Coolest employees.

If you're not familiar, at the time it launched, the Coolest Cooler was the most popular Kickstarter of all time, raising $13 million. The 55-quart cooler has a built-in blender, a waterproof Bluetooth speaker, a USB charger, and a bottle opener. You can buy one on Amazon, right now, and have it by the weekend if you pay $399.99.

That $399.99 price point is important—when Coolest Cooler was launched on Kickstarter, it cost between $165 and $225, a price its creator Ryan Grepper said in an update to backers was far too low…

…Coolest Cooler doesn't have money to produce the remaining coolers, which is why it's selling existing stock on Amazon but not sending them to backers who haven't yet received the product (the company has delivered about 20,000 coolers to backers, but 36,000 more people are waiting). Reviews of the cooler are mixed — most say that it is indeed cool, but that it is very heavy and isn't worth $400.

«

I'm trying to imagine a cooler that would be worth $400, even with those add-ons. The article's comparison with the Welsh drone screwup Zano isn't right, though; Zano had absurdly inflated claims. This is just poor pricing.link to this extract

CDC: two of every five U.S. households have only wireless phones » Pew Research Center

»More Americans than ever have cut the (telephone) cord, but the growth rate of wireless-only households slowed last year.

About two-in-five (41%) of U.S. households had only wireless phones in the second half of 2013, according to a report released today by the National Center for Health Statistics. The center, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated that 39.1% of adults and 47.1% of children lived in wireless-only households.

«

When I noted yesterday that "call mom" had overtaken "call home" as a Google search (hence almost certainly a voice activation), I thought it was because "mom" was likely to be at home. But as was pointed out, there might not be a "home" to call.

(Next up: can we calculate the divorce rate based on the rise of "call mom" v "call dad"?)link to this extract

Google Glass startup Augmedix raises $17m from healthcare orgs » Re/code

Mark Bergen:

»The next time you spot a Google Glass in the wild, it might not be on the face of a fervid techie. It might be on your doctor.

Augmedix, one of several startups that formed around the computerized headgear — and kept spinning after the search giant ditched its first attempt — is raising a fresh round of capital to get Google Glass into more health care facilities. The four-year-old startup is part of a wave of Silicon Valley companies trying to tap the massive medical market. It primarily builds software for wearable devices that display electronic health records so that doctors can access them hands-free.

"They're engaging with patients in front of them," said CEO Ian Shakil. "In the background, we're doing all the burdensome work."

He's not raising cash from Sand Hill Road. Instead, the $17m strategic investment comes from a quintet of medical institutions.

«

I always thought that Glass's best use would be inside businesses, not among consumers.link to this extract

Apple's Watch outpaced the iPhone in first year » WSJ

Daisuke Wakabayashi:

»Apple doesn't disclose sales, but analysts estimate about 12m Watches were sold in year one. At an estimated average price of $500, that is a $6bn business—three times the annual revenue of activity tracker Fitbit Inc.

By comparison, Apple sold roughly 6m iPhones in its first year. As a new entrant, the Watch accounted for about 61% of global smartwatch sales last year, according to researcher IDC.

And yet, there are detractors such as Fred Wilson, co-founder of venture-capital firm Union Square Ventures, in December declared the Watch a "flop." Mr. Wilson, who owns shares of Fitbit through a fund, had earlier predicted the Watch wouldn't be a "home run" like the iPad, iPhone and iPod, saying many people wouldn't want to wear a computer on their wrist.

The Watch has shortcomings. It is slow, with an underpowered processor that is throttled at times to extend the device's battery life. It lacks mobile and Global Positioning System connections, meaning it must be accompanied by an iPhone, limiting its usefulness as an independent device. The battery needs to be charged every day.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is the Watch's lack of a defining purpose. It does certain things well, such as activity tracking, mobile payments and notifications. But there is no task the Apple Watch handles that can't be done by an iPhone or a less-expensive activity tracker.

«

The comparison with the first-year iPhone is meaningless – the Watch was released in more places, with more fanfare. Fred Wilson's criticism, well, would the better metric be what proportion of devices are still in use? How would the Watch do against the Fitbit?

As to "defining purpose" – its purpose so far is to be an adjunct. It does that pretty well; satisfaction is high, according to survey firm Wristly.link to this extract

Exclusive: Bangladesh Bank hackers compromised SWIFT software, warning to be issued » Reuters

Jim Finkle:

»The attackers who stole $81m from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems.

SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT would release on Monday a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures.

The new developments now coming to light in the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that an essential lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood to hacking attacks, due to the vulnerabilities that enabled attackers to modify SWIFT's client software.

«

Got in via a poorly secured $10 router, got away with $81m, hacked the software the world's banks rely on. This could be worse, right?link to this extract

The secret rules of the internet » The Verge

Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly, with a (quite astoundingly) long piece about the history of content moderation on social networks – if by "history" you mean "starting in 2004":

»When Dave Willner arrived at Facebook in 2008, the team there was working on its own "one-pager" of cursory, gut-check guidelines. "Child abuse, animal abuse, Hitler," Willner recalls. "We were told to take down anything that makes you feel bad, that makes you feel bad in your stomach." Willner had just moved to Silicon Valley to join his girlfriend, then Charlotte Carnevale, now Charlotte Willner, who had become head of Facebook's International Support Team. Over the next six years, as Facebook grew from less than 100 million users to well over a billion, the two worked side by side, developing and implementing the company's first formal moderation guidelines.

"We were called The Ninjas," he said, "mapping the rabbit hole." Like Mora-Blanco, Willner described how he, Charlotte, and their colleagues sometimes laughed about their work, so that they wouldn't cry. "To outsiders, that sounds demented," he said.

Just like at YouTube, the subjectivity of Facebook's moderation policy was glaring. "Yes, deleting Hitler feels awesome," Willner recalls thinking. "But, why do we delete Hitler? If Facebook is here to make the world more open," he asked himself, "why would you delete anything?" The job, he says, was "to figure out Facebook's central why."

For people like Dave and Charlotte Willner, the questions are as complex now as they were a decade ago. How do we understand the context of a picture? How do we assign language meaning? Breaking the code for context — nailing down the ineffable question of why one piece of content is acceptable but a slight variation breaks policy — remains the holy grail of moderation.

«

One could pick out any part of this piece. It's interesting all through. The trouble is it's so long (around 2,500 words) that you may struggle to find its thread, because there isn't an actual, progressing, story.link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Source: Start up: China's coming smartphone crash, Boston Globe v readers, Google Glass is back!, and more