Day: 19 April 2021

Remember Netbooks? ⇥ theverge.com

Nilay Patel, the Verge:

Windows getting shown up by Linux was not allowed, so Microsoft did some Microsoft maneuvering, and by January 2008 the Eee PC was running Windows XP instead. It was also part of a larger category called “netbooks,” and we were all made to know what netbooks were.

[…]

The netbook explosion was all the more odd because every netbook had the same basic specs, as Microsoft charged more for a standard non-Starter Windows license if a computer had anything more than a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. So it was all colors and screen sizes, really. All to run a deeply-annoying version of Windows, on a computer that no one was even remotely claiming could replace a primary PC. By the end of it all, as the chips inevitably got more powerful, enough laptop vendors were telling Joanna that their new netbook-like computers weren’t netbooks that she started calling them “notbooks.”

The thing I remember most about the netbook era were the constant cries of technology analysts demanding that Apple make a netbook.

Jason Snell of Macworld reported on Apple’s 2008 fourth-quarter earnings:

At Apple’s event launching the company’s new laptops last week, Jobs was asked about the emerging category of “netbooks,” low-cost and low-feature laptops. Last week, Jobs made skeptical noises about the category, saying it was just too early to tell what would happen. On Tuesday Jobs went a little further, dangling some suggestion that Apple is watching the category closely: “It’s a nascent category and we’ll watch while it evolves,” Jobs said. “And we’ve got some pretty good ideas if it does evolve.”

Gregg Keizer of Computerworld in December 2008:

Apple Inc. will introduce two netbooks at the MacWorld Conference and Expo next month that will be tied to the company’s App Store, as is its iPhone, an analyst said today.

“I don’t have any inside information,” said Ezra Gottheil of Technology Business Research Inc., as he spelled out his take on Apple’s next hardware move. “This is just by triangulation.”

The computer Apple actually introduced at Macworld in January 2009 was the 17-inch MacBook Pro which only resembled a netbook from really far away.

David Carnoy of CNet could not have been more blunt in this 2009 editorial, which ran with the headline “Why Apple must do a Netbook now” and this dek:

With news that users are hacking Windows and Linux Netbooks to run OS X — and run it pretty well — Apple needs to release a Netbook of its own before it loses ground in the highest-growth laptop category.

I am sure Apple’s executives are just kicking themselves all the way to the bank.

Anyway, shortly after the iPad came out, the “netbook” name became toxic and, as Patel writes, the companies making them avoided that marketing. Patel and Joanna Stern argue that iPads are their spiritual successor, but I think Chromebooks are far more netbook-like. If anything is to be a “netbook”, it should be a laptop that is effectively just for web apps — and nothing is more like that than a kind of notebook named after the world’s most popular web browser.

The North Korean Government’s Many Digital Heists ⇥ newyorker.com

Ed Caesar, the New Yorker:

North Korea’s cybercrime program is hydra-headed, with tactics ranging from bank heists to the deployment of ransomware and the theft of cryptocurrency from online exchanges. It is difficult to quantify how successful Pyongyang’s hackers have been. Unlike terrorist groups, North Korea’s cybercriminals do not claim responsibility when they strike, and the government issues reflexive denials. As a result, even seasoned observers sometimes disagree when attributing individual attacks to North Korea. Nevertheless, in 2019, a United Nations panel of experts on sanctions against North Korea issued a report estimating that the country had raised two billion dollars through cybercrime. Since the report was written, there has been bountiful evidence to indicate that the pace and the ingenuity of North Korea’s online threat have accelerated.

According to the U.N., many of the funds stolen by North Korean hackers are spent on the Korean People’s Army’s weapons program, including its development of nuclear missiles. The cybercrime spree has also been a cheap and effective way of circumventing the harsh sanctions that have long been imposed on the country. In February, John C. Demers, the Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division of the Justice Department, declared that North Korea, “using keyboards rather than guns,” had become a “criminal syndicate with a flag.”

There are elements of this report that I do not love,1 but it is an extraordinary look at the effects of an advanced persistent threat actor whose motivation is almost solely financial gain. American and Israeli governments collaborated on malware for espionage and hardware destruction in Iran; the Russian government unleashed Petya and NotPetya to attack Ukraine in an act of war; “Five Eyes” governments share the Warriorpride espionage framework (PDF) for smartphones. But none of these countries’ governments seem interested in siphoning cash just because they can. North Korea, sanctioned internationally and with limited resources, needs money and has invested in a world-class digital subterfuge team to get it.

  1. For example, Priscilla Moriuchi, who is now at Harvard and was previously at the NSA, said in an interview quoted here that “North Koreans understand criminality”. It sounds like Moriuchi means the North Korean government and its agencies, not North Korean people generally, but this imprecision frustrates me because it implies that an entire country’s population is criminally-minded. ↥︎

Apple Will Let Parler Back Into the App Store ⇥ edition.cnn.com

In January, Parler’s iOS app was booted from the App Store because the social network was a deliberately under-moderated platform without demonstrable community standards. Along with Facebook, Parler was one of the platforms used by those involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. It had a more concentrated favourability with pro-violence and anti-democratic users than Facebook, however, because of its weak moderation policies. Apple said that Parler’s app would be allowed back into the App Store if it could show a plan to control hate speech and targeted attacks.

In March, Nicolás Rivero of Quartz reported that Parler was reworking its policies so that Apple would permit the app in its store, but was rejected for not going far enough:

In a statement the next day, Parler’s chief policy officer, Amy Peikoff, stressed the lengths to which the platform has gone in recent months to implement new moderation practices to appease Apple. “We worked tirelessly to adopt enhanced protocols for identifying and removing this type of content,” Peikoff wrote. “We have since engaged Apple to show them how we’ve incorporated a combination of algorithmic filters and human review to detect and remove content that threatens or incites violence.”

Peikoff also wrote that Parler has rolled out all-new moderation features that weed out “personal attacks based on immutable and irrelevant characteristics such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion.” Mainstream social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have long since adopted algorithms to block exactly these forms of hate speech (although they tend to use language like “protected categories” rather than “immutable and irrelevant characteristics”). The main difference is that Parler gives its users the ability to opt out of its hate speech filter so they can “curate their own feeds as they choose.”

None of that was enough to win Apple over. But Peikoff seemed to indicate that Parler would make more changes to placate the tech giant. “Parler expects and hopes to keep working with Apple to return to the App Store,” she wrote.

After months of discussion, it appears that Apple is satisfied with the changes Parler is proposing. Brian Fung, CNN:

Apple has approved Parler’s return to the iOS app store following improvements the social media company made to better detect and moderate hate speech and incitement, according to a letter the iPhone maker sent to Congress on Monday.

The decision clears the way for Parler, an app popular with conservatives including some members of the far right, to be downloaded once again on Apple devices.

The letter — addressed to Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Ken Buck and obtained by CNN — explained that since the app was removed from Apple’s platform in January for violations of its policies, Parler “has proposed updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices.”

CNN did not share Apple’s letter, but Sen. Lee’s office has published its copy (PDF) if you would like to read it in full. Here’s a key paragraph:

In response, Parler did not communicate a sufficient plan to improve its moderation of user-generated content in the app. Thereafter, and consistent with standard app review processes, Apple’s app review team, ARB, and ERB decided to remove the Parler app from the App Store for non-compliance with the Guidelines. Customers who had already downloaded the Parler app prior to its removal from the App Store could still access the app, and Apple understands that Parler’s website is accessible on the Internet, including through a web browser on an Apple device.

There are no iOS clients for 4chan or OnlyFans, but Parler seems to think its growth will be more straightforward by making its Twitter clone more like better-moderated platforms than to stick to its pretend principles. I think that is preferable. Anonymity and pseudonymity is not why social networks are often vile, nor does it explain why 4chan, Gab, and Parler are generally worse. It is a lack of community standards and effective moderation.

Parler is trying to improve; I think that is welcome. But I do not think it will make Parler a welcoming community for many; if you are looking for a steady supply of vaccine scaremongering and mask misinformation, you’ll love it there. The effects of Parler’s new rules are a mystery for now as they are not yet in place.