John Paczkowski | Vox

Code/red: LA Unified iPad Deal Failure Impressively Well-Realized

2019-03-06T06:25:14-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

The inaugural Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference.
Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting.

Programming Note: Code/red is on hiatus. Join us tomorrow evening for Code/Media Series: San Francisco.

LA Unified’s iPad Deal Ends in Total Shitshow

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s once-promising iPads-for-every-student deal has come to an ignominious end — in a federal investigation. FBI agents this week seized 20 boxes of documents from LAUSD headquarters, all of them related to a $1.3 billion effort to outfit district students with iPads that was poorly executed enough to be a subplot on “Saved by the Bell.” The investigation is the final gyre in a death spiral that began this past summer after the discovery of a disconcertingly cozy relationship between former LAUSD Supt. John Deasy and executives at Apple and educational publisher Pearson. The morning after the FBI visited LAUSD headquarters, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he’s scrapping the contract behind the iPads-for-all project entirely. “We’re not going to use the original iPad contract anymore,” Cortines told the Los Angeles Times. “I think there have been too many innuendos [and] rumors.”

Yeah, Two Billion Dollars Better …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first reaction to the Oculus Rift: “Wow, that was a lot better than I was expecting it to be.”

FCC Commissioner Flips Rhetorical Table on Netflix — “Jersey Housewife” Style

If Netflix believes Internet “fast lanes” are such a lousy idea, why is it supporting them? That’s the question FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai put to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Tuesday, calling the company out for what he implies is brazen hypocrisy. Netflix has been one of the principal advocates for subjecting Internet service providers to public utility regulation under Title II of the Communications Act, arguing that this step is necessary to prevent the development of so-called “fast lanes” on the Internet, Pai wrote. “For this reason, I was surprised to learn of allegations that Netflix has been working to effectively secure ‘fast lanes’ for its own content on ISPs’ networks at the expense of its competitors.” Netflix hasn’t yet responded to Pai’s claims, but it’s worth noting that they seem at first look a little wobbly and, as Ars Technica notes, lacking key information — specifically solid evidence backing up that “fast lanes” claim.

Point/Counterpoint: Let’s Hope Common Decency Prevails vs. So Much for Common Decency

Sony chiefs Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal: “While we are not yet sure of the full scope of information that the attackers have or might release, we unfortunately have to ask you to assume that information about you in the possession of the company might be in their possession. While we would hope that common decency might prevent disclosure, we of course cannot assume that.”

Kevin Roose, Fusion: “Here are just a few of the revelations I found in the leaked [Sony] archives — most in normal, unencrypted Excel and Word files, labeled as plain as day: A spreadsheet listing Sony Pictures employees who were fired or laid off in 2014 as part of the company’s reorganization, along with the reasons for their termination.”

Al Franken Welcomes Lyft to Al Franken Decade

Looks like Uber isn’t the only ride-hailing service furrowing Sen. Al Franken’s brow. On Tuesday, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law sent Lyft CEO Logan Green a letter questioning him about the company’s data collection practices and reports about “inadequate regard among Lyft executives for customers’ privacy.” The missive is nearly identical to the one Franken sent to Uber, and touches on points of concern about proper use of consumer data and just who has access to it. And Lyft’s response to it is as predictably saccharine as Uber’s was. Just like its pugnacious rival, Lyft looks forward to discussing its “commitment to consumer privacy in depth.”

Coincidentally, Bemusement and Disgust Also Typical Response to Your Article

Business Insider’s Mike Bird on the typical response to his ridiculous BlackBerry Passport: “His reaction was similar to that of most of the people I’ve met since: A cross between bemusement, excitement, and disgust.”

Fortune Calls Apple PR as First Witness in E-Book Price-Fixing Appeal Article

Eddy Cue — Apple’s master dealmaker and central witness in the U.S. Department of Justice’s e-book price-fixing case against it — has a message for the DOJ and anyone else (cough, Amazon) who claims that Apple conspired to shift the e-book industry from the wholesale pricing model established by Amazon to an agency model where publishers, not retailers, set e-book prices, sending them higher than they had been in the past. Even after the DOJ’s victory against Apple, he says, in hindsight, he’d do nothing differently. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d do it again,” Cue told Fortune. “I’d just take better notes.” Wonder if Cue, described by the government as the “chief ringleader” of Apple’s e-book price-fixing cabal, will be equally forthright with such sentiments when the case heads to appeal later this month.

Asked Myself the Same Question While Writing This …

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on RealNetworks in 2011: “Do they still exist?”

Sounds Like a Wednesday Lunch Special at the Google Cafeteria

Motherboard’s Jason Koebler on Soylent alternative Schmoylent: “In theory, Schmoylent wins points for being full of ingredients that I can find in my pantry right now. In practice, well, it doesn’t seem that much more complex than something I could make if I simply threw every powder I have in my house into a ziplock bag and crushed some multivitamins in it.”

Off Topic

Time Trap and Stephen Colbert on the new lightsaber in the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” trailer.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Nutshell isolation pods to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Artificial Intelligence Freaks Stephen Hawking Out, Too

2019-03-06T06:03:24-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Apple’s iPod antitrust class action suit heads back into court.

Stephen Hawking: Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

Elon Musk’s fear that reckless artificial intelligence research might someday turn humanity into a “biological boot loader for digital superintelligence” isn’t entirely unfounded. Just ask theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, another scary-smart guy who views AI as more existential threat than Kubrickian plot point. “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Hawking told the BBC. “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

Wonder If This Additional Uber Raise Is for Opposition Research?

Uber’s brand awareness far exceeds the recent controversies that have befouled it. The ride-hailing company, which is looking to raise $1 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation, has hired Goldman Sachs to raise additional money from the bank’s fattest of fat-cat clients. Evidently, the company’s aggressive business practices, consumer data issues, and talk of doing opposition research on reporters gets easier to ignore as its valuation increases.

Huawei Executive Happy to Say What Everyone’s Thinking About Windows Phone

Two Windows Phone handsets was all it took for Huawei to realize that Microsoft’s mobile OS wasn’t worth further time or effort. The company tabled plans for further Windows Phone devices back in August, saying it was having a hard time persuading consumers to buy them. And Windows Phone’s flagging performance in the smartphone market in the ensuing months clearly hasn’t done much to temper the company’s distaste for the OS. In an interview with the Seattle Times, Huawei head of international media affairs Joe Kelly said the company is unlikely to attempt another Windows Phone handset because there’s simply no good reason to do so. “We didn’t make any money in Windows Phone,” he said. “Nobody made any money in Windows Phone.”

North Korea Puts Pinky Finger Near Corner of Mouth in Sinister Fashion

North Korea may or may not be behind the devastating cyber attack last week at Sony Pictures Entertainment. This according to North Korea, which isn’t denying its involvement in the incident. Asked by the BBC if the North Korean government played a role in the attack, a senior North Korean diplomat said simply, “I kindly advise you to just wait and see.” A cryptic reply to a pointed question — hardly an indignant denial.

Echo Destined for Amazon’s Museum of Failed Devices

CNET’s David Carnoy on the Amazon Echo: “The bigger problem, though, is that the Echo is delivering on two basic missions — it’s a wireless music speaker and a virtual assistant — but it’s not differentiating itself on either one. You can buy better wireless speakers at this price, and the virtual assistant on your Apple, Google or Microsoft phone or tablet can probably ‘do’ just as much as Alexa can — for now, anyway.”

Tonight on Real Police Officers of Missouri …

Welcome news for those who support putting body cameras on cops, and for the companies that manufacture them. The Obama administration wants to set aside $263 million to fund the purchase of 50,000 on-body cameras for the nation’s police officers and the training needed to make good use of them. The proposal, which follows a grand jury’s decision last week not to indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, is intended to provide the sort of monitoring and oversight that would put police officers — and citizens in the communities they patrol — on their best behavior. Pro-Vision, Vievu and Taser, some of the largest players in the body-cam space, have their fingers crossed for this one.

Son of Quantum of Solace

Professor Stephen Hawking: “My ideal role would be a baddie in a James Bond film. I think the wheelchair and the computer voice would fit the part.”

Off Topic

Cooking detonation-velocity fried shrimp.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Cthukens to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Samsung’s JK Shin Keeps Job He Was Supposed to Lose

2019-03-06T05:57:19-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Cyber Monday (to be followed by Consumer Regret Tuesday).
Amazon’s annual number-free press release proclaiming that — just like last year and the year before it — sales of the Kindle portfolio over Thanksgiving weekend were the best ever.

You’re Losing Your Job … JK!

JK Shin, embattled co-CEO of Samsung Electronics, isn’t going anywhere, despite recent speculation that he would be pushed aside amid growing concerns about the company’s slowing smartphone business. The South Korean company said this morning that Shin, who oversees its underperforming mobile division, will remain in his current role. This despite continuing declines in Samsung’s share of the smartphone market and profoundly disappointing sales of the company’s flagship handset, the Galaxy S5. Evidently, S5 sales that were 40 percent lower than expected — and a global smartphone market share that slipped to 24.7 percent in the third quarter from 35 percent a year earlier — were easier to overlook than one would think.

AAPLSauce

Investors took Apple on an inexplicable trip to the woodshed Monday morning, causing its stock to suffer what appears to be its biggest intraday fall since January. Apple shares fell more than six percent in early trading before recovering a bit. The reason for the sudden sell-off? No one seems to know. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft’s Fait Acompli

Microsoft has indeed acquired mobile email startup Acompli, just as it said it would in that unfinished blog post it accidentally published last week.

How Much for a Monthly Subscription to Thin Mints?

The Girl Scouts of the USA are about to make your annual Thin Mint binge a hell of a lot easier. After nearly a century of peddling Girl Scout Cookies in person, the organization is taking its fundraising effort online, allowing Scouts to accept orders via email and over the Web.

Massive Demand Expected for Apple Product No One Has Used

Apple hasn’t yet brought its Apple Watch wearable to market, nor has it disclosed pricing for the device beyond an entry-level $349, but it’s going to sell a ton of them regardless. This according to UBS, which sees significant consumer interest in the Apple Watch ahead of its 2015 debut. The research outfit surveyed 4,000 people across four countries, and found 10 percent of them “very likely” to buy a smartwatch. Extrapolating from that, UBS figures that Apple could sell 24 million Apple Watches in the device’s first nine months of availability.

And if Amazon’s Robot Army Ever Gets Ahold of Those Prime Air Delivery Drones — God Help Us All

Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times: “This holiday season, Amazon’s little helper is an orange, 320-pound robot called Kiva. The robots — more than 15,000 of them companywide — are part of Amazon’s high-tech effort to get orders to customers faster.”

Off Topic

Bad Lip Reading: “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and shark cat illustrations to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Aereo’s Plan B? Bankruptcy.

2019-03-06T06:03:02-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Airbnb’s first Airbnb Open kicks off in San Francisco.
Uber drivers in 10 cities will begin suffering through their passengers’ Spotify playlists.

Programming Note: I’m off next week and Code/red will not publish while I’m away. Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday if you celebrate it.

Aereo Founder Mulling eBay Auction for Thousands of Tiny Antennas

Turns out Aereo, which claimed to have no Plan B, had one after all — or one that begins with that particular letter, anyway: Bankruptcy. This morning the company filed for Chapter 11 protection, conceding the inevitable after a June Supreme Court ruling that found its streams of broadcast TV channels violated the public performance clause of the Copyright Act. Seems Aereo’s other plan — convincing the FCC to classify it as a cable TV provider so it could pay to stream broadcast television content — didn’t have any legs. And now the company, which had raised nearly $100 million from venture capital firms and Barry Diller’s IAC/Interactive, has reached the end of the line. “[Our] challenges have proven too difficult to overcome,” Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said in an open letter. “We believe that we have played a significant part in pushing the conversation forward, helping force positive change in the industry for consumers.” While the idea of the Aereo debacle effecting change in the TV Industrial Complex is certainly a nice parting sentiment, there’s really no evidence of it. Unless you take a very generous view of half-assed Web video services like this one from CBS.

Hear That, Elon “It Would Be Pretty Cool to Die on Mars” Musk?

NASA Chief Technologist David Miller on a manned mission to Mars: “If we don’t have the technology to come back, I don’t think we have the technology to go.”

Yeah, It’s Another Automated Ad Platform, but This One Is Magical

Apple’s iAd mobile advertising network is still furlongs away from its overly ambitious goal of capturing 50 percent of the mobile ad market. But some new programmatic ad buying alliances announced this morning could change that, opening up app advertising inventory to automated buyers.

Outlier Theory: It’s an Illegal Airbnb Hostel

So that New York City office building Amazon has been sniffing around for the past few months? The company just signed a 17-year lease on it. And while Amazon says publicly that it intends to use the site “primarily as corporate office space,” people familiar with the matter persist in telling the Wall Street Journal that its plans also include an outlet for same-day pickup of online orders and product returns and exchanges.

Leaked! Internal Uber Deck Reveals New Media Narrative.

Looks like Uber generates nearly as much revenue as it does controversy. Just check out the nearly year-old data in this dusty slide deck and try not to think too hard — or at all. And then, if you’re an investor, get on to the more pressing business of ignoring the congressional inquiry into the company’s data collection practices and get “super pumped” about the $1 billion-plus funding round the company is looking to pull off. Think Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is an unmoored megalomaniac now? Just wait until his company is valued at more than $30 billion.

Fab’s Black Friday Doorbuster Deal: $1 Billion Company for $15 Million

Fab CEO Jason Goldberg once said “e-commerce is a bitch.” Truer for some than others, but perhaps most true for Fab, which appears to finally be collapsing after a series of stumbling pivots. The social network turned flash-sale site turned furniture retailer is reportedly in talks to sell itself to PCH International, an electronics contract manufacturer. Price: Upward of $15 million in cash and stock, a nice return on investment for the addled VCs who pumped $150 million into the company at a $1 billion valuation just a year ago.

Apple to Xiaomi: Talk Is Cheap — Like Your Phones

Has Xiaomi’s swift assent to the upper reaches of the smartphone market given its leadership a case of hypoxia? Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell seems to think so. Remarking on Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s ambitions to become the top player in the market within five to 10 years, Sewell chided him for making a pledge that might be tough to keep. “It is easy to say,” Sewell said. “It is much more difficult to do.” A truism, of course. That said, Xiaomi — which is now the third-largest smartphone maker in the world — didn’t sell its first smartphone until summer of 2011. And its trajectory in the smartphone market does bear a passing resemblance to Apple’s own. Jun’s reply to Sewell’s bemused put-down: “In this magic land, we produced not only a company like Alibaba, but a small miracle like Xiaomi.”

Intel Chairman Not Embarrassed by Gaping Hole in His Pants, Either

Intel’s mobile business has been bleeding money for longer than anyone cares to remember. Next year probably won’t be any different, so brace yourselves, Intel investors — but stay proud, because there’s no shame in spending billions of dollars to stake a claim in the mobile market you didn’t have the foresight to prepare for. This according to Intel Chairman Andy Bryant, who wears the $1 billion loss posted by the company’s mobile business last month like Hooper’s Mary Ellen Moffat scar in “Jaws.” “We are aware we’re losing lots of money trying to gain presence in the mobility space,” Bryant said Thursday. “I’m not proud of the money we’re losing, but I’m not embarrassed by it. This is the price we pay for sitting on the sidelines for a number of years. We’re fighting our way back into a market. We will improve this. We will not accept a business to lose billions of dollars.”

The Fuel in the Bus Goes Poop, Poop, Poop …

Charlotte Morton, CEO of the Anaerobic Digestion and Bioresources Association, on Britain’s first poo bus: “The bus also clearly shows that human poo and our waste food are valuable resources.”

Off Topic

Making Real Food With Play-Doh Toys.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Flux Capacitor Wristwatches to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Uber Receives Daily Affirmation From Stuart Smalley

2019-03-06T06:02:53-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Al Franken to Uber: You’re Threatening, You’re Arrogant and Doggone It, People Fear You

Well, that didn’t take long at all. An Uber executive’s suggestion that the company create an opposition research team to discredit its media critics and growing concerns about its ability to track the whereabouts of its users have invited an inquiry from Capitol Hill. In a letter sent Wednesday to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. — chairman of the Senate subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law — worried aloud about the company’s “troubling disregard for customers’ privacy” and pressed it to explain its data collection and preservation practices. Evidently he too is curious about the breadth of the “legitimate business purposes” loophole through which Uber allows itself to access driver and rider data.

Really? How Sad …

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer on the company’s new alliance with Mozilla: “This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years.”

Apple-GT Soon to Be Case Study in Harvard Business School Disaster Preparedness Textbook

Daisuke Wakabayashi, the Wall Street Journal: “The Apple-GT marriage was troubled from the start. GT hadn’t mass-produced sapphire before the Apple deal. The New Hampshire company’s first 578-pound cylinder of sapphire, made just days before the companies signed their contract, was flawed and unusable. GT hired hundreds of workers with little oversight; some bored employees were paid overtime to sweep floors repeatedly, while others played hooky.”

Android One Not Exactly Taking India by Storm

Google’s Android One initiative was supposed to encourage widespread adoption of the company’s Android mobile operating system in emerging markets like India. But so far it seems to be falling short of that goal. Import data reviewed by the Economic Times suggests that less than a half million Android One handsets have been brought into India since Google debuted Android One a month ago. That’s a piddling three percent of the total number of smartphones imported into the country during that period. The reason: Google’s decision to initially limit Android One handset sales in India to online only, a move that so displeased the country’s big retailers that many have refused to stock them. If Android One is going to bring Android to “the next five billion,” as Google once claimed, the company needs to embrace brick-and-mortar distribution in countries like India where it figures so prominently.

Danger, Jack Ma, Danger!

Alibaba founder Jack Ma isn’t letting the exuberance — rational or otherwise — that fueled the company’s record IPO cloud his vision. In a speech at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, Ma said Alibaba must remain nimble and aggressively innovative because complacency could kill it. “Even two months before the IPO, people didn’t think we would make money,” Ma said. “Now the problem is people think we are too good — we can do anything. This is the most dangerous moment.”

Why, Lyft Investor Would Be Happy to Comment on Uber Scandal! Thanks for Asking!

PayPal co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel has a lot to say about pretty much everything — Twitter, hippies and monopolies, which are awesome. Hardly surprising then to learn that he also has a thing or two to say about the scandal sloshing about Uber like a septic spill. “[Uber is] the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley,” said Thiel, whose opinion was not at all influenced by his investment in Uber competitor Lyft. “Sometimes the people who break the rules win and sometimes they push it too far. And I think Uber’s right on the cusp of going simply too far on many of these things.”

Report: Apple Probably Going to Sell 30 Million Units of Device It Hasn’t Shipped Yet

By the time the Apple Watch debuts next year, 10 percent of folks who own an iPhone 5 or later will likely buy the wearable. This according to Morgan Stanley, which figures first-year Apple Watch sales will peak at around 30 million units in 2015 — at the top end of current analyst estimates.

Late Night TV: So Let’s Give a Warm Welcome to the Uber Scandal

Seth Myers on the Uber scandal: “It’s comments you make in public when everyone is listening and recording what you’re saying that don’t reflect your actual views. That’s true for all of us. The truth is always worse than what we say in public. In fact, if you publicly said you wanted to spend a million dollars digging up dirt on journalists, I would have said, holy crap, Uber is murdering journalists.”

Uber Scandal and Colonoscopy Mentioned in Same Glorious Sentence

Media critic Jack Shafer: “If I had not been busy today with a colonoscopy, I would have written a column about: ‘Yeah, why shouldn’t Uber investigate unscrupulous, rotten journalists? Just be upfront about it.’ That’s the column I would have written today if I hadn’t been busy on the doctor’s gurney. I don’t think anybody wrote that, did they?”

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Your Catastrophic App Store Bill

Sex Pistols founder Johnny “Rotten” Lydon: “I wasted 10,000 fucking pounds in the last two years on apps on my iPad. I got into Game of Thrones, Game of War, Real Racing, and I just wanted to up the ante. And like an idiot I didn’t check myself.”

Off Topic

Feminist Hacker Barbie (background here) and He-Man’s Best One-Liners.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Air Umbrellas to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Uber’s Reputation Goes Plouffe

2019-03-06T05:56:43-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Salesforce.com reports earnings.
Jury selection begins in Apple’s iPod antitrust trial.

Uber Should Hire “Veep’s” Mike McLintock as Its Next Head of Comms

By hiring David Plouffe, former campaign manager and White House adviser to President Barack Obama, as its senior vice president of policy and strategy, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said he wanted to “make sure that our story is told, and that the right outcome happens.” If that was truly the plan, it really doesn’t jibe at all with the company’s handling of the latest scandal to envelop it. Certainly, Kalanick’s rambling 13-tweet repudiation of SVP Emil Michael’s suggestion that Uber hire a team of opposition researchers to smear its critics in the media does not seem to be creating anything that could be remotely described as “the right outcome.” Nor does the asinine haters-gonna-hate tweet from Uber New York General Manager Josh Mohrer that followed it — particularly since Mohrer is now under fire for tracking a BuzzFeed reporter without her permission.

Did I Say Uber Should Hire Mike McLintock? I Meant Ashton Kutcher.

“Two and a Half Men” star and Lenovo product engineer Ashton Kutcher: “What is so wrong about digging up dirt on shady journalist?”

Uber: The Only Exception to Our Policy on Data Privacy Is a Gigantic Loophole

Uber: “Uber has a strict policy prohibiting all employees at every level from accessing a rider or driver’s data. The only exception to this policy is for a limited set of legitimate business purposes.”

Congratulations, Emil Michael! Your LinkedIn Connection Travis Kalanick Has Endorsed You for Lack of Leadership and Lack of Humanity!

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on VP of business Emil Michael’s plan to do opposition research on reporters: “Emil’s comments at the recent dinner party were terrible and do not represent the company. His remarks showed a lack of leadership, a lack of humanity, and a departure from our values and ideals. His duties here at Uber do not involve communications strategy or plans and are not representative in any way of the company approach.”

Apple Intends to Clean Up Its Mesa

Though its relationship with sapphire partner GT Advanced has collapsed into allegations of bullying and defamation, Apple will not abandon the Mesa, Ariz., facility it purchased to house GT’s ambitious, but clearly not ready for prime time, sapphire-manufacturing operations. Mesa City Manager Christopher Brady tells Bloomberg that Apple has told him it wants to retain the 1.3 million-square-foot factory. “They’ve indicated their commitment to us,” Brady said. “They want to repurpose that building and use it again.” Hardly surprising, given Apple’s efforts to bring some of its manufacturing back to the U.S. If that commitment’s unchanged, why not keep the facility, whose purchase came with a sweetheart deal that cuts potential property taxes by more than 70 percent?

“Neuromancer” Author Just Can’t Seem to Wrap Head Around Tetris

William Gibson: “Pong was the only computer game I was ever good at. By the time it had gone to Tetris, I was like, ‘This is too complicated.’”

Predictably, USA Freedom Act Headed for a Long Winter’s Dirt Nap

The USA Freedom Act was intended to “rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies and increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” among other things. But it won’t. Put before the Senate Tuesday afternoon, the legislation failed to garner the 60 votes necessary to move it forward, leaving it effectively dead for this year and unlikely to be revived in 2015.

New Twitter Index Will Catalog Every Stupid Tweet Ever

So those first tentative tweets of yours? Your toddler tweets — inane, ill-conceived or both? Tweets probably best forgotten? Well, Twitter remembers them, and it plans to help everyone else do the same. The company has built an index of every public tweet since 2006 — a vast collection of “roughly half a trillion documents” that grows by several billion tweets a week.

Option: Like, Unlike, Poop

Google Doodle team lead Ryan Germick on the poop emoji: “I would reject the notion that it has one meaning. It’s a symbol in context, sort of like memes. You can do all kinds of funny things with it and use it with skill, but I guess the most common use is probably ‘that’s unfortunate, and I would like to punctuate my comment with a reiteration that I am displeased at what has just been expressed.’ It’s the anti-like.”

Art in the “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” Sense of the Word, Right?

Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick on Grand Theft Auto 5 and its hatchet killing sprees: “This is a criminal setting. It’s a gritty underworld. It is art. And I’ve embraced that art.”

Off Topic

A Tiny Hamster Thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading. Send tips, comments, Off Topics and Elizabethan superhero photos to John@recode.net, @johnpaczkowski. Subscribe to the Code/red newsletter here.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Big Tech Calls for Deactivation of NSA’s Eye of Sauron

2019-03-06T06:02:42-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Sony holds a strategy briefing for investors.
Demo Fall gets under way in San Jose, Calif.
Fur seals are attempting sex with some very unfortunate penguins.

Big Tech to Congress: Leave the Data-Gathering to Us

Some of the biggest names in technology are urging Congress to pass a bill to temper the surveillance powers of the National Security Agency. In an open letter published Monday evening, the Reform Government Surveillance coalition — whose membership includes Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, among others — called for passage of the USA Freedom Act, which would end the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records in the U.S. and install special privacy advocates in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the body that oversees the agency’s activities. “Now is the time to move forward on meaningful change to our surveillance programs,” the coalition said. “We encourage you to support the USA Freedom Act.” The measure, the subject of months of bitching and negotiation, is headed to a vote today. If it doesn’t garner the support necessary to push it forward before the end of the year, we may not see significant NSA reform for some time, as midterm elections will adjust the balance of power in Congress and open the door to still further grandstanding and negotiation.

Next Samsung Smartphone Lineup to Feature Improved Focus

With its revenue and profit declining, Samsung is finally rethinking the flood-the-market device strategy responsible for its comically vast smartphone lineup. During an investor presentation Monday, Samsung executives said they planned to streamline the company’s smartphone portfolio, reducing it by at least 25 percent. A big cut and one that should significantly reduce Samsung’s manufacturing costs, making the company more profitable as it wrestles with Apple at the smartphone market’s high end and aggressive newcomers like Xiaomi at its lower end.

Point/Counterpoint: The Web Is Dying vs. Time to Recalibrate the Wayback Machine, Mr. Peabody!

Christopher Mims, the Wall Street Journal: “The Web — that thin veneer of human-readable design on top of the machine babble that constitutes the Internet — is dying.”

John Gruber, Daring Fireball: “I can’t believe someone is still writing this in 2014.”

Did I Mention Taylor Swift’s Discography Is Available on Sony Music Unlimited? I Did?

Taylor Swift’s decision to pull her music off Spotify is giving companies like Sony cause to re-evaluate their support for ad-supported music streaming services. “What it all really comes down to is how much value are the music company and the artist getting from the different consumption methods,” Sony CFO Kevin Kelleher said during an investor briefing. “The key question is, are the free, ad-supported services taking away from how quickly and to what extent we can grow those paid services? That’s something we’re paying attention to as content owners who license our content to the different platforms.”

And We’ll Keep Predicting It Until We’re Right

How long before Apple’s market capitalization reaches $1 trillion? Perhaps not that long at all, says Alexander Alternative Capital’s Michael Corcelli, who believes the company could attain that milestone — “absolutely, without a doubt” — next year.

“Trying” Being the Operative Word Here

FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives: “Microsoft has done the best job of trying to skate where the puck is going.”

Albini Serenades Music Industry With Heartfelt Version of “Let It Go”

Musician and recording engineer Steve Albini: “I believe the very concept of exclusive intellectual property with respect to recorded music has come to a natural end, or something like an end. Technology has brought to a head a need to embrace the meaning of the word ‘release,’ as in bird or fart. It is no longer possible to maintain control over digitized material and I don’t believe the public good is served by trying to.”

Why Yes, Ousted Rap Genius Co-Founder Absolutely Is an Entitled Ass

Rap Genius co-founder Mahbod Moghadam: “When I started working on genius.com, Whole Foods was our first ‘angel investor’ — without stealing all the food I stole from the Berkeley Whole Foods, I would never have been able to spend a year bootstrapping, working on the site full-time.”

Pretty Sure Larry Ellison Would Be Perceived as Abrasive if His Face Were as Smooth as a Baby’s Butt

Personal brand and style strategist Joseph Rosenfeld: “Larry Ellison of Oracle has facial hair, but it can look a little rough, like sandpaper on him, and he could be perceived as being abrasive to some.”

Off Topic

The Danish National Chamber Orchestra plays “Tango Jalousie” while eating ferociously hot chili peppers and “Frozen” meets “Breaking Bad” in “Do You Want to Build a Meth Lab?”

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Elon Musk Is Starting to Scare Me

2019-03-06T06:24:18-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

National Unfriend Day.

Maybe Take the Blue Pill Next Time, Elon

Someone needs to take Elon Musk’s “Matrix” trilogy box set away from him and give him something more vanilla to watch — like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Over the weekend, the Tesla founder went on yet another artificial intelligence tirade, warning that reckless pursuit of true AI could lead to some unpleasant dystopian outcomes, and sooner than you’d think. “The pace of progress in artificial intelligence is incredibly fast,” Musk wrote in a now-deleted comment on an AI post at Edge.org. “The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five year time frame. 10 years at most.”

Another unsettling prediction in an ever-lengthening string. In the past year alone, Musk has warned that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes” and worried that humanity might become a “biological boot loader for digital superintelligence.” He has also described the search for artificial intelligence as “summoning the demon,” adding: “In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like yeah he’s sure he can control the demon. Didn’t work out.” While Musk’s killer robot remarks might fit well with his “I want to die on Mars” persona, their increasing frequency does seem concerning. Remember, he was an early investor in AI firm DeepMind (acquired by Google) and more recently invested in Vicarious, a company trying to build a “computer that thinks like a person.” Makes you wonder just what the hell is going on over there that has so unsettled him, doesn’t it?

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Musk verified the authenticity of his remarks, but said they were sent to Edge.org founder John Brockman via email and not intended for publication. “Elon will write a longer blog post on the topic later,” the spokesperson said.

Prospect of 4.5 Billion UnionPay Cards Linked to iTunes Accounts Has Apple Salivating

A victory for Apple in China, after a fall lousy with setbacks and awkward info security meetings in Beijing. On Monday morning, Apple said Chinese users could now use China UnionPay cards to make App Store purchases. Now that might seem like a middling announcement of little import, but it’s actually a pretty big deal. UnionPay has a near-monopoly on card payments in China. Indeed, Apple notes that more than 4.5 billion UnionPay cards have been issued in the country to date. Making it possible for the holders of those cards to now link their accounts to Apple IDs could do much to drive app purchases in what is already Apple’s second-largest market for them. More importantly, it could open the door for Apple Pay in China, which is almost certainly the endgame here.

Apple Pay Is Alipay With Just a Few More Letters

If Apple does bring Apple Pay to China, it would be in the company’s best interests to partner with Alibaba and its Alipay payment service. So says Alibaba Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai, who tells the Wall Street Journal that Alipay as the back-end of Apple Pay in China would make a lot of sense. “If people want to use Apple Pay in China, Apple would have certain restrictions and limitations on operating payment businesses in China,” Tsai said. “So we are thinking whether there is any opportunity for us to work together where Apple Pay and Alipay can somehow work together in China. … We are positive about the potential cooperation, but it depends on the details being worked out.”

“Comcast Shrugged”? Sounds Like the Worst Ayn Rand Book Ever.

Mark Cuban: “If Ayn Rand were an up and coming author today, she wouldn’t write about steel or railroads, it would be net neutrality.”

Best We Can Tell, “Free Bird” Was Playing on Repeat When They Went Off the Cliff

Uber’s new deal with Spotify is only a few hours old and already the ride-hailing service’s drivers are complaining about it. Seems they’re not all that excited about the prospect of being forced to endure their passengers’ crappy Spotify playlists. Said one in a post to Uber driver forum UberPeople.net: “It’s hard enough to get the drunks home without being distracted by their perpetual disturbances and the times when one tolerates the music because of SURGE. But it is both highly distracting and annoying as all hell. Just a vehicle full of loud obnoxious drunks is punishment enough.”

Hence the Expression “To Go Bust”

Lily Kuo, Quartz: “Earlier this summer, a group of data crunchers looking at underwear sales at Alibaba came across a curious trend: Women who bought larger bra sizes also tended to spend more. Dividing intimate-apparel shoppers into four categories of spending power, analysts at the e-commerce giant found that 65 percent of women of cup size B fell into the ‘low’ spend category, while those of a size C or higher mostly fit into the ‘middle’ or higher group.”

Caveat: Only an Idiot Would Buy the Entire Russian Stock Market

Srinivasan Sivabalan, Bloomberg: “If you owned Apple and sold it, you could purchase the entire stock market of Russia, and still have enough change to buy every Russian an iPhone 6 Plus.”

Good Job, StateDepartment@gmail.com!

First the United States Postal Service. Then the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and some unclassified computer systems at the White House. Now the State Department’s email system appears to have been breached as well. On Sunday the agency temporarily shut down its unclassified email system and portions of its website after noticing some “activity of concern” on its network and told duty officers to use Gmail accounts until it was resolved.

Tonight’s Special: Shrimp Scampering

Pacific University professor David Scholnick: “My name is David, and I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill — a burden I will forever carry. To be clear, the treadmill did not cost millions of taxpayer dollars, the goal of the research was not to exercise shrimp, and the government did not pay me — or anyone else — to work out shrimp on treadmills.”

Oh God. You Poor, Poor Uber Drivers …

Ben Richmond, Motherboard: “There’s a surprising number of albums on Spotify that are marketed to dogs. I don’t know how many there are in total, but I can confidently say the number is surprising, since there is more than none.”

Off Topic

Religious Vader and Super Bad Mario.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: FCC Chairman a Total Nightmare

2019-03-06T06:02:25-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

Cisco reports earnings.
Twitter’s investor day.
The Rosetta Mission’s comet landing.

Tom Wheeler: I Am a Golden God

Note to a sitting president who once said, “I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over”: If you opt to tap a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries as head of the federal agency that regulates them, don’t be surprised when he balks at your call to pass tougher regulations on high-speed Internet service. The Washington Post reports that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has been telling executives from major Internet companies that he’s not entirely on board with President Barack Obama’s plan to reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, nor does he have to be, as the agency doesn’t answer to the Obama administration. Said Wheeler, “I am an independent agency.” There’s no “I” in team, Tom.

Comcast: Reiterating Our Strong Support for Muahahahahaha

Speaking of net neutrality, Comcast* which on Monday slagged Obama for what it described as a “radical reversal” on the issue, today worries that its knee-jerk outburst may have been misunderstood. What Comcast meant when it said that Obama’s network neutrality proposal would “harm investment and innovation” was this: “Surprise! We Agree With the President’s Principles on Net Neutrality,” which conveniently is the title of this troll of a blog post from EVP David Cohen. “What is remarkable is that if you compare the President’s articulation of his vision for net neutrality as set forth in the White House talking points released yesterday afternoon, we are on the record as agreeing with every point,” Cohen writes, adding, “This is not game playing or sophistry on our part.” But of course it is. Obama wants the Internet to be reclassified under Title II of the Communications Act; Comcast does not. And while it’s true that the company already practices a number of the Open Internet rules for which Obama has been calling, it is legally obligated to do so because of conditions imposed on its purchase of NBCUniversal.

*Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Re/code’s parent company.

Yes, After Five CEOs in Five Years, a New CEO Is Exactly What Yahoo Needs

Reuters: “At least two top-10 Yahoo shareholders are so unhappy with chief executive Marissa Mayer’s turnaround efforts that they are making a direct plea to AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to explore a merger and run the combined company.”

AOL CEO: I Love the Smell of Shingy in the Morning

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: “The cleaning lady was in here last night, and I’m like, ‘I love the smell of this table!’ She was like, ‘Um, O.K.’ac”

Speaking of Shingy, Perhaps Yahoo Should Acquire Him …

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is beginning to dip into the $6.3 billion the company pocketed from selling shares in the Alibaba IPO. Late Tuesday, Yahoo said it will acquire video advertising delivery platform BrightRoll. Price: $640 million in cash.

Latest Windows Vulnerability Carbon-Dated to 1995

Microsoft has patched a critical vulnerability in Windows that has existed in every version of the operating system since 1995.

AT&T CEO Would Like FCC to Get Its Act Together

The current net neutrality debacle in Washington has given AT&T cause to reconsider its big fiber rollout. This according to CEO Randall Stephenson, who thinks it unwise to undertake that kind of capital expenditure under such a hazy regulatory horizon. “We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed,” Stephenson said. “We think it is prudent to just pause and make sure we have line of sight and understanding as to what those rules would look like.”

Off Topic

Punktendo.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Code/red: Just Mayo Suit Is Just Silly

2019-03-06T06:24:03-05:00

// HAPPENING TODAY

The Samsung Developers Conference kicks off at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Unilever to Hampton Creek: From Hellmann’s Heart, I Stab at Thee

Thought Big Oil was a bastard? Check out Big Mayo. International food conglomerate and mayonnaise leviathan Unilever this week filed suit against Hampton Creek, accusing it of false advertising and unfair competition in the apparently cutthroat mayo market. Unilever argues that Hampton Creek’s “Just Mayo” is a false mayonnaise, which fails to meet the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of the beloved emulsified semisolid food. “Despite its name, Just Mayo does not contain just mayonnaise. In fact, it is not mayonnaise at all,” Unilever claims in its suit. “Under federal regulations, common dictionary definitions and as consumers understand it, ‘mayonnaise’ or ‘mayo’ is a product that contains eggs. That ingredient does not exist in Just Mayo.” Worse, surging popularity of the plant-based mayo is stealing market share from Hellmann’s — the one true mayonnaise. Leaving aside for a moment the head-cleaving irony of the maker of a concoction like I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! calling for the sanctity of ingredients in anything, this is a ferociously idiotic response to innovation in a vast market that desperately needs it. By bringing Silicon Valley solutions to bear on things like mayonnaise, Hampton Creek is working to change the future of food production, and to rid it of some of its notoriously inhumane and wasteful practices. Suing it — and demanding triple damages — over the “standard of identity” of mayonnaise is just silly.

Heh: “Continuing Nokia Story”

Nokia on the launch of Microsoft’s Lumia 535 — the first Lumia that won’t bear the Nokia name: “We’re saying goodbye soon to Microsoft Lumia. The #Nokia team will share the continuing Nokia story with you soon!”

Looking Forward to Hearing More About This HoMo Idea on the Next AOL Earnings Call

The New Yorker’s Andrew Marantz on AOL’s “Digital Prophet,” David Shing: “[Shingy] told the Applebee’s people that to make their brand ‘remarkable, reactive, and relevant’ they have to tell stories in real time. Everyone is talking about SoLoMo — social, local, mobile — but they should be talking about HoMo: home/mobile, cell phones used on the couch.”

Obscenely Wealthy Entrepreneur Unsurprisingly Happy With Obscene Wealth

Mark Cuban on what normals might find surprising about being a billionaire: “Nothing. It’s fucking amazing and off the charts.”

Apple’s Enterprise Assault

Steve Jobs once said that though Apple chose not to push the iPad hard into enterprise at launch, “it’s being grabbed out of our hands, anyways.” Now, under CEO Tim Cook, Apple has become more proactive about peddling the tablet and other devices into the fast-growing mobile market for business professionals. Reuters reports that the company has created a dedicated sales team charged with courting big corporate clients. News of the initiative follows Apple’s summer announcement of a broad partnership with IBM to develop more than 100 industry-specific applications that will run on the iPhone and iPad.

Obama’s Net Neutrality Call Apparently Inconsistent With AT&T Lobbying Spend

No surprises here. President Barack Obama’s call for the FCC to reclassify consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act isn’t going over well with the big players in the telecom industry, who would like everyone to know that it’s possible to be committed to an open Internet, even while opposing it. To wit, this statement from AT&T, which warns that regulating broadband service under Title II would set the industry back decades — in inside-the-Beltway maneuvering. “We feel the actions called for by the White House are inconsistent with decades of legal precedent as well as Congressional intent. Moreover, if the government were going to make such a momentous decision as regulating the entire Internet like a public utility, that decision is more properly made by the Congress and not by unelected regulators without any public record to support the change in regulation.”

Caveat: Unethical and Unsavory Can Be Pretty Effective in Getting Your Company to a $17 Billion Valuation

Fred Wilson on Uber’s efforts to kneecap Lyft’s fundraising: “This is not a new tactic. I have seen it used for as long as I have been in the VC business. It is, however, unethical and unsavory, just like the companies that use it. And it is one other thing, ineffective.”

Jennifer Lawrence in 164 Characters

Actress Jennifer Lawrence: “I will never get Twitter. I’m not very good on phone or technology. I cannot really keep up with emails, so the idea of Twitter is so unthinkable to me.”

Spotify CEO to Taylor Swift: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Spotify’s reaction to Taylor Swift’s rejection of its service has moved from please-don’t-leave-me-we-can-make-this-work pleading to indignation today, with a new blog post from CEO Daniel Ek, who has had it with musicians like Swift complaining that his company doesn’t pay them enough for their work. According to Ek, Spotify, which has amassed some 12.5 million paying subscribers, has paid more than $2 billion in royalties to the music industry since it was founded in 2008. “When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they’ve seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I’m really frustrated too,” Ek wrote. “At our current size, payouts for a top artist like Taylor Swift (before she pulled her catalog) are on track to exceed $6 million a year, and that’s only growing — we expect that number to double again in a year. Any way you cut it, one thing is clear — we’re paying an enormous amount of money to labels and publishers for distribution to artists and songwriters, and significantly more than any other streaming service.”

How Reassuring …

Aaron, a former captain in the Air Force’s 341st Missile Wing, on his stint babysitting ICBMs: “I would sit on alert with CNN up and just hit refresh, hoping to God something would happen in the world. I’m just like, ‘Please, something change. … You just sit there and hope to God that this next 10 hours disappears. Because your partner goes to bed and you, the console, and the missiles are by yourself for 10 hours.”

Off Topic

Street Fighter II Impressions.

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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.