The Low-Down: 2018-01-14

Jan 20, 2018

How Come Apple CarPlay and Google Android Auto Still Aren't Ubiquitous?

Because 5G, Alexa, Google Assistant and the future of voice activated tech are looming. JL

Jeremy Horwitz reports in Venture Beat:

CarPlay and Android Auto are still on shaky ground with automakers. Between Amazon’s Alexa, Tesla envy, financial considerations, and the imminent arrival of 5G, a multi-year battle is underway to control the center consoles of cars, and phones are caught in the crossfire. Apple and Google , Samsung and Nvidia are well aware that 5G integration into vehicles could be a game-changer for customers: Your smartphone in the car could become irrelevant if the vehicle already has its own data services.

As the internet promotes scale, humans increasingly promote local tastes, perhaps as a counterbalance. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

Between 2008 and 2016, the number of brewery establishments expanded by a factor of six, and the number of brewery workers grew by 120 percent. Government data count 70,000 brewery employees, three times the figure just 10 years ago. Average beer prices have grown nearly 50%. “We’ve seen three main markers in the rise of craft beer—fuller flavor, greater variety, and more intense support for local businesses.” (Plus) regulations recently made it easier for individuals to introduce their beer.

The more important question may be at what point people become smart enough to hand robots the wrenches they need. JL

Will Knight reports in MIT Technology Review:

Automation is moving into new areas of work, and improvements in sensing and machine learning could accelerate as robots become more capable of taking on work that can currently be done only by people. Robots are already taking on ever more complex tasks within factories and warehouses. Indeed, the U.K. government is exploring whether robots may help it cope with a Brexit-induced shortage of labor.

Many people are surprised to learn there is such a thing as biometric privacy law, let alone that their state, region or country enforces it. JL

Jack Nicas reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Google Arts & Culture said 12.8 million people downloaded, with users taking 450,000 selfies an hour. The No. 1 free app on the Apple Inc. and Google Play app stores, is among a growing wave of tech products using software that can recognize faces—from doorbells that identify guests to security cameras to iPhones that unlock. “It’s very easy for strangers to capture your biometrics and it’s very hard for us to do anything about it.”

The reality is that humanity has gotten addicted to new technologies repeatedly: the wheel, iron, stirrups, gunpowder, paper, printed matter, phones, cars, electricity, TV, computers...It is neither Apple's fault, alone (though it and its competitors have invested billions in perfecting their ability to grab human attention) nor, in all probability, within its power to do much about that.

But it may find over time that its own economic and social incentives are better aligned with a more balanced approach to technology usage than not. JL

Farhad Manjoo reports in the New York Times:

Apple’s business model does not depend on tech addiction. The company makes most of its money by selling premium devices at high profit margins. (But) like air pollution or online advertising, tech addiction is a collective-action problem caused by misaligned incentives. Companies make money from your attention. "How we live with tech is the cultural issue of the next half century."

Given its published criteria, the list of initial finalists includes surprising inclusions - and surprising omissions - eg, will such considerations as housing/rental prices and commutes really matter compared to supply of tech talent and the incentive packages cities put together?

Creating a political juggernaut to fend off calls for regulation is an issue for Amazon. But from this list, the east coast appears to have an edge, especially Boston, where rumors of Amazon's making massive lease commitments abound and Washington, DC, where Jeff Bezos owns a large home - and a large newspaper. Data below provide the opportunity to compare and contrast. To be continued. JL

Rani Molla reports in Re/code and Pete Saunders reports in Forbes:

All the finalists have a ready supply of tech talent. Real estate leases and rentals make up just 4% of a tech company’s operating expenses, while payroll alone makes up 50%. Amazon wishes to become established in another region of the country. Amazon appears to be looking to be an economic complement to its selected city, not its economic savior. The livability cut hasnt been done yet.

How Cryptojacking Is Becoming the Next Big Cyber-Security Threat

Employing unsuspecting website users' computers to mine or steal cryptocurrency. And no, the users do not get to share in the bounty, though they may share the liability. JL

Robert Hackett reports in Fortune:

Hackers and penny-pinching website hosts are hijacking people’s computers to “mine” cryptocurrency. Operators experiment with alternatives to ads as a source of revenue. Cryptocurrency is mined, or produced, by solving complex mathematical puzzles. It’s like a lottery: The more computing power you throw at the problems, the likelier you are to win a reward. Every so often, a computer finds a solution and strikes (digital) gold.

While some may dispute that number, the reality is that the market leader is a Chinese company, DJI, which has not ripped off others' designs, but innovated its way to market dominance.

Western companies assuming that they 'own' artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other tech advances that will determine the future are forewarned. JL

Mike Murphy reports in Quartz:

This year (at CES) drone displays felt smaller because of contractions in the drone market. GoPro abandon(ed) the drone business. Parrot, one of the early leaders in consumer drones, didn’t even have a booth. All that was left was DJI and a bunch of companies trying to copy DJI. One reason DJI has come out on top is that it’s continued to innovate. The drone industry has become commoditized, and companies are trying to ride the coattails of the leader.

Wages have started to rise as the economy heats up.

Which raises questions about whether there was ever really a skills shortage, or merely the realization that people are capable of making informed decisions about the relative value of their time and services that may not be in accord with employers' assumptions. JL

Jordan Weissmann reports in Slate:

If good workers were really in short supply, you’d expect pay to rise as companies outbid each other for talent. Instead, employers carp(ed) about a lack of good job applicants while letting pay stagnate. What the firm loses in reduced output and revenue, it more than makes up in reduced costs paying lower wages. In reality, there’s only a shortage of people willing to work at the artificially low wage you’re paying. The problem isn’t a skills shortage, it’s that you aren’t offering market wages.

The question is whether, ultimately, there will be a point at which vast numbers of consumers will feel intruded upon, creeped out or violated enough to actually demand changes in government policies regarding the use of their personal data.

For now, though, those limits have not been reached. But marketers, through their increasing use of personalization, appear determined to find out whether such limits exist, and if so, where they might be. JL

Lindsay Rittenhouse reports in Adweek:

Major brands, including Spotify and Netflix are using user data to drive not only the targeting but the creation of their ads. Many campaigns seem like experiments designed to determine just how much of their own data people are willing to tolerate. “I can tell what bank you walked into [and] what you’re wearing just by your phone number. Would that creep you out if a brand knew the sweater you’re wearing? What’s the next level of creepy?”

The traditional standard in the US - are consumers worse off - is based purely on market share and is a boon to big tech companies.

But standards are different in Europe and Asia. And the climate in the US may be changing, focusing more on impact in the future due to restraint of innovation. JL

Greg Ip reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults use a Facebook; and Amazon accounts for 75% of electronic book sales. Google and Facebook absorbed 63% of online ad spending last year; Google and Apple Inc. provide 99% of mobile phone operating systems; Apple and Microsoft Corp. supply 95% of desktop operating systems. Antitrust regulators have a narrow test: Does their size leave consumers worse off? (But) If market dominance means fewer competitors and less innovation, consumers will be worse off. “The impact on innovation can be the most important competitive effect”

The underlying economics still have to establish competitive advantage.

Which means investments have to create enough market share, financial advantage - and data - to generate sufficient barriers to entry. Just like in analog businesses, only faster. JL

Jonathan Knee reports in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Structural attributes drive the value of network effects: the minimum market share at which the network can achieve financial breakeven; durability of customer relationships spawned by the network; the extent to which data generated by the network facilitates product and pricing optimization. They are versions of the competitive advantages that underpin the best businesses: economies of scale, customer captivity, and learning. (But) network effects are a fragile barrier to entry. For every Facebook and Microsoft, there are networks where it is not clear anyone will turn a profit.

Are Solar Roads the Highway of the Future - Or a Dead End?

Technically feasible but probably not practical until performance of solar road panels improves, wireless transmission of power becomes scalable and costs come down significantly. In other words, a definite possibility for the future, but not immediately. JL

Thomas Hornigold reports in Singularity Hub:

Given that the land is already covered, environmental disruption is lower. The power stations don’t suffer from remoteness problems. With LEDs, you have efficient street-lighting. With wireless power transmission, cars could be powered by roads. (But) the cost of replacing US roadways with solar roads would come in at $56 trillion. Chinese transparent asphalt can withstand 10 times more pressure than normal asphalt. If you spend $56 trillion on solar roads, you’d cover 7.5 x 10¹⁰m² with panels, generate 600 GW of electrical power - the electricity consumed by the US today.

There could be problems with the design, the data, the preprogrammed bias of the coders - or perhaps more importantly - the assumption that algorithms are inherently superior to humans at all forms of decision-making. JL

Issie Lapowsky reports in Wired:

Risk assessment algorithms, used in states from California to New Jersey, crunch data about a defendant’s history—like age, gender, and prior convictions—to help courts decide who gets bail, who goes to jail, and who goes free. Underlying the conversation about algorithms was this assumption that algorithmic prediction was inherently superior to human prediction. "There was no difference between people responding to an online survey for a buck and this commercial software being used in the courts."

Despite efforts to connect its tangible products with the increasingly intangible, screen-oriented focus of childrens' play, Lego has struggled to convert its strategy into profits.

The partnership with Chinese tech giant Tencent may help jumpstart that initiative, but the larger question may be what Lego has to surrender in terms of intellectual property and future direction to do so. JL

Thuy Ong reports in The Verge, image from Classic-castle.com:

The partnership will include the creation of a dedicated area for kids to watch Lego videos on Tencent’s platform, as well as the development of Lego-branded games. The Danish toymaker will also publish and operate Lego Boost, a simple, programmable, and connected robotics kit released in June last year. The two companies will explore co-developing a Chinese version of the social networking platform Lego Life, which is already available in other countries.

Moving fast - and hopefully not breaking things...JL

Neal Boudette reports in the New York Times:

G.M. submitted a petition to the United States Department of Transportation seeking permission to begin operating fully autonomous cars — without steering wheels or pedals — in a commercial ride-hailing service next year. The vehicle, the Cruise AV, could be put into production on a standard assembly line once approval was granted by the federal government and states where the cars would operate.

There has been growing concern among securities analysts that social media generally and Facebook specifically face significant risk of government regulation due to the growing evidence that the indiscriminate distribution of false or misleading news over their networks has influenced socio-economic and political outcomes.

While Twitter's stock has risen relatively as a potential competitive beneficiary, Facebook's has remained fairly steady because of the perception among analysts that the risk of regulation may now decrease. JL

Janko Roettgers reports in Variety and Stock News reports:

Twitter’s stock price rose just as Facebook lost 4.5% following CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that the company would tweak its news feed. Twitter is benefitting from the notion that Facebook is closing the door on news since Twitter has spent much of the past two years to reinvent itself as the place where users go to “see what’s happening.” (But some Wall Street analysts) "are positive about these changes because we believe they will be economically neutral and they lower the risk that FB gets regulated.”

The significance of the announcement is that this is a practical application of blockchain technology by two of the leaders in their respective fields - tech and logistics - which means their experience should create a more productive, glitch-free process for those who use it - and, potentially, a first mover advantage for themselves. JL

Richard Milne reports in The Financial Times:

The Danish shipping conglomerate and US (tech co.) estimate businesses spend a fifth of the cost to transport goods on processing documents and administration. The distributed ledger technology behind blockchain create(s) an unchangeable record of transactions along a supply chain shared in real time with whichever companies are necessary. The significance is huge for any transaction that has multiple parties. Blockchain would allow companies at different stages of the supply chain to see the information they need about each transaction. It could set a standard for the digitalisation of supply chains.

Google To Make Building Artificial Intelligence Algorithms As Easy As Drag and Drop

Smart strategy. Expand access for AI in order to grow the market - and associated revenues for Google. JL

Dave Gershgorn reports in Quartz:

Cloud AutoML (is) a cloud service that allows average folks to train a custom AI algorithm. The service will start with still images, but Google plans to expand this to all of its AI offerings. Google is trying to expand the group of people who can access and use AI software, rather than offer new capabilities. People who don’t know how to code can build and deploy an algorithm on their own. AutoML edits a customer’s algorithm to optimize it for a specific task, like recognizing images of car models or yogurt brands.

The most significant feature is not the placement of digital surveillance cameras nationwide, but the effort to merge the images with narrative and transactional personal data. JL

Simon Denyer reports in the Washington Post:

It will use facial recognition and artificial intelligence to analyze the mountain of video evidence. These efforts merge a vast database of information on every citizen, a “Police Cloud” that aims to scoop up medical records, travel bookings, online purchase and even social media comments — and link it to everyone’s identity card and face. The US with 62 million surveillance cameras, actually has higher per capita penetration rate than China, with around 172 million

Let's pause to remember who put the silicon in Silicon Valley. But artificial intelligence works best with new kinds of chips.

Which means startups may have as much of an opportunity to succeed as the established giants like Intel and Nvidia. JL

Cade Metz reports in the New York Times:

A.I. works better with new kinds of computer chips. Suddenly, venture capitalists forgot all those roadblocks to success for a young chip company. Today, 45 start-ups are working on chips that can power speech and self-driving cars, and five of them have raised more than $100 million from investors. Venture capitalists invested more than $1.5 billion in chip start-ups last year. Chip start-ups will face competition from Nvidia, Intel, Google. But everyone is starting from the same place: a new market.

It's not just that the audience is getting its information and entertainment from increasingly disparate sources - often at the same time - but that the very nature of the engagement may involve multiple senses such as visual, aural, numerative and digital.

Marketers and measurers are struggling to catch up. JL

Benjamin Mullin reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Total audience size defined by comScore or Nielsen is only one factor in an ad buying equation that includes engagement and content quality.“I don’t rely on any single source to make a decision.” “Unique visitors” as a benchmark to compare website audiences has become outmoded when content is disseminated on social media and other platforms. Digital has moved to distributed approaches. Audiences were undercounted by use (of) unique visitors as a baseline. (So) media companies have invested in social-first video.

Cognitive 'shorthand' employing visual and now aural imagery is becoming increasingly urgent for brands attempting to cut through the technological clutter facing all consumers. JL

Katie Richards reports in Adweek:

As Amazon’s Echo or Google Home Assistant become more embedded in daily lives, it’s becoming important for brands to create emotional connections without visuals, just sound. Cue sonic branding—the use of a sound, song or melody to reinforce a brand’s identity. Visa found that sound could make consumers feel safe and secure in their transactions, and that 81% of shoppers have a more positive reaction to Visa if it incorporated sound or animation into its marketing.

Professional investors may have thought there was an opportunity to be gained from retail investors headlong rush into cryptocurrencies.

But tax law changes benefitting repatriation of financial assets and other cyclical phenomenon have combined to roil the markets.

Bitcoin et al will survive in some form, probably under regulation, but in the meantime, prediction remains hard, even with great data. JL

Eric Lam, Lionel Laurent and colleagues report in Bloomberg:

Bitcoin lost 48% from its Dec. 18 high. The cryptocurrency’s 60-fold increase during the past three years dwarfed the Nasdaq Composite Index’s gain during the headiest days of the 1990s. It outstripped the Mississippi and South Sea bubbles of the 1700s. It even topped the Dutch tulipmani a of the 1630s. “Having no clear fundamental value and largely unregulated markets, coupled with a storyline conducive to delusions of grandeur, makes this the very essence of a bubble,”

Hawaii Five-UhOh: Did the Mobile Internet Break Emergency Alerts?

The good news is, everyone did get the message.

The bad news is, this system - like all systems - is neither mistake-proof nor capable of addressing the compounding that mobile technology now offers. JL

Ian Bogost reports in The Atlantic:

America’s emergency notification systems were first built for war, and then rebuilt for peace. A false alarm in Hawaii shows that they didn’t anticipate how media works in the smartphone era. Media have consolidated in devices everyone holds in their hands and pockets, but which work best with small quantities of narrow-bandwidth information. Someone pressed the wrong button on a computer, which then did exactly what it was programmed to do.

In the attention economy, it pays - literally and figuratively - to grab attention by any means necessary. Which often means plucking at human emotions.

Algorithms turn out to be really good at that. JL

Janessa Lantz reports in thinkgrowth.org:

Publishers have always struggled with balancing what readers should know vs. what readers want to read about, but now, the stakes are higher. Because algorithms, more than any human editor ever, cares about one thing only — owning your attention — and it has the massive data sets needed to achieve that goal. The formula is quite simple: create emotionally charged content, invest a bit of money into promoting that content on Facebook, watch the algorithm spread it regardless of value

Apple paid $21 billion to app developers in the last year.

But bogus apps that rip off users are becoming a common - and extremely profitable - means of using the app store to enrich unscrupulous developers. The question is whether Apple is doing anything about it. JL

Johnny Lin reports in Medium:

App developers take pride in the fact that if their creation adds value, or improves peoples’ lives in some way, then people will be happy to pay for it, and everybody benefits. So, aside from the moral wrongs of exploiting the vulnerable for profit, it’s disheartening to know that some developers are becoming financially successful the easy and unethical way — by making bogus apps that take a few hours to code, and whose functionality is purely to steal from the less well-informed.

Such an army could reduce cost, waste and improve the quality of the crops being raised for an increasingly healthful-demanding populace.

But will the big seed and chemical companies permit the cannibalization of their very profitable market? JL

Amanda Little reports in Bloomberg:

The implication of plant-by-plant—rather than field-by-field—farming is not just vast reductions in chemical usage. It could end monocropping (which) has given rise to high-calorie, low-nutrient diets that are causing heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Farmers have been segregating crops because equipment can’t handle more complexity. Robots that tend plants individually could support intercropping, planting complementary crops.

Uber and Lyft dont make economic sense for all commuters. Some live too far away from their destination (like the suburbs of San Francisco, New York or other large cities) and too many cars with one or two passengers simply adds to the traffic gridlock.

As global urbanization grows, the question is whether public and private transportation can work in concert to create a faster, less stressful commute for the vast majority. JL

Ronda Kaysen reports in the New York Times:

Tech companies ease commuter stress by crowdsourcing rides and then developing apps that offer the routes in demand. These services are larger and more complicated versions of ride-hailing apps like Uber or Lyft. Establishing a new commuter bus route takes more planning than requesting a car share. Riders have to rely on dozens of other passengers agreeing to sign on.Once a route has been established, riders purchase tickets through an app, guaranteeing them a seat.

There is little or no meaningful statistical correlation or causality between past and future performance.

Innovation is not about certainty but taking enlightened risks, which is how the great enterprises - and fortunes - were all made. JL

Stephanie Vozza reports in Fast Company:

These commonly used business phrases can hurt your motivation to innovate: best practices; return on investment; when I worked for...Best practices are usually two, three, or four years old. They probably aren’t even best practices anymore. Nine months in, the founders of Google tried to sell Google to Yahoo for a million dollars. Yahoo determined it wasn’t worth it: neither the founders nor the leading search engine of the time had a clue of Google’s ROI. ‘When I worked at XYZ, we tried that and it didn’t work,'”

The Ways Tesla Is Using Data and Artificial Intelligence To Craft Competitive Advantage

Tesla has built a substantial resource in the data its vehicles generate, all of which is automatically uploaded to the cloud.

It is creating two sources of value from its innovations, first by providing machine learning data to improve its vehicles' performance and future design, and second by establishing an intellectual property-based asset that could be worth billions on a standalone basis. "Tesla crowdsources data from its cars and their drivers." JL

Bernard Marr reports in Forbes:

Tesla has more sensors out on the roads gathering data than its Detroit or Silicon Valley rivals. The company is expecting its vehicles to increase by two thirds to 650,000 in 2018. Tesla vehicles send data directly to the cloud. Machine learning educat(es) the fleet, while edge computing decides what action the car takes. Cars form networks with other Tesla vehicles to share local information. These networks interface with cars from other manufacturers as well as traffic cameras, road sensors or mobile phones. McKinsey estimates vehicle-gathered data will be worth $750 billion a year by 2030.

The larger question may be: given the way the smartphone has evolved, how many brands of smart speaker can the market support? JL

Brian Heater reports in Tech Crunch:

Cortana gets no respect. Microsoft’s smart assistant is pretty solid, but it rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant. Maybe it’s a problem of marketing —it has 141 million monthly users. More likely, it’s a problem with Microsoft’s hardware strategy. Microsoft’s approach feels noncommittal. A good footprint with Windows 10 PCs isn’t a natural one for voice assistants like a smartphone. A head start is extremely important when it comes to ecosystems.

The target demographic and market positioning are important - but so are 'mouthfeel' and psychology. JL

Stephen Williams reports in the New York Times, image by Paulo Whitaker in Reuters:

A car’s name is crucial — it defines the car and can provoke an emotional response among consumers. Above all, a car’s name is brand equity, its very identity. Sound symbolism and letter structure are key precepts. One obstacle that branding experts in the car industry face is the dwindling number of names that are still free to be trademarked. There's a whole set of strategic considerations, (but)“We’ve found that our minds are a little on the lazy side and they look for something familiar."

Amazon is focused on smaller payloads - under five pounds - which comprise 90% of its deliveries. Given its experience with heavier airframes, hat leaves a lot of heavy lifting capability for Boeing. JL

Karen Hao reports in Quartz:

Boeing unveiled a prototype for a massive remote-controlled drone, meant to deliver cargo up to 500 pounds. Such ambitions put the plane maker in direct competition with Amazon, which said it was developing Prime Air drone delivery service. Both companies say their drones are intended to be able to deliver goods within at least a 10-mile radius. Amazon’s drones, however, are only intended to carry packages up to five pounds—a payload that the retailer says encompasses nearly 90% of its sales.

In the global war for talent, those countries - and enterprises - that welcome the best and brightest, no matter their origins, are the winners. JL

Rani Molla reports in Re/code:

Immigrants and their children have helped found 60% of the most highly valued tech companies in the U.S. Right now those companies — which include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook — have a combined market value of $3.8 trillion. These tech companies also rely on immigration to staff their businesses to compensate for a shortage of tech workers in the U.S. 70% of high-skill H-1B visas approved in 2016, the latest year for available data, went to people in computer-related fields

Data is only as good as the people and systems that create and input it. And the data on that suggests organizations have a lot of work to do because in a data-driven economy, the financial and operational costs of bad data are significant. JL

Thomas Redman reports in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Bad data is the norm. 50% of newly created data records had critical errors. Knowledge workers waste up to 50% of their time dealing with data quality issues. For data scientists, this may go as high as 80%. A consequence is mistakes, errors in operations, bad decisions, bad analytics, and bad algorithms. Indeed, “big garbage in, big garbage out” is the new “garbage in, garbage out.”Only 16% of managers fully trust the data they use. The cost of bad data is 15% to 25% of revenue for most companies.

Google Maps Has Created a "Data Moat" That Apple Can't Cross

While Apple was investing in phones, Google was investing in data. It is hard to say that one is more successful than the other given their differing foci.

But whose investment will yield the greatest return in the future will be interesting to see. JL

Justin O'Beirne reports in Medium:

Google has scanned more than 80 billion of its Street View images for place and business information. Google has gathered so much data, in so many areas, that it’s now creating features that Apple can’t make—surrounding Google Maps with a moat of time. In 2014, Google Street View vehicles had driven 7 million miles, including 99 % of the public roads in the U.S. It took Google’s Street View vehicles seven years to drive 99% of the U.S. Google may have a 6+ year lead over Apple in data collection.

You should not need a certificate from a coding academy to open your fridge. Should you? JL

Nilay Patel reports in The Verge:

Think of the tech industry as being built on an ever-increasing number of assumptions: that you know what a computer is, that saying “enter your Wi-Fi password” means something to you, that you understand what an app is, that you have the desire to manage your Bluetooth list, that you’ll figure out what USB-C dongles you need. What I’ve noticed is that the tech industry is starting to make assumptions faster than anyone can be expected to keep up.

Humans are suckers for machines that minic their gestures and pretend to be their friends. That's a business opportunity. JL

Wilson Rothman reports in the Wall Street Journal:

At the CES 2018 tech show, if you spotted a humanoid robot, especially one with legs, it was a toy. The useful robots were on wheels, with stocky bodies. A Kinect sees people in a room; an iPhone X sees eyes and a nose. Collecting data is easy, interpreting data is hard: Humans know the difference between people and couches, eyes and noses, but machines don’t. Homes will need fewer R2-D2s and more C-3POs. Which one would you rather have cooking your dinner—a bleeping trash can or a tall shiny-metal figure with arms and legs?

Maybe. The question is whether founder Mark Zuckerberg, famous for his ruthless competitive instincts, will be able to stand it if Facebook loses its status, profit and revenue growth.

Bill Gates was able to re-focus when he left Microsoft to his less able successor. Steve Jobs could never detach himself. We'll see which model Zuckerberg follows. JL

Franklin Foer reports in The Atlantic:

Facebook published the opinions of its users. (But) no Facebook user wants to believe that they are sharing fake news. And Facebook has no interest in telling its users their political preferences are founded in lies. Facebook will be back making us feel terrible about the inferiority of our vacations, the mediocrity of our children. Still, the social tolls of Facebook-induced status anxiety are less than political tolls of Facebook filter bubbles. Zuckerberg display(ed) humility and self-awareness to back down

States in the US have considerable power to make rules regarding their own contracts with telecom, cable and internet service providers, especially in huge states like California and New York.

The legislative thrust is that companies raising rates or slowing down provision of service would be penalized. In addition to legislative initiatives, internet access will be a major issue in the 2018 elections at the state level. JL

Cecilia Kang reports in the New York Times:

Lawmakers in states, including California and New York, have introduced bills in that would forbid internet providers to block or slow down sites or online services. Bills are more focused on government contracts than telecom law,. State (telecom) projects are huge and this will really affect the internet service providers. “This is not a partisan issue. Everyone is concerned about equal access to the internet."

That new, new thing for which everyone pined; the next transformative device that would take over our lives, challenge the smartphone (and drive a lot of sales of both hardware and software) but which pundits assumed was a few years away may have slipped into lots of Christmas stockings or Hannukah bundles last month.

Yes, the smart speaker has become the 'it gadget' du jour. And it matters because an essential, core element of its role is to connect all those other disparate devices people have lying around their homes and offices, including stuff that has been there since Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell bestrode the earth. Oh, and let's not forget the other key role smart speakers play is to capture all - and we mean all - the data that other stuff generates. Amazon and Google lost money on the devices by lowering prices to drive purchases because they knew the real profits were from the intangible value of usage, not the tangible thing itself. That is what Wall Street calls 'strategic positioning.' JL

Sarah Perez reports in Tech Crunch:

One in six Americans now own a smart speaker, up 128% from January, 2017. 30% of smart speaker owner said the device is replacing time spent with TV. They’re also listening to more audio (71%). The adoption of the device for in-home voice assistance had a trickle-down effect, as 44% found they started using the voice assistance on their phone more since getting a smart speaker.

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