Month: July 2017

AdAge: Apple to Begin Allowing Third-Party Ads in Apple News ⇥ adage.com

Garett Sloane, AdAge:

At the moment, Apple maintains tight control over ad delivery in its popular news app, and publishers say they are not generating much revenue there.

Publishers can set up ad campaigns to run in their Apple News articles, with all types of ad formats including standard banner ads and videos. “It just takes a lot of additional effort,” said one top publishing executive, speaking on condition of anonymity.

To fix that and keep media partners happy, Apple plans to allow publishers to use the ad tech they already employ on their sites, such as Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers, to deliver ads into Apple News.

The entire reason I — and others — use Apple News is because it sucks a lot less to read articles in there than it does on the web.

John Gruber:

Publishers need to find ways to do ads that don’t interrupt or delay the reading experience. I don’t know why this is so hard for them to understand.

The short answer is that the data tells them otherwise. Enough readers apparently tolerate really crappy ads that move text all over the place to play a thirty second video ad for Frosted Flakes — or, at least, they’re just effective enough to pay for the users who click away and those that run ad blockers.

As long as publishers don’t control their own ads, bad ads will persist. But building the infrastructure for an online advertising department is expensive, especially when compared to copying and pasting one of Google’s JavaScript snippets, and only very major publications can even attempt to do so — the Economist being one example.

Christina Warren:

re: Apple News ad changes, I have to think (and have it on good authority) that without those changes, publishers will leave

So yes, it “junks” up the news experience, but publishers (and I mean big ones) are threatening to leave otherwise.

Apple News is entirely dependent on retaining big publishers; without them, the app collapses. Adding third-party advertising support ought to make publishers happy, but it’s probably going to suck for readers. So what can Apple do?

Sloane:

There also are plans to enable micropayment options so people can access articles for cents at a time, according to another Apple publishing partner.

That’s one way, but I’m not convinced it will work. If people are given the option of paying a single cent upfront for every article they read, I doubt they’ll take that option when an apparently free version exists on the web — even though it might ultimately cost them twenty or thirty times as much.

Haunted by Data, Television News Edition ⇥ wsj.com

Joe Flint, Wall Street Journal (Twitter workaround for paywall):

In a game largely sanctioned by TV-ratings firm Nielsen, television networks try to hide their shows’ poor performances on any given night by forgetting how to spell.

That explains the appearance of “NBC Nitely News,” which apparently aired on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend this year, when a lot of people were away from their TVs. The retitling of “NBC Nightly News” fooled Nielsen’s automated system, which listed “Nitely” as a separate show.

Hiding the May 26 program from Nielsen dramatically improved the show’s average viewership that week. Instead of falling further behind first-place rival “ABC World News Tonight,” NBC news narrowed the gap.

According to Flint, this is a not-uncommon practice for broadcast networks because higher average viewership numbers mean a higher commanding price for advertising.

Recall Maciej Cegłowski’s talk from the Strata + Hadoop World conference:

A more recent and less fictitious example is electronic logging devices on trucks. These are intended to limit the hours people drive, but what do you do if you’re caught ten miles from a motel?

The device logs only once a minute, so if you accelerate to 45 mph, and then make sure to slow down under the 10 mph threshold right at the minute mark, you can go as far as you want.

So we have these tired truckers staring at their phones, bunny-hopping down the freeway late at night.

Of course there’s an obvious technical countermeasure. You can start measuring once a second.

Notice what you’re doing, though. Now you’re in an adversarial arms race with another human being that has nothing to do with measurement. It’s become an issue of control, agency and power.

You thought observing the driver’s behavior would get you closer to reality, but instead you’ve put another layer between you and what’s really going on.

If they wanted to, Nielsen could fix this problem with more data. They could do fuzzy matches for similarly-named programs and manually verify viewership numbers for each show. But that’s just increasing the number of steps networks have to take in order to inflate their viewership averages — instead of “Nitely News”, it could become “Lester Holt’s Hour of Power”. Every time Nielsen makes an adjustment, major networks would simply adjust.

I’m becoming increasingly convinced that making adjustments to products based purely on analytics data is a futile exercise, and can encourage obviously obtuse behaviours:

NBC in 2015 persuaded almost a dozen of its local TV station affiliates to rerun “Nightly News” after 2 a.m. At the time, NBC said, it was focused “on ways to reach our audience when and how they want to be reached.”

A rival network thought otherwise and alerted NBC advertisers to the practice. After learning of the stunt, many advertisers cried foul. They told NBC whoever was watching the newscast at that hour wasn’t the kind of consumer they wanted to reach. NBC said it quickly discontinued the practice.

You’ve seen similar practices to this on the web, only worse and far more extreme. Remember the era of paginated articles, where you’d get halfway through and have to click through to view the second half? Those were all the rage for two reasons: first, an increase in ad impressions; second, an increase in page views. The latter is part of a pretty typical SEO trick, since Google reportedly boosts rankings for websites that see more page views in a single session. However, this creates a terrible experience for readers. And every time Google makes an adjustment to the way they rank websites, a bunch of people scramble to try to figure out how to game the data for better rankings.

None of this actually helps people, though. Collecting a bunch of user data and blindly following it doesn’t always help make a better product — in fact, it sometimes produces a worse product — and it’s a privacy nightmare.

Intel Inside, Without the Sticker Outside ⇥ kensegall.com

Ken Segall:

I get that Intel Inside is one of the most successful marketing campaigns in business history. It’s just that after 36 years, that logo starts to feel more like a pollutant than an advertising device.

Thankfully, Macs have remained 100% free of Intel branding since Apple adopted its processors way back in 2006.

We have Steve Jobs’s sensibilities to thank for this. But how it all happened is a fun little story.

Back in August 2007, about a year after Apple began shipping Intel Macs,1 they held an event at their on-campus Town Hall theatre where they launched the first aluminum iMac, iLife ’08, and iWork ’08. After the event, they held a less-formal question-and-answer session between Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and the journalists in the audience. Bob Keefe of Cox Newspapers asked:

Can you say why you all are not participating in the Intel Inside program, putting the stickers on your new or previous Macs?

Jobs’ reply is now pretty famous:

Uh. What can I say? We like our own stickers better.

He provided cogent explanation of why the branding isn’t necessary, and Schiller jumped in to point out that all the promotional deals that manufacturers have made actually make the products worse for users.

Keefe’s question unfortunately prompted a rash of ridicule. Jason Snell, Macworld (then at Macuser):

Yes, access to Jobs is limited. So I can see why a reporter like Keefe would use the opportunity to ask Jobs a question and get a quote for a story he was working on. It’s not something I think I would’ve done, because to me it’s a selfish act that makes everyone in the room subservient to one writer’s deadline and story idea. […]

But I can’t condemn Keefe for asking the question. I wouldn’t have asked it, and it was a bit moldy and off topic, but damned if its end result wasn’t a great distillation of Apple’s product philosophy.

Segall, again, on the effects of the Intel Macs:

Today, even though some speculate that Apple will switch to ARM processors, one cannot diminish the importance of Steve’s switch to Intel in 2006.

His decision instantly demolished the argument that PCs had a built-in advantage over Macs.

With processor parity, Apple could focus 100% on the things that set Macs apart on a more human level: software, design, quality and simplicity.

If Apple were to switch to ARM processors in the Mac — and, I think, that’s a very big “if” — it would no longer be possible to directly compare specific Mac models against their Windows counterparts, if that was all a buyer may be interested in. But that could work to Apple’s distinct advantage; for the last several years, they’ve been emphasizing things that work better on the Mac because of the hardware and software integration. A custom processor seems like it would fall into that line of thought.

  1. At this time, Apple was also in the middle of creating a fork of Mac OS X that would run on low-performance ARM processors in the iPhone. Wild, right? ↥︎

Password Strength Indicators Help People Make Ill-Informed Choices ⇥ troyhunt.com

Troy Hunt:

Here’s the bottom line with all this: password strength meters which simply run JavaScript in the client and apply basic mathematics are woefully inadequate. Likewise, websites applying similar maths to enforce “strong” passwords in no way guarantee that actual strong passwords will be chosen. All these calculators neglect the human element of passwords and that’s an enormously important part of the picture.

I know blog posts on passwords aren’t super dynamic and fun, but this is a great piece to show friends and family. Password cracking software has adapted to work with the XKCD-style multi-word passphrase format, so pure length isn’t the answer any more; secure passwords are long, complex, and unique. That makes those passwords very hard to remember, but products like 1Password and features like Touch ID are slowly making laboriously typing passwords a relic of the past.

Apple’s Taste in Television ⇥ theoutline.com

Have you ever watched an event unfold that is so embarrassing for those involved that you get deeply embarrassed? I’ve tried watching more episodes of “Planet of the Apps”, and I’m finding it hard to see the show as anything other than a cynical, merchandise-driven, and tasteless attempt at original programming. The first time that I watched the premiere episode, I was under the impression that it just wasn’t the show for me; after re-watching it, though, I don’t think it’s just me.

Data Brokers Are Pervasive in Daily Life and Growing ⇥ crackedlabs.org

A huge, groundbreaking study from Cracked Labs shows the scale of big data collection in nearly every aspect of daily life. Wolfie Christl:

One major reason that corporate tracking and profiling has become so pervasive lies in the fact that nearly all websites, mobile app providers, and many device vendors actively share behavioral data with other companies.

A few years ago most websites began embedding tracking services that transmit user data to third parties into their websites. Some of these services provide visible functionality to users. When a website shows, for example, a Facebook like button or an embedded YouTube video, user data is transmitted to Facebook or Google. Many other services related to online advertising remain hidden, though, and largely serve only one purpose, namely to collect user data. It is widely unknown exactly which kinds of user data digital publishers share and how third parties use this data. At least part of these tracking activities can be examined by everybody; by installing the browser extension Lightbeam, for example, one can visualize the hidden network third-party trackers.

A recent study examined one million different websites and found more than 80,000 third-party services that receive data about the visitors of these websites. Around 120 of these tracking services were found on more than 10,000 websites, and six companies monitor users on more than 100,000 websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Oracle’s BlueKai. A study on 200,000 users from Germany visiting 21 million web pages showed that third-party trackers were present on 95% of the pages visited. Similarly, most mobile apps share information on their users with other companies. A 2015 study of popular apps in Australia, Brazil, Germany, and the US found that between 85% and 95% of free apps and even 60% of paid apps connect to third parties that collect personal data.

Consider that there are thousands of these companies. Consider, too, that many of them share information between themselves, and that you won’t necessarily know when you’re providing information to any of these companies because, oftentimes, the privacy policy on different websites won’t always disclose which trackers and advertising scripts they are using at any given time. Finally, consider that there’s virtually no way to opt out of this kind of mass data collection, because it’s largely beyond your control.

Google DeepMind Trial Failed to Comply With U.K. Data Protection Act ⇥ iconewsblog.wordpress.com

The Information Commissioner’s Office, in a press release:

The ICO has ruled the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust failed to comply with the Data Protection Act when it provided patient details to Google DeepMind.

The Trust provided personal data of around 1.6 million patients as part of a trial to test an alert, diagnosis and detection system for acute kidney injury.

But an ICO investigation found several shortcomings in how the data was handled, including that patients were not adequately informed that their data would be used as part of the test.

Elizabeth Denham, Information Commissioner, weighs in on the findings on the ICO blog:

But what stood out to me on looking through the results of the investigation is that the shortcomings we found were avoidable. The price of innovation didn’t need to be the erosion of legally ensured fundamental privacy rights. I’ve every confidence the Trust can comply with the changes we’ve asked for and still continue its valuable work. This will also be true for the wider NHS as deployments of innovative technologies are considered.

Denham makes this point specifically regarding health information, but it should be applied to all kinds of data, particularly when multiple streams of data are collected and connected. It may be harder to innovate in a big data way without collecting information on a big data scale — much like how it may be more difficult to investigate crimes when everyone’s phone isn’t being wiretapped at all times. But we should ensure that we are vigilant about reducing the erosion of our privacy protections in both the public and private sectors, even if that means waiting longer for innovative new technologies.

WSJ: With Bixby Delayed in U.S., Samsung Is Working on a ‘Smart’ Speaker ⇥ wsj.com

Timothy W. Martin, Wall Street Journal (work around the paywall via Twitter, or read the CNet summary):

Samsung Electronics Co. is developing a voice-activated speaker powered by its digital assistant Bixby, according to people familiar with the matter, joining a proliferating arms race in tabletop devices.

[…]

One variable slowing Samsung’s progress is the postponed U.S. launch of the English-language version of Bixby, which would operate the speaker much as Alexa operates Amazon’s Echo device, according to people familiar with the matter. Bixby’s voice features were a key selling point for the world’s largest smartphone maker’s latest flagship model, the Galaxy S8, introduced April 21.

The company vowed the English-language Bixby would be ready by spring, but now Samsung internally believes those voice features are unlikely before the second half of July, one of the people said. The Galaxy S8 is Samsung’s first device to feature Bixby.

Previously, Martin reported that Bixby had been delayed because it was having difficulty understanding English. You might reasonably think that mastering English would be trivial for Bixby seeing as Samsung acquired the Viv virtual assistant — that amazing one built by ex-Siri engineers — but, apparently, Bixby doesn’t use any of Viv’s technology yet.

What It’s Like Raising Money as a Woman in Silicon Valley ⇥ forbes.com

Some followup on Katie Benner’s brutal New York Times article about widespread sexual harassment from venture capitalists when female founders attempt to raise funding for their companies. And this followup is actually a piece from back in 2014, when Jeff Bercovici of Forbes published an account from a female founder who requested anonymity:

After some small talk, he sat next to me on the couch and commented that I looked stressed. He put down his glass of wine and reached to massage my shoulders. As he slid his hands further, I made a nervous joke, quickly trying to shift my weight away from him. I leaned into the corner of the couch and crossed my legs, attempting to put an obstacle in his way. Undeterred, he continued to reach for me.

I got up and walked across the room. Trying to keep it light, I comment on how often men made inappropriate advances towards me during business meetings, hoping he’d get the message.

“Yeah, that’s tough. You can’t really say anything because it’s one tight knit community,” he said, probably thinking he sounded sympathetic.

If I chose to complain—or make a scene and wake up his children who slept nearby—it would be another case of he said / she said, like the countless harassment cases that have made headlines in the tech community but have not done much to change status quo. Given his standing in the community and his personal wealth, who would believe my claims as anything more than those of a spurned little girl upset that a VC had chosen not to invest in her company?

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy is talking out of their ass. If male founders were subject to the same pervasive sexual harassment as women face, reforms would have happened a long time ago.

Yet, despite high-profile resignations lately from men implicated in these reports, I’m not really sure any meaningful reforms are currently taking place. Top venture capital companies are overwhelmingly run by men, and their power allows a festering quiet environment where women are propositioned to exchange sex for funding. The relative dearth female venture capital partners is, quite possibly, a symptom as well for a much bigger and more pervasive problem — women simply aren’t respected or treated as seriously as their male counterparts. That’s something that needs to be fixed everywhere, but for an industry that encourages reinventing the world, it’s especially problematic.

Women Frankly Describe Rampant Sexual Harassment in Silicon Valley ⇥ nytimes.com

Katie Benner, New York Times:

One female entrepreneur recounted how she had been propositioned by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist while seeking a job with him, which she did not land after rebuffing him. Another showed the increasingly suggestive messages she had received from a start-up investor. And one chief executive described how she had faced numerous sexist comments from an investor while raising money for her online community website.

What happened afterward was often just as disturbing, the women told The New York Times. Many times, the investors’ firms and colleagues ignored or played down what had happened when the situations were brought to their attention. Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism.

Now some of these female entrepreneurs have decided to take that risk. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent days about being sexually harassed. Ten of them named the investors involved, often providing corroborating messages and emails, and pointed to high-profile venture capitalists such as Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital and Dave McClure of 500 Startups, who did not dispute the accounts.

Journalists often try to get two unaffiliated sources to corroborate claims like these; Benner got over two dozen women reporting their own experiences, many of them attributed to them. Given the culture of Silicon Valley that has been reported in countless articles, including Benner’s piece, that’s a brave move.

This story is well-reported and shocking but, alas, unsurprising. The day before the Times published their piece — and, presumably, around the time that Benner contacted Chris Sacca for a response — he published a thing on Medium to preempt some of the criticism he would inevitably face. It sounds like an acknowledgement of his mistakes but, just a day after Benner’s piece was published, Susan J. Fowler — yes, that Susan J. Fowler — said on Twitter that Sacca messaged her to try to get her to stop tweeting about him. Gross.

Update: Matthew Panzarino and Jonathan Shieber of TechCrunch are reporting that Dave McClure has resigned.