#but keyboard is tricky and the bar is so high its like

[colourful-void]

one of the difficult things about community based online rhythm games (so like, something like osu as a opposed to something to proseka) is that the perception of "easy" is really skewed to the point where it's really difficult for new comers, at least in my experience.

[woodrokiro]

Do It For the Band, Part Four

Fandom: Bleach

Pairing: IchiRuki

Summary: When Tatsuki said she wanted their sophomore album to be the next Rumours, this is NOT what she meant. Band AU. Read Part One, Two, and Three. 

Rukia’s sure they’re not crossing any lines.

… Pretty sure.

She’s never been in a band like this before--or, well. A band, period. And from the movies she’s watched, the musician biographies she’s read and the behind-the-album documentaries she’s seen she imagines her group’s closeness is normal. Grabbing a tea and writing in a coffee shop with Chad, meeting up with Tatsuki at bars and picking out cute girls the drummer might like--these sort of things are normal. They’re her friends, after all. 

And she doesn’t do much different with Ichigo. It just… Feels different.

Especially when they start spending time together after recording sessions.  

They don’t even do anything, really. Mostly just put on a record at Ichigo’s place and talk about their favorite albums. Sometimes they’ll watch a movie together: Rukia on one far end of his tattered, second-hand couch, curled into the arm while Ichigo tries to scrounge something up for dinner in the kitchen behind her. 

And�� Okay, she’s fallen asleep there. A couple times. But in a completely platonic way. She’ll wake up on his couch with a blanket over her, and Ichigo will walk in and nag at her for sinking the cushions of his couch and she’ll groggily snap back that maybe he should get a new couch then--

She’s stayed late there so often that Ichigo bought her a toothbrush to keep in the bathroom (“I can smell your morning breath all the way from the bedroom”), but it’s fine because it is! So! Platonic!!!

They’re friends. They’re friends. 

She’s (pretty) sure of it. 

It’s the end of the recording sessions when they go to her place because she had forgotten the champagne she meant to bring for celebrating their last day. The recording studio happened to be only a few blocks away, but he insisted on walking back with her to grab them. 

(“Shut up and let me be a gentleman” he had grumbled, and Rukia tries to ignore Tatsuki’s stare piercing them both). 

They had just finished climbing the six stories in her apartment building when she spies the roses at her door. 

He scoffs. “Who are those from? Yourself?” 

She rolls her eyes, picking up the flowers to read the card attached. “Good one, idiot. No. My brother.” 

“Byakuya? What the hell does he want?” 

She’s surprised he remembers his name; then again, she supposes she’s mentioned him in passing enough times. 

It’s funny: the little details they know about each other by now. 

“Don’t talk about him so crudely. I told him about the album awhile ago.”

“Yeah, and you said he never responded.” He waits respectfully in the hallway as she unlocks her door. She immediately starts shuffling through her studio in an attempt to find a vase. “I don’t get why you still talk to him. The guy kicks you out of the house, takes away your allowance you depend on--just because he doesn’t want you to do music? The thing he arranged for you to have lessons for in the first place?”

“You’re oversimplifying it.” She rummages through her cupboards. “He wanted me to go to college for a career--I told him I didn’t want to. I said I wanted to be a musician. He said that was fine, I was a young woman who could make her own decisions… And as such, I’d need to do it on my own. I agreed. I don’t want anybody’s money, and he’s helped me enough as it is.”

“... He should still support you--”

“He does. In his own way.” Her eyes light up at what she’s been looking for: the glass beaker for a French press that broke on her a couple weeks ago. She lifts it with one hand and the roses in the other, a silent question toward him. At Ichigo’s shrug/nod combo, she starts filling the beaker with tap water. “Maybe he doesn’t vocally support it. The creative life is scary. You know that. Technically you wouldn’t want your sisters as starving musicians either, right? But a couple months before I met up with you guys, I was behind on my rent. One day, right before I was sure I was going to get kicked out: my landlord says it was all paid for. Just like that. And I’ve sworn every day, up and down, that my brother’s never going to need to do that for me ever again.”

“He should want to do that for you.”

“I think he does. But I want to make my own way, and he knows that. These flowers are more than kind.” She steps back and assesses her flower arrangement in the beaker, nodding once. Good enough. 

He’s uncharacteristically quiet as she grabs the two bottles from her fridge and returns back to the hallway. She’s attempting to lock her front door with the bottles in one arm and keys in the other when he snorts, tapping her wine-carrying arm.

“Here, I’ll take ‘em.” Begrudgingly, she hands them over. “You try to do too much by yourself.” 

“Yes, because I have to.” She focuses her attention back on the lock (the door could be rather tricky) when she feels him nudge her arm again. 

“No. You really don’t.” She looks back and up at him and suddenly for the first time they feel very, very close. “Look I don’t--the fact that your brother doesn’t know what a fucking phenominal talent you have astounds me. But you have people now. You have me.”

Time completely stops as they stare at each other. Rukia feels frozen in place--but Ichigo is… Well. He looks like he’s only sort of embarrassed at own sentiment, judging from the faint blush on his cheeks--but mostly he seems sure of himself, confident and fearless and golden.

That is Ichigo, she realizes. She’s really never met anyone like him. 

She’ll never know what either of them were about to do when suddenly her neighbor’s door swings open behind him. 

The sound jolts them both, and her elderly neighbor smiles apologetically. She waves, and when she looks back at him Ichigo is looking down at his shoes, clearing his throat. 

“Hurry up ‘n lock the door. The others are waiting for us--especially Tatsuki. You know how stoked she was when you told her about the champagne.” 

Rukia nods and tries to shake the odd feeling that an opportunity was just missed. 

---

They’re getting a tour.

Tatsuki is in euphorics. They’re getting a fucking tour. 

Urahara says they’re starting small--mostly because the label wants to test the waters on them. Just four cities, fronting for a rock band called Espada. They’re all kind of douchey assholes but it doesn’t even matter. She knows her band is better, and in just a few years they’ll be begging to front for Karakura Soul Society. 

 Still, even though it’s a small tour Tatsuki manages to sweet talk Urahara into hiring her good friend as their stage manager. “We need somebody to keep us organized back there. Help us sound check and everything, you know? And frankly, Urahara… You’re a mess.”

… It becomes clear to the team within the first ten minutes of her employment that Orihime Inoue is also, as it happens, a disaster--but she’s bubbly and ambitious and works hard and Tatsuki may be not-so-secretly in love with her so of course everyone loves her immediately, too.

Once they’re on the road, the whole tour itself is kind of a blur. Their first city is… Decent. They sound great, but there’s some tech issues that Orihime apologizes profusely for. Grimmjow, the lead singer of Espada says something snide about “fucking yuppies” and Ichigo and Tatsuki both have to be held back from absolutely pulvarizing the cocky motherfucker--but yeah it’s decent.

 At least, Urahara points out, it adds a bit of a competitive edge between the two bands. 

He’s right. The next couple cities they absolutely kill it.

With Chad’s shredding it on his base and Tatsuki  feeling like a God at her drums--the two of them alone would be something to contend with. 

But combined with Ichigo and Rukia…

Tatsuki doesn’t know what’s going on between them, and frankly: she doesn’t care anymore. She’s decided it’s none of her business whether her best friend is getting his brains screwed out or if they really are “just friends,” as Rukia insists. 

What matters is what’s going right here, right in the performance.

As usual, they are so in sync with each other it’s scary--but now, there’s emotion too. There’s an electric energy when they sing the chorus to Fullbringer, a deep melancholy when they harmonize on Masaki. The band is only able to perform about five of their songs, but they’ve arranged the order so the audience gets to go through a journey--and it all ends on Sun and Moon.

It’s easily their best crowd pleaser, and for good reason. 

It sounds cheesy, but there is such an upbeat joy to the song that even scowl-loving Ichigo grins during its entirety, and Rukia--always so poised--bounces at her keyboard, bopping her head to the beat. The bridge is absolutely wild, and the whole thing moves so fast that Tatsuki is going harder at her drums than she ever has. It was a bitch to practice, but man. Man does it it fucking end a show. 

At the end of Espada’s last show, the crowd demands an encore… From their front band. 

“Eat shit,” Grimmjow hisses as they unexpectedly make their way back to the stage, and Tatsuki knows for an asshole like him to be this pissed: it’s a compliment.

---

They’re feeling so pumped about the whole tour that at the end of that encore, even Chad agrees to go out to a nearby pub to celebrate.

The group is on Cloud 9 as they float into the semi-crowded bar, and Tatsuki feels even more of a high when some of the patrons--fresh from the show--cheer as they enter. A guy orders the band shots, and from that point on things get… Uh. Kind of blurry.

Chad does manage to escape early, but not before she challenges him to a game of who can drink a pint faster. Orihime glows next to her as she sips her own fruity cocktail, cheering Tatsuki on in a way that makes her feel powerful even when she loses. Occasionally she catches her friend glancing over at Ichigo with a soft smile that Tatsuki… Doesn’t really want to notice right now. She’s having such a good time, so for what?

 Urahara floats, chuckling behind his fan about this and that--leading to a brief debate between Ichigo and Tatsuki whether he’s high, drunk, or both. Rukia pops up out of nowhere, offering a convincing argument of: neither. Urahara is just fucking batshit. 

Ichigo and Tatsuki stare at the unexpected profanity.

“What?” Rukia’s face is flushed, and she tries (unsuccessfully) to look like she has the decency to be embarrassed. Suddenly, she grins toothily, grabbing Ichigo’s hand and dragging him to the bar corner’s jukebox. “C’mon, idiot. You’re helping me pick out a song.” 

Tatsuki doesn’t pay much more attention to the two after that--she’s too busy getting another drink, getting Orihime another drink, seeing if she can get Urahara to confess he’s committed at least one felony in his lifetime, and if so which one--but she happens to overhear their conversation at one point when they’re getting drinks.

“... Swift is a stellar songwriter, Kurosaki. I’m telling you--”

“Come oooooon--”

“No, you--you come on, Ichigo. Ichigo Kurosaki.” Rukia pokes her finger at Ichigo’s chest, and Tatsuki sees him failing to hide a smile. “She had a… Taylor has iffy periods, of course she does. But have you… Have you even listened to the lyrics of Blank Space?

“Whassat?” 

“You’ve heard that song, don’t you--don’t you even start--”

Tatsuki rolls her eyes and takes her leave. Listening to drunk straight people flirt is excruciating. 

Still: whether it’s from the warm buzz of alcohol or the general high of the good night or her just loving her friends… She’s happy for them. 

When she leaves, Blank Space is blaring from the jukebox. She looks back to see Rukia and Ichigo intimately close. Rukia is beaming up at him, shouting over the music that she can only imagine is the song lyrics. Ichigo’s body is curved toward her, watching and bobbing his head with a soft smile. 

Good for them, Tatsuki thinks dreamily before immediately finding a dumpster to throw up in. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Interoperability: Fix the internet, not the tech companies

Everyone in the tech world claims to love interoperability—the technical ability to plug one product or service into another product or service—but interoperability covers a lot of territory, and depending on what's meant by interoperability, it can do a lot, a little, or nothing at all to protect users, innovation and fairness.

Let's start with a taxonomy of interoperability:

Indifferent Interoperability

This is the most common form of interoperability. Company A makes a product and Company B makes a thing that works with that product, but doesn't talk to Company A about it. Company A doesn't know or care to know about Company B's add-on.

Think of a car's cigarette lighter: these started in the 1920s as aftermarket accessories that car owners could have installed at a garage; over time they became popular enough that they came standard in every car. Eventually, third-party companies began to manufacture DC power adapters that plugged into the lighter receptacle, drawing power from the car engine's alternator. This became widespread enough that it was eventually standardized as ANSI/SAE J563.

Standardization paved the way for a variety of innovative new products that could be made by third-party manufacturers who did not have to coordinate with (or seek permission from) automotive companies before bringing them to market. These are now ubiquitous, and you can find fishbowls full of USB chargers that fit your car-lighter receptacle at most gas stations for $0.50-$1.00. Some cars now come with standard USB ports (though for complicated reasons, these tend not to be very good chargers), but your auto manufacturer doesn't care if you buy one of those $0.50 chargers and use it with your phone. It's your car, it's your car-lighter, it's your business.

Cooperative Interoperability

Sometimes, companies are eager to have others create add-ons for their products and services. One of the easiest ways to do this is to adopt a standard: a car manufacturer that installs an ANSI/SAE J563-compliant car-lighter receptacle in its cars enables its customers to use any compatible accessory with their cars; any phone manufacturer that installs a 3.5mm headphone jack allows anyone who buys that phone to plug in anything that has a matching plug, even exotic devices like Stripe's card-readers, which convert your credit-card number to a set of tones that are played into a vendor's phone's headphone jack, to be recognized and re-encoded as numbers by Stripe's app.

Digital standards also allow for a high degree of interoperability: a phone vendor or car-maker who installs a Bluetooth chip in your device lets you connect any Bluetooth accessory with it—provided that they support that device, or at least that they make no steps to prevent that device from being connected.

This is where things get tricky: manufacturers and service providers who adopt digital standards can use computer programs to discriminate against accessories, even those that comply with the standard. This can be extremely beneficial to customers: you might get a Bluetooth "firewall" that warns you when you're connecting to a Bluetooth device that's known to have security defects, or that appears on a blacklist of malicious devices that siphon away your data and send it to identity thieves.

But as with all technological questions, the relevant question isn't merely "What does this technology do?" It's "Who does this technology do it to and who does it do it for?"

Because the same tool that lets a manufacturer help you discriminate against Bluetooth accessories that harm your well-being allows the manufacturer to discriminate against devices that harm its well-being (say, a rival's lower-cost headphones or keyboard) even if these accessories enhance your well-being.

In the digital era, cooperative interoperability is always subject to corporate boundaries. Even if a manufacturer is bound by law to adhere to a certain standard—say, to provide a certain electronic interface, or to allow access via a software interface like an API—those interfaces are still subject to limits that can be embodied in software.

A digitally enabled car-lighter receptacle could be made to support only a limited range of applications—charging via USB but not USB-C or Lightning, or only charging phones but not tablets—and software could be written to enforce those limits. Even a very permissive "smart lighter-receptacle" that accepted every known device as of today could be designed to reject any devices invented later on, unless the manufacturer chose to permit their use. A manufacturer of such a device could truthfully claim to support "every device you can currently plug into your car lighter," but still maintain a pocket veto over future devices as a hedge against new developments that it decides are bad for the manufacturer and its interests.

What's more, connected devices and services can adjust the degree of interoperability their digital interfaces permit from moment to moment, without notice or appeal, meaning that the browser plugin or social media tool you rely on might just stop working.

Which brings us to...

Adversarial Interoperability

Sometimes an add-on comes along that connects to a product whose manufacturer is outright hostile to it: third-party ink for your inkjet printer, or an unauthorized app for your iPhone, or a homebrew game for your console, or a DVR that lets you record anything available through your cable package, and that lets you store your recordings indefinitely.

Many products actually have countermeasures to resist this kind of interoperability: checks to ensure that you're not buying car parts from third parties, or fixing your own tractor.

When a manufacturer builds a new product that plugs into an existing one despite the latter's manufacturer's hostility, that's called "adversarial interoperability" and it has been around for about as long as the tech industry itself, from the mainframe days to the PC revolution to the operating system wars to the browser wars.

But as technology markets have grown more concentrated and less competitive, what was once business-as-usual has become almost unthinkable, not to mention legally dangerous, thanks to abuses of cybersecurity law, copyright law, and patent law.

Taking adversarial interoperability off the table breaks the tech cycle in which a new company enters the market, rudely shoulders aside its rivals, grows to dominance, and is dethroned in turn by a new upstart. Instead, today's tech giants show every sign of establishing a permanent, dominant position over the internet.

"Punishing" Big Tech by Granting It Perpetual Dominance

As states grapple with the worst aspects of the Internet—harassment, identity theft, authoritarian and racist organizing, disinformation—there is a real temptation to "solve" these problems by making Big Tech companies legally responsible for their users' conduct. This is a cure that's worse than the disease: the big platforms can't subject every user's every post to human review, so they use filters, with catastrophic results. At the same time, these filters are so expensive to operate that they make it impossible for would-be competitors to enter the market. YouTube has its $100 million Content ID copyright filter now, but if it had been forced to find an extra $100,000,000 to get started in 2005, it would have died a-borning.

But assigning these expensive, state-like duties to tech companies also has the perverse effect of making it much harder to spark competition through careful regulation or break-ups. Once we decide that providing a forum for online activity is something that only giant companies with enough money to pay for filters can do, we also commit to keeping the big companies big enough to perform those duties.

Interoperability to the Rescue?

It's possible to create regulation that enhances competition. For example, we could introduce laws that force companies to follow interoperability standards and oversee the companies to make sure that they're not sneakily limiting their rivals behind the scenes. This is already a feature of good telecommunications laws, and there's lots to like about it.

But a mandate to let users take their data from one company to another—or to send messages from one service to another—should be the opener, not the end-game. Any kind of interoperability mandate has the risk of becoming the ceiling on innovation, not the floor.

For example, as countries around the world broke up their national phone company monopolies, they made rules forcing them to allow new companies to use their lines, connect to their users and share their facilities, and this enabled competition in things like long distance service.

But these interoperability rules were not the last word: the telcos weren't just barred from discriminating against competitors who wanted to use their long-haul lines; thanks to earlier precedent, they were also not able to control who could make devices that plugged into those lines. This allowed companies to make modems that could connect to phone lines. As the Internet crept (and then raced) into Americans' households, the carriers had ample incentive to control how their customers made use of the net, especially as messaging and voice-over-IP eroded the massive profits from long-distance and SMS tariffs. But they couldn't, and that helplessness to steer the market let new companies and their customers create a networked revolution.

The communications revolution owes at least as much to the ability of third parties to do things that the carriers hated—but couldn't prevent—as it does to the rules that forced them to interconnect with their rivals.

Fix the Internet, Not the Tech Companies

The problems of Big Tech are undeniable: using the dominant services can be terrible, and now that they've broken the cycle of dominance and dethroning, the Big Tech companies have fortified their summits such that others dare not besiege them.

Today, much of the emphasis is on making Big Tech better by charging the companies to filter and monitor their users.

The biggest Internet companies need more legal limits on their use and handling of personal data. That’s why we support smart, thorough new Internet privacy laws. But laws that require filtering and monitoring user content make the Internet worse: more hostile to new market entrants (who can't afford the costs of compliance) and worse for Internet users' technological self-determination.

If we're worried that shadowy influence brokers are using Facebook to launch sneaky persuasion campaigns, we can either force Facebook to make it harder for anyone to access your data without Facebook's explicit approval (this assumes that you trust Facebook to be the guardian of your best interests)—or we can bar Facebook from using technical and legal countermeasures to shut out new companies, co-ops, and projects that offer to let you talk to your Facebook friends without using Facebook's tools, so you can configure your access to minimize Facebook's surveillance and maximize your own freedom.

The second way is the better way. Instead of enshrining Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft as the Internet’s permanent overlords and then striving to make them as benign as possible, we can fix the Internet by making Big Tech less central to its future.

It's possible that people will connect tools to their Big Tech accounts that do ill-advised things they come to regret. That's kind of the point, really. After all, people can plug weird things into their car's lighter receptacles, but the world is a better place when you get to decide how to use that useful, versatile ANSI/SAE J56-compliant plug—not GM or Toyota.

(Crossposted from EFF Deeplinks)

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/11/make-big-tech-small-again.html

[rowanheartjunior]

A Haven for Lost Things

Chapter 2

Connor pulled up to the two story skimpy house, scanning the facade for abnormalities. Seeing nothing and no one, he snatched a sleeping Markus off the backseat and carried him into the house after scrambling to figure out the best way to punch in the passcode with a gaunt and asleep assassin in his hands.

Money. Connor required it. For Hank and for himself.

The door hit the adjacent wall with a crash, but Connor didn’t care. He kicked it shut, and dumped Markus on the living room couch with a grunt. The man opened hazy eyes and blinked at him. He managed to remain neutral despite the pain and situation.

Connor shook his head. Markus was like him, and that meant no matter what, he couldn’t let his guard down. Men like them were tricky bastards, slippery to hold and harder to keep. Which put into perspective how easy it had been to catch Markus.

It had been something Connor had been mulling over during the drive through the city. He’d been hunting the elusive man for almost sixteen months, and out of the blue, he gets lucky. People in this business don’t get lucky.

Markus must have another motivator. A reason, something to explain why he let himself get caught. He’d been a ghost for too long to be found out in the open. What were the likely options?

Markus must need something from him. Connor’s eyebrows scrunched together. But what could he supply that Markus couldn’t give himself? Markus had money, the necessary skill set, a life, what else did he require?

There was a missing piece, an empty space in Connor’s observations. He hated not having the whole story, but the only way to get it was through the man himself. Perhaps Connor had the chance to understand the mystery behind the legend, but in the meantime, he had to nurse the sickly man back to health.

The Deviant, reduced to skin and bones and exhaustion. Connor remembered hearing stories when he was younger about the one called Deviant, a title passed down from assassin to assassin. To be the Deviant was the be the best, and Connor had coveted that dream until he understood what it meant. Left with a unique set of skills and lacking the kind needed to be someone else, Connor had forced himself into a corner in a titanium cage.  

Connor never cared much to decide what his morals were. It was obvious that they didn’t line up with most of the world’s population. There wasn’t a reset button to fix them, and he wasn’t inclined to adjust them either.

The clock chimed noon, its echoing sound familiar and distant at the same time. There were days when that sound meant pain and rugged eyes and alcohol filled breath and there were days when it meant roasting coffee and a grim but patient smile.

Connor left the living room and came back with a length of rope. Markus was hurt, but he knew that the man was still dangerous. Several lessons had taught him several times to alway beware. He tied it around Markus’ wrists and then to the beam of wood in the ceiling. The oak was supported and bolted into several other crossing beams. Granted, he didn’t think Markus was going anywhere.

Knot finished, Connor’s thoughts turned to food. The safe house was stocked to the brim with supplies, but the food choices were sparse. Connor didn’t cook anything more complicated than a bowl of brown rice and roasted vegetables. He could start a fire from flint and iron, run on walls, navigate through complex layouts and streets, and hit a sniper shot at seventeen hundred meters, but he couldn’t make a single crèpe.

The kitchen was basic, with only the necessary oven, microwave, and fridge. They weren’t new appliances either, the white tinged a dreary grey and drudged up brown. Rust was creeping in the stovetop bars. He wasn’t coming back here after this and Connor had never been one to clean unless a case called for it.

The silence wasn’t oppressive the way it was in the lost district. Here, there was the faint noise of cars and planes, wind clattering branches against windows, and dogs barking every now and again. There, metal clanged and doors slammed and the foundation was built upon the hidden and forgotten things, things left alone for reasons no one knew any longer.

The creature was another matter. Connor had seen it once, cast in moonlight and framed in ragged shadows. Eyes dark as a starless night and mouth crawling with jagged teeth that could rip and tear through steel with ease, the creature lacked any formal name. It didn’t need one. The very sound of its claws dragging against the road made birds silent and turned foxes and badgers aside. Doors were braced and windows left empty. The creature was always hungry and always waiting.

The lights flickered in the kitchen before coming back to their usual consistent beam. Connor ignored t and went about making a cheddar cheese and butter sandwich for himself and a chicken soup for Markus. Solid food after starvation wasn’t a good idea. He’d have to work Markus into the regular three meals a day. From prior research, treatment for the malnourished took over three months. They’d have to find another place to stay, out of the way from civilization. The country of France was lovely at this time year.

The summer heat and colliding weather brought out a lush countryside filled with various kinds of trees and grasses. Hills roamed through, rivers cutting around bluffs. It wasn’t so different from the midwestern countryside, aside for one monumental fact.

France had mountains.

Towering, jagged peaked mountains. Most were snow capped, but their bases sometimes sprouted deciduous forests that would fade into rocky outcroppings and trails. Connor had spent a vacation hiking up Mount Blac, one of France’s tallest mountains. They wouldn’t be hiding out near an tourist attraction, the likelihood of someone asking for directions increased dramatically.

The water was boiling on the stove, the rich smell of chicken and spices rising from the pot as Connor added the packet mixture. Rich was a stretch, but to Connor and certainly to Markus, it would be their version of a five star meal.

Tapping the wooden spoon on the side of the steaming pot, Connor laddled a sizeable chunk of the soup into a one of two bowls he had on stock. Tupperware and silverware weren’t high on his survival list. His contact must have thought of it; he knew himself well enough to know it wouldn't have crossed his mind.

Connor set the bowl onto the rickety coffee table. Markus stared at him with those strange eyes―the heterochromia unsettling. Markus’ eyes were unsettling without the two different colors, a barrier blocked Connor from seeing anything but a wall put up to keep others out. He didn’t like not being able to see through a person, however invasive that was.

Connor offered the bowl and no words. Markus took it and sat up, his hands trembling. The soup splashed from the spoon onto his lap as he raised it to his lips. It didn’t deter Markus. He kept at it until the soup was in his stomach or on the ragged shirt he wore.

It was a mess and if Connor had cared about such things, he might have said something, but he didn’t care, so he refrained from spoken word.

Neither had said a word to each other during their stay in each other’s company. They had an innate understanding, or so Connor thought. Both were killers and both weren’t the type to have small talk. What sort of things would they talk about anyways? Kills? Training how to kill? Their first kill?

Connor’s whole world revolved around these things, nothing else had ever mattered. Nothing besides the gun in his hands and the father back home.

He left Markus laying there, eyes staring at the blank wall, mind off in another place. There was a phone call he had to make.

The bedroom was sparse—a night stand, full size bed with black sheets, and one wardrobe with two sets of clothes. There wasn’t a window, giving the room a closed off and claustrophobic atmosphere. Markus would need a set of clothes to travel in, the ones he was wearing were torn and stained with various liquids.

Connor made a mental note to see if the one’s in the wardrobe would fit him or if he’d have to buy new ones. He pulled out the cheap phone for one last call.

Another number he knew by heart. His one friend, or the closest thing he had to a friend. His contact, who helped him get places, know layouts and hack into secret Russian KGB servers.

“Simon.”

“AK. What do you need this time?” Simon’s voice filtered in with a crack.

Connor sat down on the edge of the bed. “I need a place out in the country, not for from Lyon, France. Fifty miles at most, but away from people. I have something that came up and I can’t travel for a few months. I’ll need two thousand euros and two sets of the normal. One car, don’t care how old as long as it doesn’t break down. Guns must be kept in a different location than normal.”

Simon was silent, the clattering of a keyboard faintly coming through. “You have someone with you?”

“An old buddy, injured in a car crash yesterday and you know I hate hospitals. I want more medical supplies in the house too. Antiseptic, gauze, morphine, the usual.”

Simon hummed in agreement. “I’ll send the address over in an hour. It’ll be ready by tomorrow afternoon, probably around two. Stay alive.”

Connor hung up and laid back on the bed. He had an hour drive in the morning to pick up Gavin. The man had texted him that he’d arrive at four am. The clock read one pm. The day was dragging on, with every moment lasting longer than it should have any right to.

He stared up at the ceiling, eyes following the slowly spinning fan that didn’t circulate the air in the room. Questions reemerged.

Markus was here on his own account, this Connor knew. Connor was good at what he did, he was very good, but the man in the living room was far better at everything. Markus was the top, the pinnacle of what they could do. He’d heard stories, everyone heard stories of the Deviant. Names came and went, but Markus’ had had stayed up their for longer than most lived. Twelve years. For the past twelve years, Markus had dominated the playing field.

Why him and why now? What changed? What caused the haggard man he saw before him, with sunken eyes and sallow skin?

Connor hated unanswered questions, but he hated begging for information too. If he could find out who this man was before he was the Deviant…

But how could Connor do that? He snorted. The man had lived in the shadows, become a shadow. People had tried, they always tried—to figure out the person behind the mask.

The notoriety of never being carved out, of never being exposed had given Markus an incredible advantage. No one knew how he did it, but Connor had an inkling.

Hackers were good and there had to be their version of Deviant in the community too. A person Markus had contacted to get himself wiped out of every database. In every country. Connor sighed.

There were things to get done, preparation for Gavin and for their move. Connor spent the rest of the day doing exactly that. The boring, easy, and mindless tasks he’d done enough times that they’d lost all meaning. Their importance didn’t decrease, they still had to be done, but Connor had grown accustomed to listening to classical music and think about other things while he finished security checks, figured out plans of moving Markus and the surgery he’d require from Gavin.

Markus was fast asleep, or appeared to be when Connor checked in on him around ten. The day had quickened into night and Connor grew tired as the minutes ticked by. He made sure the rope was tight and the knot untouched before leaving the room. He couldn’t scratch the itch that was Markus. The man could have escaped, Connor had left him enough openings to leave, but there he lay, still here. Markus wanted something, and Connor needed to find out what that was.

Why him? Others had hunted Markus too, sought after the ten million for their efforts, which led to the obvious question, what made him special? Connor had encountered his kind over the past year, killed a few and left a few unable to walk. It wasn’t unnecessary, Connor was built on necessary. It was necessary to eat, to drink and sleep. Necessary to take out opponents, ranging from unconscious to dead, depending on the situation.

But the question lingered in the background as he gave Markus one last look. When he looked at him, he didn’t see everything he’d expected. The strong, unflinching stance, a cold, ruthless killer, the remarkably robotic style of thinking, none of it came to mind. In its place stood a man, human in the way he tried to understand his surroundings, human in the way he stared endlessly at the walls, deep in an unknowable place. Thin and hungry and starved for something more.

Connor disliked the word something. It implied that the thing wasn’t known or there was too much to know. Implications were dangerous and so was he. But he found himself wanting that something too, though it remained far out of reach and hidden by a dark fog.

That night he went to sleep with mysteries in his head and a problem he hadn’t yet seen, but no matter the things in his head, Connor always slept light and woke up often. Nothing changed, nothing wavered.

And by magic, Connor hadn’t noticed the light flickering on in the living room.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3

Previous Chapter: Chapter 1

[theloniousbach]

THE CONNIE HAN TRIO, JAZZ ST LOUIS, 3 (COUCH TOUR) and 4 MARCH 2022

Back to the Bistro for a lost show that was on the list for April 2020, but not without a stream from the night before that served as a nice and familiar preview. That preview mattered as five tunes were repeated and I got a sense of her acknowledged debt to McCoy Tyner, and adjusted to her presentation (intelligent commentary and platform high heels with goth (black skintight jeans with a see through top night one, hot pants in person).

I’m loathe to talk about a woman’s appearance, particularly a young one, but I am some combination of prude, old fart, and one not wanting, on her behalf, any obstacle to her being taken seriously. One could observe that she is simply expressing her youth and sexuality and quip that she dresses that way because she can. It is not at variance with her dedicated musicianship with equally unabashed grimaces and hunching at the keyboard and her wide ranging and developed comments on songcraft in Stephen Sondheim, painting and museums, and Sumerian mythology. No variance at all, but evidently I am a prude and an old fart more comfortable, say, with Nicole Glover’s austerity and shy but equally intelligent and all too rare stage patter.

So, with that detour, let’s return to Han’s remarkable piano work. Yes, she’s a big rollicking player with lots of power. For the OG was her explicit tribute to McCoy Tyner which was relentless and certainly had Tynerisms as just about any modal tune will. But there was more even in that tune. The openers, Mister Dominator (“not what you think but [comments on song construction leading to…]about the power of dominant chords.”) and Boy Toy (by drummer Bill Wysacke—great last name) for its tricky structure plus Captain’s Song (where she also evoked Herbie Hancock) from Thursday were the only tuses that weren’t played both nights. Okay, the openers maybe are of a piece with her outfits, a winking daring the likes of me to take her seriously because of, not in spite, of the provocation.

Besides the power though of course she had subtlety. Groovy was on electric piano and that can get muddy with too many notes, so she could back off the gas when she needs too. But the best examples were from Wysacke—his waltz Wind Rose Goddess and a lush arrangement of Pretty Women from Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. The music had space to breathe and she/they could explore even without sacrificing her overall aesthetic. We sat near the bar, drummer’s side, so we didn’t see her hands but saw him, and he (and bassist Ryan Berg too) were strong in their crafts. But she introduced Wysacke as producer/composer/arranger/drummer, so there are ways that this is in part his band. He has been her mentor for a dozen year, since she was 14, so that’s of a piece. But he came out 10 minutes early and put set lists out for each of them, so he plays essential to the operation. But his mentorship might well be his major contribution as Han is quite the player.

It was weird but comfortable to be back in person. Other people are distracting, one’s sight line is fixed, it’s hard to write in my notebook; it’s not quite about just the music in the very focused it has been on the streams. And yet I acknowledge that that’s how it should be and, indeed, needs to be.

So, it’s back to the Bistro!

[greatposthottub]

Headphones For Mac Pro

Simplify Bluetooth connection

Headphones For Macbook Pro 16

Mac Pro Wikipedia

Mac Pro Cosmetics

Service coverage is available only for AirPods, Beats earphones, or Beats headphones and their original included accessories for protection against (i) defects in materials or workmanship, (ii) batteries that retain less than 80 percent of their original capacity, and (iii) up to two incidents of accidental damage from handling every 12 months, each incident being subject to a. Also, the headset is now built to last with an IP54 rating meaning it's dust and water resistant. Lastly, the headset software is updateable meaning you can plug it directly to a computer or pair it with smartphone running the BlueParrott updater program and you will be able to update the firmware on the headset. ' Easy connection to my iPhone, iPad or Mac.the weight isnt annoying, and the bulkiness isnt noticeable for the wearer, only for the visual of the larger coverage of over ear headphones, that is the main cause as the noise cancellation, the weight isnt bad, it isnt easy to lose a pair as a sport bluetooth pair of surrljnding earbuds could be.

Headphones for macbook pro Best Buy customers often prefer the following products when searching for Headphones For Macbook Pro. Browse the top-ranked list of Headphones For Macbook Pro below along with associated reviews and opinions. Determining If the Headphones are Compatible. When you plug a headphone that has a 3.5 mini-phono jack pin into the headphone port, the MacBook Pro can tell you whether the system is actually detecting your headphones when you plug them in. After plugging the headphones into the headphone port, open 'System Preferences' from the Apple menu.

With ToothFairy, pairing AirPods with Mac is effortless.

From the dawn of time to just about a few years ago, all of us sported a pair of wired headphones and were convinced that this is simply how it will be done forever. After all, they are the easiest technology around: just plug them in, put them on, and go. But with proliferation of Bluetooth headphone options and disappearance of headphone jacks from nearly all the latest smartphones, wired headphones seem to progress on the path of disappearance more and more each day.

Thankfully, wireless devices are great. They are lightweight. They are versatile. They can be easily connected to your iPhone, your Mac, or your car. Charge them overnight just the same way as your phone and they last all day too.

Sadly, without proper configuration, connecting Bluetooth headphones to Mac might get a bit tricky, with frequent disconnections and music interruptions. Here, we’ll help you find out how to pair AirPods and other sound devices with Mac properly and control them masterfully at the same time.

Why Bluetooth Headphones Won't Connect To Mac

There are a few common problems we need to explore:

Bluetooth headphones won't connect to Mac right out of the box — some configuring is needed

Pairing Bluetooth headphones with Mac is different from pairing them with iPhone or your car’s audio system

Special settings that answer questions like how to connect two Bluetooth headphones to one Mac and how to use multiple audio outputs

Throughout the article, AirPods would be used as an example, but any other model of Bluetooth headphones can be connected in a similar fashion.

Get a tool to pair with a Mac

Connect Bluetooth devices to your Mac in one click. Setapp has an easy tool for that.

How to pair wireless headphones to Mac

Connecting Bluetooth headphones to Mac for the first time is done by following a few easy steps:

On your Mac, click on the Apple menu and launch System Preferences

Navigate to the Bluetooth menu and Turn Bluetooth On. You should now see all available Bluetooth devices around you.

Make sure your headphones are charged and currently in discoverable mode. Click Connect to establish a new connection

Your Bluetooth headphones should now appear in the list. Click Connect to establish a new connection.

If you’re trying to reconnect your existing device, right-click on it and choose Connect

After you’ve managed to successfully connect Bluetooth headphones to Mac for the first time, they should stay connected or reconnect automatically when you leave the Bluetooth range (around 33 feet or 10 meters) and come back.

You can also calibrate headphones to your liking through the Sound menu in System Preferences. For example, in the Output tab you can choose to “Show volume in menu bar” and set a stereo balance between right and left.

Described above is the ideal scenario for connecting AirPods to Mac. But oftentimes things don’t go as planned, so let’s work through some widespread issues regarding Bluetooth headphones as well.

How to connect AirPods to Mac

There’s good news for those interested specifically in how to pair AirPods with MacBook. It’s really handy to set up connections if you use multiple Apple devices with your AirPods. Plus, you can get third-party software to automate the flow.

Here’s how you connect new AirPods to Mac:

Open System Preferences on your Mac and select Bluetooth.

Ensure Bluetooth is turned on.

On AirPods, press and hold the round button (it’s at the bottom center of the case) until the white light starts blinking.

Your Bluetooth headphones should now appear in the list.

In case you’ve already paired AirPods with your iPhone that’s tied to the same iCloud account and Apple ID, your earbuds will be automatically recognized by Mac.

To simplify it even more, install ToothFairy, an app that pairs Bluetooth devices with Mac in one click. It works particularly well with connecting AirPods to Mac – instead of taking AirPods out of their case and putting them back in, you click on one single icon in ToothFairy. You can read more about how to use the app below.

How to fix Bluetooth headphone issues

Sometimes going through the setup steps doesn’t result in your headphones connecting successfully, or connecting and then abruptly disconnecting. This is profoundly annoying but can be solved by either resetting the headphones or purging preference settings on your Mac. Here's how to fix all known issues:

Restart your Bluetooth headphones

In case you can’t connect your Bluetooth headphones not only to your Mac but also any other device you own (iPhone or car audio), it might be a glitch in its settings, so a simple reset should remedy the situation.

For reset instructions, check your device’s manual. Here’s how to reset AirPods:

Put the earpieces into the case and keep the lid open

Press and hold the setup button until the light switches from amber to white (around 10 seconds)

Now all settings on your earphones should be reset and you should be able to connect them again using the standard workflow above. If the problem persists, it could be something to do with the preferences on your Mac.

Reset sounds preferences on Mac

First, make sure that your Mac is running macOS Sierra or newer (macOS High Sierra or Mojave). If not, upgrade to the latest version by going to System Preferences > Software Update or using the App Store if you’re upgrading from a few versions back.

Next, if nothing was of any benefit so far, try resetting your Mac’s sound preferences. To do that:

Headphones For Macbook Pro 16

From the menu bar select Go > Go to Folder… and type ~/Library/Preferences

In the long list of preference files, find and delete the following: com.apple.preferences.plist and com.apple.soundpref.plist

Deleting preferences out of the library forces your Mac to recreate them brand new, thus avoiding any bugs or improper algorithms that could have interfered with your Bluetooth headphones setup. If that didn’t work, you can also try relaunching the audio process:

Launch Activity Monitor from the Applications folder

In the CPU tab, find the process called coreaudiod

Quit the process and close Activity Monitor

The above would force not only the preferences for your audio to reset but also the audio process for your whole Mac to relaunch.

No audio from a paired and connected Bluetooth headset

Occasionally, when you succeeded in connecting Bluetooth headphones to Mac, you might hear no sound going through. There are a few things you can do to solve this.

Ensure that your headphones are the selected audio output for your Mac:

Go System Preferences > Sound

In the Output tab, find your headphones in the list and double-click to make them active

If that didn’t change anything:

Reset your headphones as per the directions above

Go System Preferences > Bluetooth

Right-click on your headphones, choose Remove, and confirm

Now you need to connect Bluetooth headphones to Mac all over again, and the problem should disappear.

Can’t connect two Bluetooth headphones Mac recognizes

The beauty of Mac’s Bluetooth menu is that it lets you add any number of Bluetooth-enabled devices, from keyboards to headphones. Sometimes, however, it might malfunction and not allow you to add two wireless headphones at the same time.

To fix this issue, essentially repeat the steps from the previous section:

Reset each pair of headphones

Remove them from Mac’s Bluetooth menu

Reconnect your headphones once more

If, however, you’re looking for how to use multiple audio outputs, such as headphones, at the same time — here some magic tricks are required.

How to use multiple audio outputs simultaneously

Most Mac users believe that they can only play their audio output through one device at a time, be it internal speakers, Bluetooth headphones, or some other amplifier. But in reality it’s possible to play audio on multiple devices at the same time through a handy built-in utility called Audio MIDI Setup. Here’s what you need to do:

Mac Pro Wikipedia

Launch Audio MIDI Setup through Applications

Click the plus icon at the bottom left and choose Create Multi-Output Device

In the new option that appears, check all the Bluetooth devices you need to play simultaneously

Navigate to the Sound menu in System Preferences and choose the Multi-Output Device in the Output tab. Now all sounds will play through both devices at the same time.

Playing audio through multiple devices is a nifty trick for when you need more sound power for your party or when trying to create a true surround sound for a movie screening.

Use master audio software for all needs

Most of the time, audio on Mac is not an issue. What’s frustrating is the way current settings are sprinkled all over macOS. Lots of fixes described here might seem confusing and unintuitive at first sight. You might wish there was an app that would make it easy to control all your audio needs from a single place. And there is.

Meet ToothFairy — the most simple and magical Bluetooth device assistant for Mac. In a true one-click fashion, ToothFairy allows you to set up any number of Bluetooth-enabled devices, configure hotkeys, and switch easily between them.

To set up a new device in ToothFairy, all you need to do is:

Open the app

Click the plus icon

Locate your device in the list and click Connect

Similarly, it’s just as easy to assign custom icons to all your frequently used devices and get them displayed in the menu bar, so you instantly know which devices are connected, what’s their battery life, and can quickly turn them on and off with one click.

Additionally, ToothFairy offers a unique option of improving the sound quality of your Bluetooth headphones by funneling the sound through a higher level audio codec.

In the end, it seems like wireless headphones are here to stay. So finding a master program to control them with ease is going to save your hours of time in the long run. Use the tips above to configure your headphones, easily connect AirPods to MacBook, and take advantage of ToothFairy to just the way you want and take advantage of ToothFairy to tell you what exactly is going on with all your Bluetooth devices.

Best of all, ToothFairy is available for a free trial through Setapp, a platform of over 150 useful utilities and apps for people who love finding the best shortcuts for using their Macs. Now enjoy the sound!

Setapp lives on Mac and iOS. Please come back from another device.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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Mac Pro Cosmetics

[tech-battery]

The Corsair H150i Elite Capellix AIO Cooler Review: Go Big Or Go Home

Corsair is one of the oldest and most reputable PC component manufacturers in the PC market. The company’s origins lie with memory-related products but, nearly two decades ago, the company slowly began diversifying into other segments of the market. While their initial attempts were reluctant, releasing but a couple of products each time, most of these attempts were highly successful and drove the company to grow massively into the entrepreneurial (and recently IPOed) giant that they are today.

These days, one of Corsair’s most successful product segments is that of all-in-one (AIO) liquid coolers – an ironic outcome considering that liquid coolers were the company’s first unsuccessful diversification attempt back in 2003. Corsair did not give up on liquid cooling though and several years later, when simple and maintenance-free AIO cooler designs appeared, Corsair successfully launched their own AIO coolers. Today, AIO coolers are one of Corsair’s most popular group of products, with the company retailing over a dozen different models at this point of time.

In this review we're taking a look at our first cooler from Corsair's new Elite Capellix series of AIO coolers, the H150i Elite Capellix. Like previous H150 AIO coolers, this is a 360mm (3x120mm) cooler, the largest that Corsair makes and ostensibly offering the best cooling performance thanks to its hefty radiator size. For cases that can fit the sizable cooler, the H150 series typically addresses both end of the performance spectrum, offering modest cooling at very low fan speeds (and thus noise levels), or top-tier cooling at more normal fan speeds.

For their new Elite Capellix generation of coolers, Corsair has given their product lineup another layer of polish. Along with incorporating the latest and greatest from Corsair in terms of MagLev fans and pump heads, Corsair has focused on making the Elite Capellix series “Smart” AIO coolers, adding an advanced Commander CORE module into the bundle. A combination fan and RGB lighting controller, the Commander CORE greatly enhances the programming flexibility of the cooler’s performance and lighting features, allowing it to control fans and lighting throughout an entire system.

Packaging & Bundle

We received the new H150i Elite Capellix in a long cardboard box, hinting the size of the cooler. Corsair is currently shipping most of their products in artistically similar black/yellow themed packaging and this cooler is no exception. A colorful picture of the H150i covers the relatively simple front of the packaging. Inside the box we found the cooler and its parts well protected by custom cardboard inserts.

As expected, Corsair includes all of the necessary mounting hardware into the box. The H150i Elite Capellix supports most of the current consumer CPU sockets, including sTR4/sTRX4 for AMD Threadripper CPUs, the mounting hardware for which are also included in the bundle. Corsair also includes an alternative main block cover for aesthetic purposes.

Corsair supplies a Commander CORE module alongside with the H150i Elite Capellix, which essentially is a version of the iCUE Commander Pro RGB controller that the company retails as a stand-alone product, simply tailored to control the RGB lighting of the liquid cooler instead. Nevertheless, it sports six fan power and RGB LED connectors, allowing users to install up to three additional compatible fans, enabling either push-pull configurations or the control of system fans.

The included three ML120 fans feature cutting edge magnetic levitation engines, with their specifications suggesting extraordinary longevity. Unlike all classic designs, these engines magnetically repel the fan’s rotor, greatly reducing friction. Lower friction should lead to significantly superior overall performance and longevity, as well as lower energy consumption, which explains the low current requirement for the rated speed of 2400 RPM. The fans have frosted blades and a black frame, with eight RGB LEDs each.

The Corsair H150i Elite Capellix Liquid Cooler

At first sight, Corsair’s latest liquid cooler looks deceptively simple. Its massive proportions certainly are inspiring but the simplistic appearance does not hint at how advanced this cooler is. At a high level, the design is based on the standard AIO configuration of a single radiator, two hoses, and a single block that combines the copper CPU contact plate with a mini liquid pump. Corsair went with thick-walled FEP (Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene) tubing with nylon sleeve braiding instead of the usual stiff corrugated tubing, which is more flexible and aesthetically superior.

The massive 400 mm long radiator requires a case designed to hold three 120 mm fans in the row, yet also with enough clearance to fit the extra mass of the radiator itself. It is 27 mm thick, requiring a clearance of 55 mm with the fans installed in order to fit inside a system. Size aside, the radiator is the typical dual-pass cross-flow design with tiny fins soldered on thin oblong tubes, as the vast majority of AIO cooler radiators are. Due to its thickness, the radiator’s airflow resistance is low and clearly designed to perform with very little air pressure.

The main block assembly of the H150i Elite Capellix initially appears unrefined – however, the octagonal body hides a record number of thirty-three fully programmable RGB LEDs and the top plate is removable, providing extra flexibility to users. Corsair includes two top plates in the bundle, one darker and one brighter, but the relatively simple shape of the top cover allows for very easy customization if someone has access to a 3D printer or CNC. The block is powered via the Commander CORE module and has a 3-pin motherboard connector that serves only as a tachometer for speed/health monitoring.

The octagonal copper contact plate is attached to the base of the block with eight screws. Although it is not machined to a perfect mirror finish, it is very smooth and perfectly flat, which is what matters for good thermal performance. Thermal material is pre-applied to it.

Once everything is properly connected and powered, the H150i Elite Capellix becomes a canvas full of colors. The LEDs are controlled by the Commander CORE interface and lighting effects are programmable via Corsair's iCUE software. It is the presence of the Commander CORE module that makes the new H150i Elite Capellix so much more flexible than previous versions of the cooler – when combined with the now highly advanced iCUE software, the number of programming options are endless.

For example, users can stick with basic lighting effects that are purely aesthetic or program practical indicative lighting effects and/or reactions, such as temperature-dependent colors, alarms, and more. Additionally, the Commander CORE module paired with the iCUE software offers a complete synergy between all compatible Corsair devices, allowing inter-device manipulation and commands. For example, users could very well turn the Function row of a compatible keyboard into a lighting bar that indicates the RPM % of the cooler’s fans or change the cooler’s lighting colors based on which mouse profile is currently active.

Testing Methodology

Although the testing of a cooler appears to be a simple task, that could not be much further from the truth. Proper thermal testing cannot be performed with a cooler mounted on a single chip, for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons include the instability of the thermal load and the inability to fully control and or monitor it, as well as the inaccuracy of the chip-integrated sensors. It is also impossible to compare results taken on different chips, let alone entirely different systems, which is a great problem when testing computer coolers, as the hardware changes every several months. Finally, testing a cooler on a typical system prevents the tester from assessing the most vital characteristic of a cooler, its absolute thermal resistance.

The absolute thermal resistance defines the absolute performance of a heatsink by indicating the temperature rise per unit of power, in our case in degrees Celsius per Watt (°C/W). In layman's terms, if the thermal resistance of a heatsink is known, the user can assess the highest possible temperature rise of a chip over ambient by simply multiplying the maximum thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip with it. Extracting the absolute thermal resistance of a cooler however is no simple task, as the load has to be perfectly even, steady and variable, as the thermal resistance also varies depending on the magnitude of the thermal load. Therefore, even if it would be possible to assess the thermal resistance of a cooler while it is mounted on a working chip, it would not suffice, as a large change of the thermal load can yield much different results.

Appropriate thermal testing requires the creation of a proper testing station and the use of laboratory-grade equipment. Therefore, we created a thermal testing platform with a fully controllable thermal energy source that may be used to test any kind of cooler, regardless of its design and or compatibility. The thermal cartridge inside the core of our testing station can have its power adjusted between 60 W and 340 W, in 2 W increments (and it never throttles). Furthermore, monitoring and logging of the testing process via software minimizes the possibility of human errors during testing. A multifunction data acquisition module (DAQ) is responsible for the automatic or the manual control of the testing equipment, the acquisition of the ambient and the in-core temperatures via PT100 sensors, the logging of the test results and the mathematical extraction of performance figures.

Finally, as noise measurements are a bit tricky, their measurement is being performed manually. Fans can have significant variations in speed from their rated values, thus their actual speed during the thermal testing is being recorded via a laser tachometer. The fans (and pumps, when applicable) are being powered via an adjustable, fanless desktop DC power supply and noise measurements are being taken 1 meter away from the cooler, in a straight line ahead from its fan engine. At this point we should also note that the Decibel scale is logarithmic, which means that roughly every 3 dB(A) the sound pressure doubles. Therefore, the difference of sound pressure between 30 dB(A) and 60 dB(A) is not "twice as much" but nearly a thousand times greater. The table below should help you cross-reference our test results with real-life situations.

The noise floor of our recording equipment is 30.2-30.4 dB(A), which represents a medium-sized room without any active noise sources. All of our acoustic testing takes place during night hours, minimizing the possibility of external disruptions.

Testing Results, Maximum Fan Speed

As always, we'll start things off by testing things at full speed/performance. Our maximum speed testing is performed with both the fans and the pump powered via a 12V DC source. This input voltage should have the pump and fans matching the speed ratings of the manufacturer. According to Corsair’s specifications, the MagLev fans included with the H150i Elite Capellix should have a rotational speed of 2400 RPM. Our tachometer indicated that the fans were rotating at an average speed of 2370 RPM, very close to their rated specifications.

The Corsair H150i Elite Capellix seems to be getting the best thermal performance out of every similarly sized AIO cooler that we have tested to this date, outperforming NZXT’s X73 by a whisker. The performance seems to be fairly stable across most of the load range, offering predictable performance regarding of the load, with the exception of very low loads where the temperature difference is far too small for appropriate heat transfer between the mediums.

The average thermal resistance of 0.0704 °C/W is impressive but users need to keep in mind that this performance comes with the fans rotating at their maximum speed. With the powerful fans of the H150i Elite Capellix, this results to a sound pressure level of 43 dB(A), a relatively high figure for a CPU cooler.

Testing Results, Low Fan Speed

Using a PWM voltage regulator, we reduced the speed of the fans manually down to half their rated speed. At this setting, the 120 mm MagLev fans of the H150i Elite Capellix rotate at 1220 RPM. Since the pump’s speed cannot be controlled directly, we had the Commander CORE module attached to a PC and set the pump to operate in its “Quiet” mode while testing.

When it comes to thermal resistance, Corsair’s latest AIO cooler initially seems to be slightly outperforming all of the 360 mm coolers that we have tested to this date. The average thermal resistance of 0.0808 °C/W is almost identical to the figures we received from the recently released NZXT X73, with Corsair’s MagLev fans giving the H150i Elite Capellix a small advantage in terms of acoustics.

But if one looks at just the thermal performance charts, other implementations with significantly slower fans, including Corsair’s older H150i Pro RGB, initially seem to be performing slightly worse. A closer look reveals that the better thermal performance is due to the quick fans of the H150i Elite Capellix, resulting to significantly higher noise levels. Setting the fans to operate even slower is likely to neutralize any thermal performance advantage that the cooler has.

Thermal Resistance VS Sound Pressure Level

During our thermal resistance vs. sound pressure level test, we maintain a steady 100W thermal load and assess the overall performance of the coolers by taking multiple temperature and sound pressure level readings within the operating range of the stock cooling fans. The result is a graph that depicts the absolute thermal resistance of the cooler in comparison to the noise generated. For both the sound pressure level and absolute thermal resistance readings, lower figures are better.

This graph reveals interesting information regarding the overall performance of the H150i Elite Capellix. Although it does manage to get the best thermal performance out of every other similarly sized cooler, it can be seen that the older H150i Pro RGB actually outperforms it when taking the acoustics into account. This is because of the fast 2400 RPM fans that Corsair includes with the H150i Elite Capellix and our two-point testing methodology. Theoretically, the H150i Elite Capellix would perform identically or nearly identically with the H150i Pro RGB if both coolers were to share the same fans. It is also proof that the long and thin 360 mm radiator benefits very little from higher airflow, as its heat transfer surface is far too large to allow for significant temperature differences even if the airflow is low.

Conclusion

All-in-one CPU coolers first hit the market in force over a decade ago, which since then has allowed for more than enough time for developers to optimize their thermal performance, leaving little room for additional raw performance advancements. Nowadays, with many manufacturers retailing AIO cooler solutions, the market is pretty much saturated, a common outcome in the world of PC parts. Because of this, Corsair is always striving to maintain a competitive advantage by designing products with unique features, which is what made the release of the H150i Elite Capellix an anticipated move.

Where the H150i Elite Capellix has the lead over most of the competition is in terms of quality. Corsair ensured that their top AIO cooler is very well made, with excellent materials and a solid overall build quality. They also supply top-tier and fairly expensive MagLev cooling fans with the cooler, something that is often overlooked despite the fans being one of the most important parts of an AIO cooler.

The prime marketing feature of the H150i Elite Capellix is the included Commander CORE module and its compatibility with Corsair’s iCUE ecosystem. This opens up practically limitless user-programmable options, both aesthetic and practical. Except from the versatility that the iCUE software affords to the H150i Elite Capellix itself, it also enables greater control over other system fans and lights, allowing for system-wide lighting programming and sensory input. For example, it is easy to change the lighting of the cooler depending on which gaming profile is selected or for all compatible devices to share exactly the same lighting effect. The disadvantage of this feature is simple and obvious – this kind of total synergy only works with iCUE compatible devices, meaning that not even all of Corsair’s products are compatible with this feature.

However when it comes to performance, the H150i Elite Capellix barely any better than the H150i Pro RGB that the company released two years ago. We suspected as much from before we tested the cooler, as it is obvious that both coolers share the same radiator and tubing. The H150i Elite Capellix technically leads our thermal performance charts but the very powerful 2400 RPM fans are primarily responsible for this, which actually damage the cooler’s noise-to-performance ratio. Running the fans of the H150i Elite Capellix at the same speed as the fans of the H150i Pro RGB yields virtually the same performance, with but a tiny advantage for the H150i Elite Capellix – an advantage so small that can easily be a statistical error. Regardless, the quick fans provided with the H150i Elite Capellix offer greater versatility, as they can be programmed to stay quiet but also can be made loud if, for whatever reason, the user needs them to be.

Although the H150i Elite Capellix does not have a distinct performance advantage over the previous generation of cooler, its MSRP of $189 actually is reasonable and competitive. Despite the included Commander CORE, iCUE compatibility, and other minor upgrades, it's the same MSRP as the older H150i Pro RGB, making for a pleasant surprise as it means Corsair hasn't raised priced. In fact, it's generally priced close to – or even lower than – most of its direct competition. So from a performance standpoint, although Corsair hasn't managed to really move the needle on performance or pricing for their new cooler, the latest H150i is (still) just as competitive as the previous version.

Ultimately, this means that although we can't recommend the H150i Elite Capellix as an upgrade over a previous-generation cooler, Corsair continues to deliver a solid AIO cooler as far as new builds are concerned. The small quality of life improvements that come with newest H150i will help ensure that Corsair keep its advantage with unique features, all the while offering a better value to users that are considering a large AIO cooler today.

[endenogatai]

Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy.

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

These users want more choice over key elements such as the search engine that can be set as the default in Safari on iOS (Apple currently offers four choices: Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo, all U.S. search engines; and with ad tech giant Google set as the default).

It is also being called out over other default settings that undermine its claims to follow a privacy by design philosophy. Such as the iOS location services setting which, once enabled, non-transparently flip an associated sub-menu of settings — including location-based Apple ads. Yet bundled consent is never the same as informed consent…

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings

that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this

@tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially — feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

(At least barring some miracle new piece of Apple hardware — yet to be unboxed but which somehow rekindles smartphone-level demand afresh. That’s highly unlikely in any medium term timeframe given how versatile and capable the smartphone remains; ergo Apple’s greatest success is now Apple’s biggest challenge.)

With smartphone hardware replacement cycles slowing, the pressure on Cook to accelerate services revenue naturally steps up — which could in turn increase pressure on the core principles Cupertino likes to flash around.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

It’s true that controlling the iOS experience by applying certain limits to deliver mainstream consumer friendly hardware served Apple well for years. But it’s also true iOS has grown in complexity over time having dropped some of its control freakery.

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Though of course from a business PoV Apple benefits by being able to charge Google a large sum of money to remain in the plum search default spot. (Reportedly a very large sum, though claims that the 2018 figure was $9BN have not been confirmed. Unsurprisingly neither party wants to talk about the terms of the transaction.)

The problem for Apple is that indirectly benefiting from Google eroding the user privacy it claims to champion — by letting the ad tech giant pay it to suck up iOS users’ search queries by default — is hardly consistent messaging.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

Cook has also made a point of strongly and publicly attacking the ‘data industrial complex‘. Yet without mentioning the inconvenient side-note that Apple also engages in trading user data for profit in some instances, albeit indirectly.

In 2017 Apple switched from using Bing to Google for Siri web search results. So even as it has stepped up its rhetoric around user privacy it has deepened its business relationship with one of the Western Internet’s primary data suckers.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

The presence of the DDG startup alongside three data-mining tech giants has allowed those ‘in the know’ iOS users to flip the bird at Google for years, meaning Apple has kept privacy conscious consumers buying its products (if not fully on side with all its business choices).

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android -powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the inflating $1,000+ price-tags on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhones. $1,000+ for a smartphone that isn’t selling your data by default might still sound very pricy but at least you’d be getting something more than just shiny glass for all those extra dollars. But the iPhone isn’t actually that phone. Not by default.

Apple may be taking a view that the most privacy sensitive iPhone users are effectively a captive market with little option but to buy iOS hardware, given the Google-flavored Android competition. Which is true but also wouldn’t bode well for the chances of Apple upselling more services to these people to drive replacement revenue in a saturated smartphone market.

Offending those consumers who otherwise could be your very best, most committed and bought in users seems short-sighted and short-termist to say the least.

Although removing Google as the default search provider in markets where it dominates would obviously go massively against the mainstream grain that Apple’s business exists to serve.

This logic says Google is in the default position because, for most Internet users, Google search remains their default.

Indeed, Cook rolled out this exact line late last year when asked to defend the arrangement in an interview with Axios on HBO — saying: “I think their search engine is the best.”

He also flagged various pro-privacy features Apple has baked into its software in recent years, such as private browsing mode and smart tracker prevention, which he said work against the data suckers.

Albeit, that’s a bit like saying you’ve scattered a few garlic cloves around the house after inviting the thirsty vampire inside. And Cook readily admitted the arrangement isn’t “perfect”.

Clearly it’s a trade off. But Apple benefitting financially is what makes this particular trade-off whiff.

It implies Apple does indeed have an eye on quarterly balance sheets, and the increasingly important services line item specifically, in continuing this imperfect but lucrative arrangement — rather than taking a longer term view as the company purports to, per Cook’s letter to shareholders this week; in which he wrote: “We manage Apple for the long term, and Apple has always used periods of adversity to re-examine our approach, to take advantage of our culture of flexibility, adaptability and creativity, and to emerge better as a result.”

If Google’s search product is the best and Apple wants to take the moral high ground over privacy by decrying the surveillance industrial complex it could maintain the default arrangement in service to its mainstream base but donate Google’s billions to consumer and digital rights groups that fight to uphold and strengthen the privacy laws that people-profiling ad tech giants are butting hard against.

Apple’s shareholders might not like that medicine, though.

More palatable for investors would be for Apple to offer a broader choice of alternative search engines, thereby widening the playing field and opening up to more pro-privacy Google alternatives.

It could also design this choice in a way that flags up the trade-off to its millions of users. Such as, during device set-up, proactively asking users whether they want to keep their Internet searches private by default or use Google?

When put like that rather more people than you imagine might choose not to opt for Google to be their search default.

Non-tracking search engine DDG has been growing steadily for years, for example, hitting 30M daily searches last fall — with year-on-year growth of ~50%.

Given the terms of the Apple-Google arrangement sit under an NDA (as indeed all these arrangements do; DDG told us it couldn’t share any details about its own arrangement with Apple, for e.g.) it’s not clear whether one of Google’s conditions requires there be a limit on how many other search engines iOS users can pick from.

But it’s at least a possibility that Google is paying Apple to limit how many rivals sit in the list of competitors iOS users can pick out an alternative default. (It has, after all, recently been spanked in Europe for anti-competitive contractual limits imposed on Android OEMs to limit their ability to use alternatives to Google products, including search. So you could say Google has history where search is concerned.)

Equally, should Google actually relaunch a search product in China — as it’s controversially been toying with doing — it’s likely the company would push Apple to give it the default slot there too.

Though Apple would have more reason to push back, given Google would likely remain a minnow in that market. (Apple currently defaults to local search giant Baidu for iOS users in China.)

So even the current picture around search on iOS is a little more fuzzy than Cook likes to make out.

Local flavor

China is an interesting case, because if you look at Apple’s growth challenges in that market you could come to a very different conclusion vis-a-vis the power of privacy as a brand premium.

In China it’s convenience, via the do-it-all ‘Swiss army knife’ WeChat platform, that’s apparently the driving consumer force — and now also a headwind for Apple’s business there.

At the same time, the idea of users in the market having any kind of privacy online — when Internet surveillance has been imposed and ‘normalized’ by the state — is essentially impossible to imagine.

Yet Apple continues doing business in China, netting it further charges of hypocrisy.

Its revised guidance this week merely spotlights how important China and emerging markets are to its business fortunes. A principled pull-out hardly looks to be on the cards.

All of which underscores growing emerging market pressures on Apple that might push harder against its stated principles. What price privacy indeed?

It’s clear that carving out growth in a saturated smartphone market is going to be an increasingly tricky business for all players, with the risk of fresh trade-offs and pitfalls looming especially for Apple.

Negotiating this terrain certainly demands a fresh approach, as Cook implies is on his mind, per the shareholder letter.

Arguably the new normal may also call for an increasingly localized approach as a way to differentiate in a saturated and samey smartphone market.

The old Apple ‘one-sized fits all’ philosophy is already very outdated for some users and risks being caught flat-footed on a growing number of fronts — be that if your measure is software ‘innovation’ or a principled position on privacy.

An arbitrary limit on the choice of search engine your users can pick seems a telling example. Why not offer iOS users a free choice?

Or are Google’s billions really standing in the way of that?

It’s certainly an odd situation that iPhone owners in France, say, can pick from a wide range of keyboard apps — from mainstream names to superficial bling-focused glitter and/or neon LED keyboard skins or indeed emoji and GIF-obsessed keyboards — but if they want to use locally developed pro-privacy search engine Qwant on their phone’s native browser they have to tediously surf to the company’s webpage every time they want to look something up.

Google search might be the best for a median average ‘global’ (excluding China) iOS user but in an age of increasingly self-focused and self-centred technology, with ever more demanding consumers, there’s really no argument against letting people who want to choose for themselves.

In Europe there’s also the updated data protection framework, GDPR, to consider. Which may yet rework some mainstream ad tech business models.

On this front Qwant questions how even non-tracking rival DDG can protect users’ searches from government surveillance given its use of AWS cloud hosting and the U.S. Cloud Act. (Though, responding to a discussion thread about the issue on Github two years ago, DDG’s founder noted it has servers around the world, writing: “If you are in Europe you will be connected to our European servers.” He also reiterated that DDG does not collect any personal data from users — thereby limiting what could be extracted from AWS via the Act.)

Asked what reception it’s had when asking about getting its search engine on the Safari iOS list, Qwant told us the line that’s been (indirectly) fed back to it is “we are too European according to Apple”. (Apple declined to comment on the search choices it offers iOS users.)

“I have to work a lot to be more American,” Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Leandri told us, summing up the smoke signals coming out of Cupertino.

“I understand that Apple wants to give the same kind of experience to their customers… but I would say that if I was Apple now, based on the politics that I want to follow — about protecting the privacy of customers — I think it would be great to start thinking about Europe as a market where people have a different point of view on their data,” he continued.

“Apple has done a lot of work to, for example, not let applications give data to each by a very strict [anti-tracking policy]; Apple has done a lot of work to guarantee that cookies and tracking is super difficult on iOS; and now the last problem of Apple is Google search.”

“So I hope that Apple will look at our proposal in a different way — not just one-fits-all. Because we don’t think that one-fits-all today,” he added.

Qwant too, then, is hoping for a better Apple to emerge as a result of a little market adversity.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://tcrn.ch/2RxIUfB via IFTTT

[ainchase]

How Magic Wardrobe Works

Hi, this will be a very crude but in-depth explanation about what the Magic Wardrobe is and how it works in the KR server.

This is also very long and tedious so if you’re not interested, press J key on your keyboard to skip to the next post on your dashboard.

First, in order to access the wardrobe, press the button in your inventory.

Categories A

Catgories B

Categories C

See Only Appearances I Own option

List of Appearances

Grey’d out item is not registered in your wardrobe, but exists in the game. 

Item in white means it is registered in your wardrobe

You will only see things your current character can wear

Hide My Current Avatar

Purchase Selected Avatar (If it exists in the Item Mall)

Reset

Register Appearance

Apply Appearance

Search

Reset Search Bar

Clicking on the item in the preview will show you that item on the list. For example, I clicked on a weapon avatar, and now the list is showing me all weapon avatars that exist in the game for Ain. This also shows weapon item (not avatar). Yes you can wardrobe non-avatars equipments for their appearance, but you cannot apply appearance to non-avatars equipments.

Selecting the hair shows me that hair on the list of all the hair in the game. Notice how the entire list is grey? They are all the hairs that I did not register to the wardrobe; therefore I cannot apply them to other avatars. I have not registered the Idol Hat into my wardrobe yet. I will show you now how to register them into your wardrobe.

First, you have to take off the avatar/accessory you want to register. (There are other ways of registering, but it can get a little confusing so let me show you the most basic method first.)

Press Register Appearance button on the wardrobe. “Register appearance of the item. Select the item whose appearance you want to register from your inventory! You can only register items you can wear (i.e., not Eve-Only item)”.

You get a message on screen telling you to select item to register. Also notice how the mouse changed. Go to the inventory and select the item you want. I’m going to wardrobe the Idol Top avatar.

Now it’s showing you a warning saying that ONCE YOU REGISTER AN ITEM INTO THE WARDROBE, THE ITEM BECOMES A WARDROBED-ITEM THAT CANNOT BE TRADED OR SEALED. The game calls it a  “Clothes Hanger Item” but what this essentially is that now the item has become a different type of item that’s forever account-bound and cannot be traded anymore. No, there isn’t a way to remove the item from the wardrobe list or remove its “Wardrobed-Item” status as of yet in the game.

Success! Notice how the item now has a yellow/gold border around it with a clothes hanger icon. That means that item is now in your wardrobe.

!!! IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE !!!

You can only apply appearance to items that have been wardrobed. What I mean is, you cannot apply appearance to items that is not on the wardrobe list. You can’t wear Ebalon Top and have it look like Rosso Top without having BOTH EBALON AND ROSSO TOP WARDROBED. Okay?

My Idol Top has been wardrobed. Welcome to the family. Now to demonstrate applying the appearance to your wardrobed items!

This is my Salvatore Rosso for Ain. Notice how all of them have been wardrobed already. The yellow line around the item!

When I select the Idol Top from the list, the preview will show me how it will look on my Ain with his current set up. It looks hideous but for the purpose of this demonstration, we’re going to go for this clashing color combo. Notice that I did not apply the appearance yet.

Press the Apply Appearance button and now the game will ask you to select a Wardobed-Item to apply the appearance to!

You can select the Rosso Top in the preview (it looks like Idol Top in the preview right now because I selected it) and it will change Rosso Top to Idol Top’s appearance. It tells me that it’s going ot change Salvatore Rosso Top (Ain) into Ain, the Beat Genius, Fantastic Wave Top (A)’s appearance.

Or you can select the wardrobed item in your inventory and it will change the wardrobed-item in your inventory into the Idol Top we just selected.

Tada! Now your Rosso Top looks like Idol Top. You also need better fashion sense cuz this is atrocious.

It’s more or less the same deal with accessories, so I won’t go into that. 

Now this is where it can get a lil tiny bit tricky and screw you over, so pay attention

ALWAYS BE AWARE OF WHAT THE FUCK YOU ARE DOING WHEN YOU ARE USING THIS MAGICAL WARDROBE.

The danger and the joy of using magical wardrobe is that you can see every item that exists in the game, and this allows you to come up with the ultimate look of your dreams, spending hours upon hours just in the wardrobe preview screen, concocting the perfect look for your characters. 

You can do this with the things you own, or the things you’ve never seen in the game but exists in the game somewhere, just not in your own inventory. The endless combinations... but this is where the danger is

Remember how I showed you how to register non-Wardrobed item into the wardrobe? You press the button and choose it from your inventory, right? Well there is another way... and that screwed me over in the past.

If you are wearing a not-yet Wardrobed Item and opened the magic wardrobe to look at some stuff... played around with combinations... and found the look you were looking for, and started applying appearances to your items...

If you attempt to apply appearance to non-Wardobed-Item, the game will ask you, Do you wish to continue because if you do this, we’ll skip the registering process for you and register this item + apply the appearance all in one go.

Yes this happens for both items you’re currently wearing (therefore shows up on the preview window) and the items in the inventory.

What happened with me is that.. Uh.. I had my Hamel Arctic Officer Cape (not wardrobed) on my Add.. was playing around with a look for a while... found what I was looking for... started applying appearance to everything I was..............wearing... because I forgot I was wearing the cape and uhhh

Yeah I accidentally wardrobed the cape 8D (but no regret cuz its beautiful)

So Always always always always always always be aware of what the fuck you are doing and never trust yourself; take them off if they’re something you never want to wardrobe when you want to lose yourself in the magical land of the wardrobe. 

I have the full set of Elpheus accessories that I’m not so sure about wardrobing them yet so I am on high-alert everytime Im trying to play around with a look for my Ain to the point of being mentally stressed.

Now for a super long Q&A

Q. Can you unregister wardrobed item?

A. Read. I said no.

Q. What if I want to unregister them???

A. Well you should’ve thought about it before you wardrobed it then. You can destroy the item after you’ve wardrobed it but the item on the wardrobe list will not disappear. It’s there. Forever. So don’t start wardrobing every shit you have because it can get a little cluttered. That’s what the search bar and categories dropdown menu is for I guess.

Q. What if I want to look like I’m not wearing any accessory/one piece but I want to wear them for the stats?

A. That’s what “invisible accessories + one piece” is for. Yes they sell them in Item Mall in KR. They’re not cheap. They have stats like a normal cheapo accessory but you can wardrobe these and then apply their “invisible appearance” to other wardrobed items.

Q. If I wardrobe something on one character, can my other character in the same account use its appearance?

A. Yes, as long as it’s something they can wear, and not class-specific. For example, any character in my account on the KR Solace server can wear my Purple Fairy Wing.

Q. How can I wardrobe promotional avatars?

A. You can, but only if you have a special promotional avatar wardrobe ticket. These tickets, when right clicked, will allow you to click on the promo avatar from the list to “activate” them, aka, turn them from grey’d out item on the list into a white item that you can use later. Promotional avatars on the wardrobe will also show the hair as well, even though they never were an avatar in the game before. There are other types of wardrobe tickets, but they’re given out in events, and they all have varying restrictions and limitations. They’re pretty self explanatory though. I have my CBS wardrobed all of Electra’s promo avy from events couple of years ago, but only my Electra/CBS chars can use its appearance; my CN/CEm can’t.

Q. Is the applying of appearance only affect appearance and not the stat?

A. Well you know the “apply appearance” is pretty self explanatory... It will only change how the item you’re wearing will LOOK. You can wear full set of your GFriend Navillera and parade around in something prettier:

Q. How does registering equipment item (not avatar) work?

A. Same as other items except currently in KR server, if you wardrobe the equipment items, they don’t get yellow line around it... and are still tradeable. I crafted a grendized Ancient Noble Guardian pendulum and wardrobed it, but realized I can still seal+sell it later. You cannot apply appearance to equipments though. That pretty Eltrion weapon appearance can be applied to your weapon avatar, but you cannot apply it to, say, Heroic Weapon. by the way you cant wardrobe heroic equipments in the game for some reason;

Well there you go! I think I heard a rumor that NA/INT might be getting the magic wardrobe, and I hope it’s not some cruel April Fools joke because I CAN CONDONE ALL THE OTHER SHIT THAT NA/INT DOES TO YOU BUT NOTHAVING A WARDROBE IS A CRIME AGAINST THE GODS. A SIN. 

What other shit can I condone? Uh... the fact that you guys need a seal to trade your rare avatars/accessories from Ice Burners... the fact that you guys can’t expand inventory with ED... or buy res stones from Ariel with ED... ... man, seriously, what the fuck

Anyways, now you’ll know what they skipped out on if they ever decide to give you guys a “tweaked” version. Hey maybe they’ll even give you guys option to take the items out of the wardrobe and what not... honestly don’t see the harm in that as long as the item appearance is removed from the list as well...

[laptopverge]

How to Play PS4 on a Laptop Screen

How many times does it happen that you come home eager to play the new FIFA you just ordered a couple of days back only find out that the TV is currently occupied by your sister or dad enjoying their favorite TV soap or sports?

The wait is killing, isn’t it? So what if there you didn’t need your TV to play your PS4? Yup, believe it or not, you can also connect and play your PlayStation on your laptop screen.

Though keep in mind that the process can be a little tricky and won’t simply work by you connecting the HDMI cable to your laptop rather than the TV.

But why? What is the problem?

That is because the HDMI ports on your laptop and PS4 are output ports and cannot be converted into input ports so easily. So what can you do? Here are a couple of tricks to play PS4 on a Laptop screen.

Method 1: With a Video Capture Card

This is one of the easiest ways to turn your laptop into your new LCD for gaming but remember but your pocket might take a little hit as there are a few things that need purchasing.

Here’s what all you will need.

Laptop

Video Capture Card

Internet (WIFI or Ethernet)

File sharing enabled

HDMI cable

Step 1: The first and foremost thing to connect your PS4 to the internet. If you have a wireless network then go to the Settings option on the menu. There you will find the Internet Connection Settings. Once you locate your WI-Fi, hit the button and connect to it.

But I do not have a wireless connection so what do I do?

Well, in that case, you will need to connect both your laptop and PS4 using Ethernet Cables

Step 2: Next up, you will need a Video Capture Card. We recommend you go with the Elgato Game Capture Card HD60 S. It is an absolute value for money pick as it gives you Full-HD quality and ability directly stream on Twitch, YouTube, etc. at a low cost of less than $120 (no wonder it is an Amazon best-seller).

Step 3: Once you get the video capture card, you need to connect it to your laptop. The USB and all the software needed to establish the connection correctly will be provided to you with the purchase.

Step 4: After you connect the video capture card to your laptop it needs to be hooked up to the PS4. This again is an S-Video connection cable. All you have to do it put in the HDMI cable into the HDMI-IN port on the Capture Card and HDMI-Out port on the PS4.

Step 5: Run the Capture Card software you just installed onto your laptop and turn on the PS4. The software will do a quick search and show the PS4 on the screen within 60-seconds.

Note: To enjoy the game graphics to the fullest make sure to run the software in full-screen.

And just like that, you no longer have to wait for the TV. You can turn your laptop into a screen for your PS4 anytime anywhere but note, that this method does not work with Macbooks.

So what if you have a Macbook or cannot purchase the Video capture card as of now? Well, no problem, we have another trick up our sleeves. Here’s all about it.

Method 2: With Remote Play (Also works with Mac)

Things you will need for this method include:

Your Laptop

A PS4

USB cable or DUALSHOCK 4 USB wireless adaptor

An Account on PlayStation Network

Internet Connection

The Catch: One of the reasons we do not recommend this method first is that it does require a TV at first. For a few minutes only but yes, you will need your LCD as your PS4 settings require a little adjustment for streaming to your laptop.

So if you can get that access, here are the steps.

Step 1: Firstly, you need to download the Sony Remote Play app on your Windows or Mac laptop. It is easy as the files for both OS are available on the official website itself. Once the download is complete, get done with the installation which takes about a minute.

Got more than one PS4 at home? Then step 2 is important for you. But if you not, you can jump right to step 3.

Step 2: Its time to set up the PS4 for connection.

For that, you will need to turn one of the PS4’s into the primary console. So how do you do that? Well, switch on your PS4 and head to the Playstation Network settings available in the settings menu. There you will find the  Account Management option with an option to Activate the current system as the Primary Console.

Another thing you will have to do is make sure your PS4 has the software 3.50 or higher running on it. In case you haven’t updated it in a while just hit the System Software Update in the settings menu to download the latest updates.

Step 3: Now you have to enable the Remote Play option in PS4 settings. For that you’ll have to go into Settings, then into Remote Play Connection Settings, check if the Remote Play is enabled. To allow you access to the games through your network, the PS4 should power on or the Rest mode activated.

Step 4: Activate Rest Mode. It is usually by default enabled, however, it is good to check. Go to the Settings, then to Power Save Settings, now Set Features Available in Rest Mode.

Confirm that the Enable Turning on PS4 from Network is ticked, if it isn’t you have to enable this feature to be able to stream your PS4 on your laptop.

Step 5: Now you have to switch to the Remote Play app on the laptop, after tweaking things up in the PS4 settings. On the left corner of the app, there’s a Settings option.

You need to set the settings like resolution, frames per second, etc. You can set the resolution to 1080p, but it’s usually set at 720p because for the higher resolution you’d need a high power laptop and also a PS4 Pro. While on the frame rate you can choose from standard to high frame rates. With high, you will get 60fps which is pretty dope but will eat up your network.

Step 6: Connecting DUALSHOCK 4 Controller. You can use a USB cable or DUALSHOCK 4 wireless USB adaptor to plug in the controller to your laptop.

To connect the wireless controller follow these steps:

First, hold down Share and circular PlayStation buttons on your controller till the light bar starts flashing on the controller.

Plug in the USB adapter into your laptop and hold it in a pushing position for at least 3-4 seconds. Your controller now paired.

Step 7: You’ll be able to see a Start option in your Remote Play app on the laptop. You’ll be prompted to log-in to your PlayStation Network when you click on that start button. The app will search for the first PS4 in the network and will take you to the PS4’s home screen.

This is the console being streamed on to your laptop. Interestingly you can also use your laptop’s mic and keyboard for chat and text typing.

Step 8: In case you want to power off the PS4. You have to press down the PlayStation button on DUALSHOCK 4 controller, then go to power settings and enter Rest Mode. This will sleep your PS4 and terminate the connection stream.

The post How to Play PS4 on a Laptop Screen appeared first on Laptop Verge.

[dustedmagazine]

The Hold Steady — Thrashing Thru the Passion (Frenchkiss)

Thrashing Thru The Passion by The Hold Steady

The last decade has been tough for fans of The Hold Steady. After releasing Almost Killed Me (perfect), Separation Sunday (also perfect), and Boys and Girls in America (near perfect), songwriter Craig Finn got high on his own supply. His stories turned into schtick, resulting in the overwrought Stay Positive. Flamboyant ivory tickler Franz Nicolay took off,Heaven is Whenever was as clear and committed as its shrug of a title, and the less said about the plodding Teeth Dreams, the better. Expectations were low for Thrashing Thru the Passion, so to say that Thrashing exceeds those expectations is to damn it with faint praise. It deserves better. The Hold Steady will probably never match the thrill of their first three releases, but Thrashing Thru the Passion is the most enjoyable record they’ve made in thirteen years.

Thrashing Thru the Passion (which continues their tradition of terrible album titles and covers) doesn’t break new ground for The Hold Steady. Songwriter Craig Finn still sings like a youth pastor on a bender; the band still sounds like an above-average Springsteen cover act with a residency in a punk bar, and the lyrics are still allusive short stories about roads that go on forever and parties that never end. What sets Thrashing apart from the three releases that preceded it are its light touch, a product of their expanded lineup. Nicolay has rejoined the fold; second lead guitarist Steve Selvidge has decided to stick around and there are horns on almost every track. There are more moving parts on Thrashing than any previous Hold Steady record, but rather than weighing them down, they add welcome subtlety and complexity. Moment by moment, Thrashing is their busiest and most interesting release.  

From the sax solo and gentle, twinkling vamp in the otherwise unexceptional “Traditional Village” to the wailing slides on “Star 18,” there are small, unexpected pleasures — funny keyboard textures, cute guitar squiggles, tricky rhythms, breakdowns, buildups, and modulations — on every track. Of course, this being The Hold Steady, an expanded lineup also means their Big Moments are even bigger than usual. The core songwriting team of Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler are both Midwest expats, so there is, as always, unhealthy portions of corn and cheese here, but if you can resist the dual guitar solo at the end of “Blackout Sam,” the syncopated horn and keys hook on “Entitlement Crew,” or the stadium stomp of “T Shirt Tux”’s coda, you are made of sterner stuff than I.  

You will read that this is a less anthemic incarnation of The Hold Steady. True, but it’s not the problem they’d have you believe. Freed from the burden of writing anthems, Finn is back to doing what he does best: telling tragicomic tales of the perpetually hungover. On character sketches like “Denver Haircut,” “Epaulets,” and “Blackout Sam,” Finn is sharper and funnier than he’s been in years. Nothing on their last three albums matches the compressed wit of “Entitlement Crew”’s opening couplet: “Tequila takeoff/Tecate landing/Sorry about the centerpiece/Thanks for understanding.”  

If there’s one theme underpinning Finn’s songs, more than drugs, parties and Catholicism, it’s faith, the belief, however misguided, that the next high, the next detox, or the next town will solve everything. Like many of you, I had nearly lost faith in The Hold Steady, but I had also forgotten that, faith is, every so often, imperfectly and unexpectedly rewarded. If, like your average Finn character, it’s been a while since you’ve been to church, there’s a word for that: grace. Thrashing Thru the Passion is not a great record, but it is very good, better than we had any right to expect and, in its own joyful, beer-soaked way, graceful.   

Isaac Olson

[neptunecreek]

Interoperability: Fix the Internet, Not the Tech Companies

Everyone in the tech world claims to love interoperability—the technical ability to plug one product or service into another product or service—but interoperability covers a lot of territory, and depending on what's meant by interoperability, it can do a lot, a little, or nothing at all to protect users, innovation and fairness.

Let's start with a taxonomy of interoperability:

Indifferent Interoperability

This is the most common form of interoperability. Company A makes a product and Company B makes a thing that works with that product, but doesn't talk to Company A about it. Company A doesn't know or care to know about Company B's add-on.

Think of a car's cigarette lighter: these started in the 1920s as aftermarket accessories that car owners could have installed at a garage; over time they became popular enough that they came standard in every car. Eventually, third-party companies began to manufacture DC power adapters that plugged into the lighter receptacle, drawing power from the car engine's alternator. This became widespread enough that it was eventually standardized as ANSI/SAE J563.

Standardization paved the way for a variety of innovative new products that could be made by third-party manufacturers who did not have to coordinate with (or seek permission from) automotive companies before bringing them to market. These are now ubiquitous, and you can find fishbowls full of USB chargers that fit your car-lighter receptacle at most gas stations for $0.50-$1.00. Some cars now come with standard USB ports (though for complicated reasons, these tend not to be very good chargers), but your auto manufacturer doesn't care if you buy one of those $0.50 chargers and use it with your phone. It's your car, it's your car-lighter, it's your business.

Cooperative Interoperability

Sometimes, companies are eager to have others create add-ons for their products and services. One of the easiest ways to do this is to adopt a standard: a car manufacturer that installs an ANSI/SAE J563-compliant car-lighter receptacle in its cars enables its customers to use any compatible accessory with their cars; any phone manufacturer that installs a 3.5mm headphone jack allows anyone who buys that phone to plug in anything that has a matching plug, even exotic devices like Stripe's card-readers, which convert your credit-card number to a set of tones that are played into a vendor's phone's headphone jack, to be recognized and re-encoded as numbers by Stripe's app.

Digital standards also allow for a high degree of interoperability: a phone vendor or car-maker who installs a Bluetooth chip in your device lets you connect any Bluetooth accessory with it—provided that they support that device, or at least that they make no steps to prevent that device from being connected.

This is where things get tricky: manufacturers and service providers who adopt digital standards can use computer programs to discriminate against accessories, even those that comply with the standard. This can be extremely beneficial to customers: you might get a Bluetooth "firewall" that warns you when you're connecting to a Bluetooth device that's known to have security defects, or that appears on a blacklist of malicious devices that siphon away your data and send it to identity thieves.

But as with all technological questions, the relevant question isn't merely "What does this technology do?" It's "Who does this technology do it to and who does it do it for?"

Because the same tool that lets a manufacturer help you discriminate against Bluetooth accessories that harm your well-being allows the manufacturer to discriminate against devices that harm its well-being (say, a rival's lower-cost headphones or keyboard) even if these accessories enhance your well-being.

In the digital era, cooperative interoperability is always subject to corporate boundaries. Even if a manufacturer is bound by law to adhere to a certain standard—say, to provide a certain electronic interface, or to allow access via a software interface like an API—those interfaces are still subject to limits that can be embodied in software.

A digitally enabled car-lighter receptacle could be made to support only a limited range of applications—charging via USB but not USB-C or Lightning, or only charging phones but not tablets—and software could be written to enforce those limits. Even a very permissive "smart lighter-receptacle" that accepted every known device as of today could be designed to reject any devices invented later on, unless the manufacturer chose to permit their use. A manufacturer of such a device could truthfully claim to support "every device you can currently plug into your car lighter," but still maintain a pocket veto over future devices as a hedge against new developments that it decides are bad for the manufacturer and its interests.

What's more, connected devices and services can adjust the degree of interoperability their digital interfaces permit from moment to moment, without notice or appeal, meaning that the browser plugin or social media tool you rely on might just stop working.

Which brings us to...

Adversarial Interoperability

Sometimes an add-on comes along that connects to a product whose manufacturer is outright hostile to it: third-party ink for your inkjet printer, or an unauthorized app for your iPhone, or a homebrew game for your console, or a DVR that lets you record anything available through your cable package, and that lets you store your recordings indefinitely.

Many products actually have countermeasures to resist this kind of interoperability: checks to ensure that you're not buying car parts from third parties, or fixing your own tractor.

When a manufacturer builds a new product that plugs into an existing one despite the latter's manufacturer's hostility, that's called "adversarial interoperability" and it has been around for about as long as the tech industry itself, from the mainframe days to the PC revolution to the operating system wars to the browser wars.

But as technology markets have grown more concentrated and less competitive, what was once business-as-usual has become almost unthinkable, not to mention legally dangerous, thanks to abuses of cybersecurity law, copyright law, and patent law.

Taking adversarial interoperability off the table breaks the tech cycle in which a new company enters the market, rudely shoulders aside its rivals, grows to dominance, and is dethroned in turn by a new upstart. Instead, today's tech giants show every sign of establishing a permanent, dominant position over the internet.

"Punishing" Big Tech by Granting It Perpetual Dominance

As states grapple with the worst aspects of the Internet—harassment, identity theft, authoritarian and racist organizing, disinformation—there is a real temptation to "solve" these problems by making Big Tech companies legally responsible for their users' conduct. This is a cure that's worse than the disease: the big platforms can't subject every user's every post to human review, so they use filters, with catastrophic results. At the same time, these filters are so expensive to operate that they make it impossible for would-be competitors to enter the market. YouTube has its $100 million Content ID copyright filter now, but if it had been forced to find an extra $100,000,000 to get started in 2005, it would have died a-borning.

But assigning these expensive, state-like duties to tech companies also has the perverse effect of making it much harder to spark competition through careful regulation or break-ups. Once we decide that providing a forum for online activity is something that only giant companies with enough money to pay for filters can do, we also commit to keeping the big companies big enough to perform those duties.

Interoperability to the Rescue?

It's possible to create regulation that enhances competition. For example, we could introduce laws that force companies to follow interoperability standards and oversee the companies to make sure that they're not sneakily limiting their rivals behind the scenes. This is already a feature of good telecommunications laws, and there's lots to like about it.

But a mandate to let users take their data from one company to another—or to send messages from one service to another—should be the opener, not the end-game. Any kind of interoperability mandate has the risk of becoming the ceiling on innovation, not the floor.

For example, as countries around the world broke up their national phone company monopolies, they made rules forcing them to allow new companies to use their lines, connect to their users and share their facilities, and this enabled competition in things like long distance service.

But these interoperability rules were not the last word: the telcos weren't just barred from discriminating against competitors who wanted to use their long-haul lines; thanks to earlier precedent, they were also not able to control who could make devices that plugged into those lines. This allowed companies to make modems that could connect to phone lines. As the Internet crept (and then raced) into Americans' households, the carriers had ample incentive to control how their customers made use of the net, especially as messaging and voice-over-IP eroded the massive profits from long-distance and SMS tariffs. But they couldn't, and that helplessness to steer the market let new companies and their customers create a networked revolution.

The communications revolution owes at least as much to the ability of third parties to do things that the carriers hated—but couldn't prevent—as it does to the rules that forced them to interconnect with their rivals.

Fix the Internet, Not the Tech Companies

The problems of Big Tech are undeniable: using the dominant services can be terrible, and now that they've broken the cycle of dominance and dethroning, the Big Tech companies have fortified their summits such that others dare not besiege them.

Today, much of the emphasis is on making Big Tech better by charging the companies to filter and monitor their users.

The biggest Internet companies need more legal limits on their use and handling of personal data. That’s why we support smart, thorough new Internet privacy laws. But laws that require filtering and monitoring user content make the Internet worse: more hostile to new market entrants (who can't afford the costs of compliance) and worse for Internet users' technological self-determination.

If we're worried that shadowy influence brokers are using Facebook to launch sneaky persuasion campaigns, we can either force Facebook to make it harder for anyone to access your data without Facebook's explicit approval (this assumes that you trust Facebook to be the guardian of your best interests)—or we can bar Facebook from using technical and legal countermeasures to shut out new companies, co-ops, and projects that offer to let you talk to your Facebook friends without using Facebook's tools, so you can configure your access to minimize Facebook's surveillance and maximize your own freedom.

The second way is the better way. Instead of enshrining Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft as the Internet’s permanent overlords and then striving to make them as benign as possible, we can fix the Internet by making Big Tech less central to its future.

It's possible that people will connect tools to their Big Tech accounts that do ill-advised things they come to regret. That's kind of the point, really. After all, people can plug weird things into their car's lighter receptacles, but the world is a better place when you get to decide how to use that useful, versatile ANSI/SAE J56-compliant plug—not GM or Toyota.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2XHl3cz

[technicalsolutions88]

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy.

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

These users want more choice over key elements such as the search engine that can be set as the default in Safari on iOS (Apple currently offers four choices: Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo, all U.S. search engines; and with ad tech giant Google set as the default).

It is also being called out over other default settings that undermine its claims to follow a privacy by design philosophy. Such as the iOS location services setting which, once enabled, non-transparently flip an associated sub-menu of settings — including location-based Apple ads. Yet bundled consent is never the same as informed consent…

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this @tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially — feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

(At least barring some miracle new piece of Apple hardware — yet to be unboxed but which somehow rekindles smartphone-level demand afresh. That’s highly unlikely in any medium term timeframe given how versatile and capable the smartphone remains; ergo Apple’s greatest success is now Apple’s biggest challenge.)

With smartphone hardware replacement cycles slowing, the pressure on Cook to accelerate services revenue naturally steps up — which could in turn increase pressure on the core principles Cupertino likes to flash around.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

It’s true that controlling the iOS experience by applying certain limits to deliver mainstream consumer friendly hardware served Apple well for years. But it’s also true iOS has grown in complexity over time having dropped some of its control freakery.

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Though of course from a business PoV Apple benefits by being able to charge Google a large sum of money to remain in the plum search default spot. (Reportedly a very large sum, though claims that the 2018 figure was $9BN have not been confirmed. Unsurprisingly neither party wants to talk about the terms of the transaction.)

The problem for Apple is that indirectly benefiting from Google eroding the user privacy it claims to champion — by letting the ad tech giant pay it to suck up iOS users’ search queries by default — is hardly consistent messaging.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

Cook has also made a point of strongly and publicly attacking the ‘data industrial complex‘. Yet without mentioning the inconvenient side-note that Apple also engages in trading user data for profit in some instances, albeit indirectly.

In 2017 Apple switched from using Bing to Google for Siri web search results. So even as it has stepped up its rhetoric around user privacy it has deepened its business relationship with one of the Western Internet’s primary data suckers.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

The presence of the DDG startup alongside three data-mining tech giants has allowed those ‘in the know’ iOS users to flip the bird at Google for years, meaning Apple has kept privacy conscious consumers buying its products (if not fully on side with all its business choices).

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android-powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the inflating $1,000+ price-tags on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhones. $1,000+ for a smartphone that isn’t selling your data by default might still sound very pricy but at least you’d be getting something more than just shiny glass for all those extra dollars. But the iPhone isn’t actually that phone. Not by default.

Apple may be taking a view that the most privacy sensitive iPhone users are effectively a captive market with little option but to buy iOS hardware, given the Google-flavored Android competition. Which is true but also wouldn’t bode well for the chances of Apple upselling more services to these people to drive replacement revenue in a saturated smartphone market.

Offending those consumers who otherwise could be your very best, most committed and bought in users seems short-sighted and short-termist to say the least.

Although removing Google as the default search provider in markets where it dominates would obviously go massively against the mainstream grain that Apple’s business exists to serve.

This logic says Google is in the default position because, for most Internet users, Google search remains their default.

Indeed, Cook rolled out this exact line late last year when asked to defend the arrangement in an interview with Axios on HBO — saying: “I think their search engine is the best.”

He also flagged various pro-privacy features Apple has baked into its software in recent years, such as private browsing mode and smart tracker prevention, which he said work against the data suckers.

Albeit, that’s a bit like saying you’ve scattered a few garlic cloves around the house after inviting the thirsty vampire inside. And Cook readily admitted the arrangement isn’t “perfect”.

Clearly it’s a trade off. But Apple benefitting financially is what makes this particular trade-off whiff.

It implies Apple does indeed have an eye on quarterly balance sheets, and the increasingly important services line item specifically, in continuing this imperfect but lucrative arrangement — rather than taking a longer term view as the company purports to, per Cook’s letter to shareholders this week; in which he wrote: “We manage Apple for the long term, and Apple has always used periods of adversity to re-examine our approach, to take advantage of our culture of flexibility, adaptability and creativity, and to emerge better as a result.”

If Google’s search product is the best and Apple wants to take the moral high ground over privacy by decrying the surveillance industrial complex it could maintain the default arrangement in service to its mainstream base but donate Google’s billions to consumer and digital rights groups that fight to uphold and strengthen the privacy laws that people-profiling ad tech giants are butting hard against.

Apple’s shareholders might not like that medicine, though.

More palatable for investors would be for Apple to offer a broader choice of alternative search engines, thereby widening the playing field and opening up to more pro-privacy Google alternatives.

It could also design this choice in a way that flags up the trade-off to its millions of users. Such as, during device set-up, proactively asking users whether they want to keep their Internet searches private by default or use Google?

When put like that rather more people than you imagine might choose not to opt for Google to be their search default.

Non-tracking search engine DDG has been growing steadily for years, for example, hitting 30M daily searches last fall — with year-on-year growth of ~50%.

Given the terms of the Apple-Google arrangement sit under an NDA (as indeed all these arrangements do; DDG told us it couldn’t share any details about its own arrangement with Apple, for e.g.) it’s not clear whether one of Google’s conditions requires there be a limit on how many other search engines iOS users can pick from.

But it’s at least a possibility that Google is paying Apple to limit how many rivals sit in the list of competitors iOS users can pick out an alternative default. (It has, after all, recently been spanked in Europe for anti-competitive contractual limits imposed on Android OEMs to limit their ability to use alternatives to Google products, including search. So you could say Google has history where search is concerned.)

Equally, should Google actually relaunch a search product in China — as it’s controversially been toying with doing — it’s likely the company would push Apple to give it the default slot there too.

Though Apple would have more reason to push back, given Google would likely remain a minnow in that market. (Apple currently defaults to local search giant Baidu for iOS users in China.)

So even the current picture around search on iOS is a little more fuzzy than Cook likes to make out.

Local flavor

China is an interesting case, because if you look at Apple’s growth challenges in that market you could come to a very different conclusion vis-a-vis the power of privacy as a brand premium.

In China it’s convenience, via the do-it-all ‘Swiss army knife’ WeChat platform, that’s apparently the driving consumer force — and now also a headwind for Apple’s business there.

At the same time, the idea of users in the market having any kind of privacy online — when Internet surveillance has been imposed and ‘normalized’ by the state — is essentially impossible to imagine.

Yet Apple continues doing business in China, netting it further charges of hypocrisy.

Its revised guidance this week merely spotlights how important China and emerging markets are to its business fortunes. A principled pull-out hardly looks to be on the cards.

All of which underscores growing emerging market pressures on Apple that might push harder against its stated principles. What price privacy indeed?

It’s clear that carving out growth in a saturated smartphone market is going to be an increasingly tricky business for all players, with the risk of fresh trade-offs and pitfalls looming especially for Apple.

Negotiating this terrain certainly demands a fresh approach, as Cook implies is on his mind, per the shareholder letter.

Arguably the new normal may also call for an increasingly localized approach as a way to differentiate in a saturated and samey smartphone market.

The old Apple ‘one-sized fits all’ philosophy is already very outdated for some users and risks being caught flat-footed on a growing number of fronts — be that if your measure is software ‘innovation’ or a principled position on privacy.

An arbitrary limit on the choice of search engine your users can pick seems a telling example. Why not offer iOS users a free choice?

Or are Google’s billions really standing in the way of that?

It’s certainly an odd situation that iPhone owners in France, say, can pick from a wide range of keyboard apps — from mainstream names to superficial bling-focused glitter and/or neon LED keyboard skins or indeed emoji and GIF-obsessed keyboards — but if they want to use locally developed pro-privacy search engine Qwant on their phone’s native browser they have to tediously surf to the company’s webpage every time they want to look something up.

Google search might be the best for a median average ‘global’ (excluding China) iOS user but in an age of increasingly self-focused and self-centred technology, with ever more demanding consumers, there’s really no argument against letting people who want to choose for themselves.

In Europe there’s also the updated data protection framework, GDPR, to consider. Which may yet rework some mainstream ad tech business models.

On this front Qwant questions how even non-tracking rival DDG can protect users’ searches from government surveillance given its use of AWS cloud hosting and the U.S. Cloud Act. (Though, responding to a discussion thread about the issue on Github two years ago, DDG’s founder noted it has servers around the world, writing: “If you are in Europe you will be connected to our European servers.” He also reiterated that DDG does not collect any personal data from users — thereby limiting what could be extracted from AWS via the Act.)

Asked what reception it’s had when asking about getting its search engine on the Safari iOS list, Qwant told us the line that’s been (indirectly) fed back to it is “we are too European according to Apple”. (Apple declined to comment on the search choices it offers iOS users.)

“I have to work a lot to be more American,” Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Leandri told us, summing up the smoke signals coming out of Cupertino.

“I understand that Apple wants to give the same kind of experience to their customers… but I would say that if I was Apple now, based on the politics that I want to follow — about protecting the privacy of customers — I think it would be great to start thinking about Europe as a market where people have a different point of view on their data,” he continued.

“Apple has done a lot of work to, for example, not let applications give data to each by a very strict [anti-tracking policy]; Apple has done a lot of work to guarantee that cookies and tracking is super difficult on iOS; and now the last problem of Apple is Google search.”

“So I hope that Apple will look at our proposal in a different way — not just one-fits-all. Because we don’t think that one-fits-all today,” he added.

Qwant too, then, is hoping for a better Apple to emerge as a result of a little market adversity.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2RxIUfB ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

[theinvinciblenoob]

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy.

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

These users want more choice over key elements such as the search engine that can be set as the default in Safari on iOS (Apple currently offers four choices: Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo, all U.S. search engines; and with ad tech giant Google set as the default).

It is also being called out over other default settings that undermine its claims to follow a privacy by design philosophy. Such as the iOS location services setting which, once enabled, non-transparently flip an associated sub-menu of settings — including location-based Apple ads. Yet bundled consent is never the same as informed consent…

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this @tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially — feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

(At least barring some miracle new piece of Apple hardware — yet to be unboxed but which somehow rekindles smartphone-level demand afresh. That’s highly unlikely in any medium term timeframe given how versatile and capable the smartphone remains; ergo Apple’s greatest success is now Apple’s biggest challenge.)

With smartphone hardware replacement cycles slowing, the pressure on Cook to accelerate services revenue naturally steps up — which could in turn increase pressure on the core principles Cupertino likes to flash around.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

It’s true that controlling the iOS experience by applying certain limits to deliver mainstream consumer friendly hardware served Apple well for years. But it’s also true iOS has grown in complexity over time having dropped some of its control freakery.

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Though of course from a business PoV Apple benefits by being able to charge Google a large sum of money to remain in the plum search default spot. (Reportedly a very large sum, though claims that the 2018 figure was $9BN have not been confirmed. Unsurprisingly neither party wants to talk about the terms of the transaction.)

The problem for Apple is that indirectly benefiting from Google eroding the user privacy it claims to champion — by letting the ad tech giant pay it to suck up iOS users’ search queries by default — is hardly consistent messaging.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

Cook has also made a point of strongly and publicly attacking the ‘data industrial complex‘. Yet without mentioning the inconvenient side-note that Apple also engages in trading user data for profit in some instances, albeit indirectly.

In 2017 Apple switched from using Bing to Google for Siri web search results. So even as it has stepped up its rhetoric around user privacy it has deepened its business relationship with one of the Western Internet’s primary data suckers.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

The presence of the DDG startup alongside three data-mining tech giants has allowed those ‘in the know’ iOS users to flip the bird at Google for years, meaning Apple has kept privacy conscious consumers buying its products (if not fully on side with all its business choices).

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android -powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the inflating $1,000+ price-tags on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhones. $1,000+ for a smartphone that isn’t selling your data by default might still sound very pricy but at least you’d be getting something more than just shiny glass for all those extra dollars. But the iPhone isn’t actually that phone. Not by default.

Apple may be taking a view that the most privacy sensitive iPhone users are effectively a captive market with little option but to buy iOS hardware, given the Google-flavored Android competition. Which is true but also wouldn’t bode well for the chances of Apple upselling more services to these people to drive replacement revenue in a saturated smartphone market.

Offending those consumers who otherwise could be your very best, most committed and bought in users seems short-sighted and short-termist to say the least.

Although removing Google as the default search provider in markets where it dominates would obviously go massively against the mainstream grain that Apple’s business exists to serve.

This logic says Google is in the default position because, for most Internet users, Google search remains their default.

Indeed, Cook rolled out this exact line late last year when asked to defend the arrangement in an interview with Axios on HBO — saying: “I think their search engine is the best.”

He also flagged various pro-privacy features Apple has baked into its software in recent years, such as private browsing mode and smart tracker prevention, which he said work against the data suckers.

Albeit, that’s a bit like saying you’ve scattered a few garlic cloves around the house after inviting the thirsty vampire inside. And Cook readily admitted the arrangement isn’t “perfect”.

Clearly it’s a trade off. But Apple benefitting financially is what makes this particular trade-off whiff.

It implies Apple does indeed have an eye on quarterly balance sheets, and the increasingly important services line item specifically, in continuing this imperfect but lucrative arrangement — rather than taking a longer term view as the company purports to, per Cook’s letter to shareholders this week; in which he wrote: “We manage Apple for the long term, and Apple has always used periods of adversity to re-examine our approach, to take advantage of our culture of flexibility, adaptability and creativity, and to emerge better as a result.”

If Google’s search product is the best and Apple wants to take the moral high ground over privacy by decrying the surveillance industrial complex it could maintain the default arrangement in service to its mainstream base but donate Google’s billions to consumer and digital rights groups that fight to uphold and strengthen the privacy laws that people-profiling ad tech giants are butting hard against.

Apple’s shareholders might not like that medicine, though.

More palatable for investors would be for Apple to offer a broader choice of alternative search engines, thereby widening the playing field and opening up to more pro-privacy Google alternatives.

It could also design this choice in a way that flags up the trade-off to its millions of users. Such as, during device set-up, proactively asking users whether they want to keep their Internet searches private by default or use Google?

When put like that rather more people than you imagine might choose not to opt for Google to be their search default.

Non-tracking search engine DDG has been growing steadily for years, for example, hitting 30M daily searches last fall — with year-on-year growth of ~50%.

Given the terms of the Apple-Google arrangement sit under an NDA (as indeed all these arrangements do; DDG told us it couldn’t share any details about its own arrangement with Apple, for e.g.) it’s not clear whether one of Google’s conditions requires there be a limit on how many other search engines iOS users can pick from.

But it’s at least a possibility that Google is paying Apple to limit how many rivals sit in the list of competitors iOS users can pick out an alternative default. (It has, after all, recently been spanked in Europe for anti-competitive contractual limits imposed on Android OEMs to limit their ability to use alternatives to Google products, including search. So you could say Google has history where search is concerned.)

Equally, should Google actually relaunch a search product in China — as it’s controversially been toying with doing — it’s likely the company would push Apple to give it the default slot there too.

Though Apple would have more reason to push back, given Google would likely remain a minnow in that market. (Apple currently defaults to local search giant Baidu for iOS users in China.)

So even the current picture around search on iOS is a little more fuzzy than Cook likes to make out.

Local flavor

China is an interesting case, because if you look at Apple’s growth challenges in that market you could come to a very different conclusion vis-a-vis the power of privacy as a brand premium.

In China it’s convenience, via the do-it-all ‘Swiss army knife’ WeChat platform, that’s apparently the driving consumer force — and now also a headwind for Apple’s business there.

At the same time, the idea of users in the market having any kind of privacy online — when Internet surveillance has been imposed and ‘normalized’ by the state — is essentially impossible to imagine.

Yet Apple continues doing business in China, netting it further charges of hypocrisy.

Its revised guidance this week merely spotlights how important China and emerging markets are to its business fortunes. A principled pull-out hardly looks to be on the cards.

All of which underscores growing emerging market pressures on Apple that might push harder against its stated principles. What price privacy indeed?

It’s clear that carving out growth in a saturated smartphone market is going to be an increasingly tricky business for all players, with the risk of fresh trade-offs and pitfalls looming especially for Apple.

Negotiating this terrain certainly demands a fresh approach, as Cook implies is on his mind, per the shareholder letter.

Arguably the new normal may also call for an increasingly localized approach as a way to differentiate in a saturated and samey smartphone market.

The old Apple ‘one-sized fits all’ philosophy is already very outdated for some users and risks being caught flat-footed on a growing number of fronts — be that if your measure is software ‘innovation’ or a principled position on privacy.

An arbitrary limit on the choice of search engine your users can pick seems a telling example. Why not offer iOS users a free choice?

Or are Google’s billions really standing in the way of that?

It’s certainly an odd situation that iPhone owners in France, say, can pick from a wide range of keyboard apps — from mainstream names to superficial bling-focused glitter and/or neon LED keyboard skins or indeed emoji and GIF-obsessed keyboards — but if they want to use locally developed pro-privacy search engine Qwant on their phone’s native browser they have to tediously surf to the company’s webpage every time they want to look something up.

Google search might be the best for a median average ‘global’ (excluding China) iOS user but in an age of increasingly self-focused and self-centred technology, with ever more demanding consumers, there’s really no argument against letting people who want to choose for themselves.

In Europe there’s also the updated data protection framework, GDPR, to consider. Which may yet rework some mainstream ad tech business models.

On this front Qwant questions how even non-tracking rival DDG can protect users’ searches from government surveillance given its use of AWS cloud hosting and the U.S. Cloud Act. (Though, responding to a discussion thread about the issue on Github two years ago, DDG’s founder noted it has servers around the world, writing: “If you are in Europe you will be connected to our European servers.” He also reiterated that DDG does not collect any personal data from users — thereby limiting what could be extracted from AWS via the Act.)

Asked what reception it’s had when asking about getting its search engine on the Safari iOS list, Qwant told us the line that’s been (indirectly) fed back to it is “we are too European according to Apple”. (Apple declined to comment on the search choices it offers iOS users.)

“I have to work a lot to be more American,” Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Leandri told us, summing up the smoke signals coming out of Cupertino.

“I understand that Apple wants to give the same kind of experience to their customers… but I would say that if I was Apple now, based on the politics that I want to follow — about protecting the privacy of customers — I think it would be great to start thinking about Europe as a market where people have a different point of view on their data,” he continued.

“Apple has done a lot of work to, for example, not let applications give data to each by a very strict [anti-tracking policy]; Apple has done a lot of work to guarantee that cookies and tracking is super difficult on iOS; and now the last problem of Apple is Google search.”

“So I hope that Apple will look at our proposal in a different way — not just one-fits-all. Because we don’t think that one-fits-all today,” he added.

Qwant too, then, is hoping for a better Apple to emerge as a result of a little market adversity.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy.

The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

These users want more choice over key elements such as the search engine that can be set as the default in Safari on iOS (Apple currently offers four choices: Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo, all U.S. search engines; and with ad tech giant Google set as the default).

It is also being called out over other default settings that undermine its claims to follow a privacy by design philosophy. Such as the iOS location services setting which, once enabled, non-transparently flip an associated sub-menu of settings — including location-based Apple ads. Yet bundled consent is never the same as informed consent…

6/ and @Apple also defaults to ON, approx 13 location settings the moment a user enables location settings that includes using YOUR location to support APPLE’s advertising business interests & $$$. By ‘enabling location based services’ you give your consent to this @tim_cook pic.twitter.com/scYSg94QgY

— Privacy Matters (@PrivacyMatters) October 19, 2018

As the saying goes you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But the new normal of a saturated smartphone market is imposing new pressures that will require a reconfiguration of approach.

Certainly the challenges of revenue growth and user retention are only going to step up from here on in. So keeping an otherwise loyal base of users happy and — crucially — feeling listened to and well served is going to be more and more important for the tech giant as the back and forth business of services becomes, well, essential to its fortunes going forward.

(At least barring some miracle new piece of Apple hardware — yet to be unboxed but which somehow rekindles smartphone-level demand afresh. That’s highly unlikely in any medium term timeframe given how versatile and capable the smartphone remains; ergo Apple’s greatest success is now Apple’s biggest challenge.)

With smartphone hardware replacement cycles slowing, the pressure on Cook to accelerate services revenue naturally steps up — which could in turn increase pressure on the core principles Cupertino likes to flash around.

Yet without principles there can be no brand premium for Apple to command. So that way ruin absolutely lies.

Control shift

It’s true that controlling the iOS experience by applying certain limits to deliver mainstream consumer friendly hardware served Apple well for years. But it’s also true iOS has grown in complexity over time having dropped some of its control freakery.

Elements that were previously locked down have been opened up — like the keyboard, for instance, allowing for third party keyboard apps to be installed by users that wish to rethink how they type.

This shift means the imposed limit on which search engines users can choose to set as an iOS default looks increasingly hard for Apple to justify from a user experience point of view.

Though of course from a business PoV Apple benefits by being able to charge Google a large sum of money to remain in the plum search default spot. (Reportedly a very large sum, though claims that the 2018 figure was $9BN have not been confirmed. Unsurprisingly neither party wants to talk about the terms of the transaction.)

The problem for Apple is that indirectly benefiting from Google eroding the user privacy it claims to champion — by letting the ad tech giant pay it to suck up iOS users’ search queries by default — is hardly consistent messaging.

Not when privacy is increasingly central to the premium the Apple brand commands.

Cook has also made a point of strongly and publicly attacking the ‘data industrial complex‘. Yet without mentioning the inconvenient side-note that Apple also engages in trading user data for profit in some instances, albeit indirectly.

In 2017 Apple switched from using Bing to Google for Siri web search results. So even as it has stepped up its rhetoric around user privacy it has deepened its business relationship with one of the Western Internet’s primary data suckers.

All of which makes for a very easy charge of hypocrisy.

Of course Apple offers iOS users a non-tracking search engine choice, DuckDuckGo, as an alternative choice — and has done so since 2014’s iOS 8.

Its support for a growing but still very niche product in what are mainstream consumer devices is an example of Apple being true to its word and actively championing privacy.

The presence of the DDG startup alongside three data-mining tech giants has allowed those ‘in the know’ iOS users to flip the bird at Google for years, meaning Apple has kept privacy conscious consumers buying its products (if not fully on side with all its business choices).

But that sort of compromise position looks increasingly difficult for Apple to defend.

Not if it wants privacy to be the clear blue water that differentiates its brand in an era of increasingly cut-throat and cut-price Android -powered smartphone competition that’s serving up much the same features at a lower up-front price thanks to all the embedded data-suckers.

There is also the not-so-small matter of the inflating $1,000+ price-tags on Apple’s top-of-the-range iPhones. $1,000+ for a smartphone that isn’t selling your data by default might still sound very pricy but at least you’d be getting something more than just shiny glass for all those extra dollars. But the iPhone isn’t actually that phone. Not by default.

Apple may be taking a view that the most privacy sensitive iPhone users are effectively a captive market with little option but to buy iOS hardware, given the Google-flavored Android competition. Which is true but also wouldn’t bode well for the chances of Apple upselling more services to these people to drive replacement revenue in a saturated smartphone market.

Offending those consumers who otherwise could be your very best, most committed and bought in users seems short-sighted and short-termist to say the least.

Although removing Google as the default search provider in markets where it dominates would obviously go massively against the mainstream grain that Apple’s business exists to serve.

This logic says Google is in the default position because, for most Internet users, Google search remains their default.

Indeed, Cook rolled out this exact line late last year when asked to defend the arrangement in an interview with Axios on HBO — saying: “I think their search engine is the best.”

He also flagged various pro-privacy features Apple has baked into its software in recent years, such as private browsing mode and smart tracker prevention, which he said work against the data suckers.

Albeit, that’s a bit like saying you’ve scattered a few garlic cloves around the house after inviting the thirsty vampire inside. And Cook readily admitted the arrangement isn’t “perfect”.

Clearly it’s a trade off. But Apple benefitting financially is what makes this particular trade-off whiff.

It implies Apple does indeed have an eye on quarterly balance sheets, and the increasingly important services line item specifically, in continuing this imperfect but lucrative arrangement — rather than taking a longer term view as the company purports to, per Cook’s letter to shareholders this week; in which he wrote: “We manage Apple for the long term, and Apple has always used periods of adversity to re-examine our approach, to take advantage of our culture of flexibility, adaptability and creativity, and to emerge better as a result.”

If Google’s search product is the best and Apple wants to take the moral high ground over privacy by decrying the surveillance industrial complex it could maintain the default arrangement in service to its mainstream base but donate Google’s billions to consumer and digital rights groups that fight to uphold and strengthen the privacy laws that people-profiling ad tech giants are butting hard against.

Apple’s shareholders might not like that medicine, though.

More palatable for investors would be for Apple to offer a broader choice of alternative search engines, thereby widening the playing field and opening up to more pro-privacy Google alternatives.

It could also design this choice in a way that flags up the trade-off to its millions of users. Such as, during device set-up, proactively asking users whether they want to keep their Internet searches private by default or use Google?

When put like that rather more people than you imagine might choose not to opt for Google to be their search default.

Non-tracking search engine DDG has been growing steadily for years, for example, hitting 30M daily searches last fall — with year-on-year growth of ~50%.

Given the terms of the Apple-Google arrangement sit under an NDA (as indeed all these arrangements do; DDG told us it couldn’t share any details about its own arrangement with Apple, for e.g.) it’s not clear whether one of Google’s conditions requires there be a limit on how many other search engines iOS users can pick from.

But it’s at least a possibility that Google is paying Apple to limit how many rivals sit in the list of competitors iOS users can pick out an alternative default. (It has, after all, recently been spanked in Europe for anti-competitive contractual limits imposed on Android OEMs to limit their ability to use alternatives to Google products, including search. So you could say Google has history where search is concerned.)

Equally, should Google actually relaunch a search product in China — as it’s controversially been toying with doing — it’s likely the company would push Apple to give it the default slot there too.

Though Apple would have more reason to push back, given Google would likely remain a minnow in that market. (Apple currently defaults to local search giant Baidu for iOS users in China.)

So even the current picture around search on iOS is a little more fuzzy than Cook likes to make out.

Local flavor

China is an interesting case, because if you look at Apple’s growth challenges in that market you could come to a very different conclusion vis-a-vis the power of privacy as a brand premium.

In China it’s convenience, via the do-it-all ‘Swiss army knife’ WeChat platform, that’s apparently the driving consumer force — and now also a headwind for Apple’s business there.

At the same time, the idea of users in the market having any kind of privacy online — when Internet surveillance has been imposed and ‘normalized’ by the state — is essentially impossible to imagine.

Yet Apple continues doing business in China, netting it further charges of hypocrisy.

Its revised guidance this week merely spotlights how important China and emerging markets are to its business fortunes. A principled pull-out hardly looks to be on the cards.

All of which underscores growing emerging market pressures on Apple that might push harder against its stated principles. What price privacy indeed?

It’s clear that carving out growth in a saturated smartphone market is going to be an increasingly tricky business for all players, with the risk of fresh trade-offs and pitfalls looming especially for Apple.

Negotiating this terrain certainly demands a fresh approach, as Cook implies is on his mind, per the shareholder letter.

Arguably the new normal may also call for an increasingly localized approach as a way to differentiate in a saturated and samey smartphone market.

The old Apple ‘one-sized fits all’ philosophy is already very outdated for some users and risks being caught flat-footed on a growing number of fronts — be that if your measure is software ‘innovation’ or a principled position on privacy.

An arbitrary limit on the choice of search engine your users can pick seems a telling example. Why not offer iOS users a free choice?

Or are Google’s billions really standing in the way of that?

It’s certainly an odd situation that iPhone owners in France, say, can pick from a wide range of keyboard apps — from mainstream names to superficial bling-focused glitter and/or neon LED keyboard skins or indeed emoji and GIF-obsessed keyboards — but if they want to use locally developed pro-privacy search engine Qwant on their phone’s native browser they have to tediously surf to the company’s webpage every time they want to look something up.

Google search might be the best for a median average ‘global’ (excluding China) iOS user but in an age of increasingly self-focused and self-centred technology, with ever more demanding consumers, there’s really no argument against letting people who want to choose for themselves.

In Europe there’s also the updated data protection framework, GDPR, to consider. Which may yet rework some mainstream ad tech business models.

On this front Qwant questions how even non-tracking rival DDG can protect users’ searches from government surveillance given its use of AWS cloud hosting and the U.S. Cloud Act. (Though, responding to a discussion thread about the issue on Github two years ago, DDG’s founder noted it has servers around the world, writing: “If you are in Europe you will be connected to our European servers.” He also reiterated that DDG does not collect any personal data from users — thereby limiting what could be extracted from AWS via the Act.)

Asked what reception it’s had when asking about getting its search engine on the Safari iOS list, Qwant told us the line that’s been (indirectly) fed back to it is “we are too European according to Apple”. (Apple declined to comment on the search choices it offers iOS users.)

“I have to work a lot to be more American,” Qwant co-founder and CEO Eric Leandri told us, summing up the smoke signals coming out of Cupertino.

“I understand that Apple wants to give the same kind of experience to their customers… but I would say that if I was Apple now, based on the politics that I want to follow — about protecting the privacy of customers — I think it would be great to start thinking about Europe as a market where people have a different point of view on their data,” he continued.

“Apple has done a lot of work to, for example, not let applications give data to each by a very strict [anti-tracking policy]; Apple has done a lot of work to guarantee that cookies and tracking is super difficult on iOS; and now the last problem of Apple is Google search.”

“So I hope that Apple will look at our proposal in a different way — not just one-fits-all. Because we don’t think that one-fits-all today,” he added.

Qwant too, then, is hoping for a better Apple to emerge as a result of a little market adversity.

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com

[literatelobstersareliterate]

On Composing for Woodwind Quintet

by Zeke Hecker

This essay originally appeared in Consorting, newsletter of the Consortium of Vermont Composers.

    Since I first played oboe in a woodwind quintet at about age 13, I've been a fan. I love the richness of five distinct, heterogeneous voices that blend in innumerable ways, so unlike the insistent unity of the string quartet. (Only two of the quintet instruments share the same sound-producing mechanism, and even those two don't sound much alike. The oboe and bassoon are both double reeds; the clarinet is a single reed; the flute has a sound-hole; the horn isn't even a woodwind, but just wandered in from sheer curiosity, and stayed for 200 years.)

    I have played through much of the regular repertory in ad hoc groups, for fun, and I've been in one or two longer-lived quintets. I first wrote for woodwind quintet in the mid-1970's, and since have composed about 90 minutes' worth of quintet music, in addition to doing some transcriptions (yes, there are always transcriptions). The point is that I'm an admirer, not an expert. What follows are some observations, some half-baked truths, some principles I try to follow but often can't.

    The standard woodwind quintet -- flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon -- first appeared in the late 18th century. It flourished briefly around 1800, all but disappeared until the late 19th century, and made a triumphant reappearance in the 20th. The very qualities which left the Romantics cold have recommended it to modern composers: precision, clarity, lightness, wit. Since 19th-century values and repertory still dominate concert life, the woodwind quintet has never achieved the status with audiences that its tireless and passionate sister, the string quartet, enjoys. Permanently constituted touring woodwind quintets appeared only in the 1950's (the Philadelphia group was perhaps the first great one), but in recent decades they have proliferated as part of the chamber music boomlet. Amateur quintets abound. The repertory, overwhelmingly 20th century, has been enriched by hundreds of composers, including some of the most eminent.

    The first things to consider when composing for this medium are the capabilities and limitations of the individual instruments. I won't say much about that here. You should know their ranges (if you don't, keep a chart on your piano rack); you should know what to avoid in the clarinet's throat register; you should know which fingerings drive bassoonists crazy.

    But don't think primarily in terms of limitations. The refinements in design and construction of woodwind instruments (achieved mostly by 19th century French builders), combined with the increasing demands made on players by 20th century composers, have produced astonishing results. Wind players can do much more than is customarily required of them. The virtuoso potential, especially of the treble instruments, is tremendous; players often have great flexibility in rapid passages. The expressive potential is no less powerful. Modern woodwind tone is rich and sensuous, with phrasing influenced by subtle uses of vibrato and inflection. We are a long way from the village band.

    The players usually sit in a semicircle: from audience left, it's flute, oboe, horn, bassoon, clarinet; sometimes horn and bassoon are switched; no array is sacrosanct. In score the order from top down is flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon. I do the score at written, not sounding, pitch, since it's mainly for the players' use: flute, oboe, and bassoon in C, horn in F, clarinet in A or Bb depending on the key orientation of the piece, if any. Each player is usually given only the appropriate part, not the full score, to play from, the score being reserved for study and consultation.

    Here, then, in only a vague semblance of sequence, are some suggestions:

Woodwind players must breathe. Unlike a viola, a clarinet can't keep up an unbroken Alberti-bass-type figure for 32 measures, but needs a 16th note rest every few bars. This is not to say that woodwinds can't sustain long phrases; they can. To gauge breathing intervals, think in terms of the human voice. Make breathing part of the music's essence.

Woodwind players must also rest. The muscular effort of forming the embouchure requires periodic, and fairly protracted, relaxation. A woodwind part should not appear on the page the way the first violin part of a Beethoven quartet does, nearly solid black. Rests ought to occur frequently, and at least some should last measures instead of just beats. After a particularly strenuous passage, give the player 10 or 15 seconds to recover. Before a demanding passage, give some time to prepare the embouchure.

The temptation in quintet writing is to take the traditional "pastoral" approach: sighing zephyrs, rippling watery effects, bouncy folk-style tunes. Certainly, if that's what you had in mind when you chose the medium, go ahead. I've done it myself. But be aware that the combination is capable of more than that, of more serious, less predictable modes of expression. (John Harbison, in his recent and much admired quintet, delibarately avoided the pastoral, with impressive results.)

Don't think of the instruments as a fixed heirarchy, with the flute invariably soaring on top, followed in score order down to the bassoon lurking on the bottom. That way boredom lies. Juggle instruments vertically. Use the clarinet's chalumeau register as bass to another instrument. Put the horn on top, or the bassoon. Try the flute on the bottom.

To make such tactics work, give your vertical writing space. Write chords in open position, wide open. Winds are rich in overtones, which will fill in the spaces if you deploy your forces cleverly. Example: if you want to hear the low-register flute as a bass, put the melody 1 1/2 octaves above in the oboe.

Don't make the sound bottom heavy. Avoid thickness in the tenor region. Get the horn and clarinet, in particular, up on the staff. It'll sound better, and you won't bore the players.

Avoid purely triadic thinking. You've got as many as five notes to sound simultaneously, which means the richness of "color" chords: 6ths, 9ths, 11ths, and beyond. (If the technical language is opaque to you, as it mostly is to me, all I mean is that you can add interesting notes to the common chord for expressive purpose.)

But don't use all five instruments all the time. Make permutations and combinations: create a kaleidoscopic effect, instead of a monotonous one. The great virtue of the woodwind quintet is color, so mix your palette. (To give some idea of the range of options, David Van Vactor's Music for Woodwinds consists of pieces using every possible combination of the quintet instruments from one to five, ending with double quintet. There are over thirty of them.)

Think, too, of variation in texture. Straight homophonic writing (sustained hymn-like chords, or melody with chordal accompaniment) works fine for a while, but does not show off this ensemble to best advantage if carried on too long. Try a more contrapuntal approach. These instruments like to move, not just hang on to notes, even in slow music.

Speaking of color, you can achieve some startling and wonderful blends. High bassoon and low flute can be virtually indistinguishable. Horn and bassoon together, in parallel motion at consonant intervals, sound like a pair of hunting horns. Above the staff, the three trebles begin to sound very much alike. Using these and other combinations, you can create an almost orchestral effect.

Don't be casual about doublings. Treat them more as colors, less as ways of manipulating balance or volume. Horn and bassoon in unison make hardly more noise than either alone. Octave doublings can be effective, but use the cliche ones (flute above oboe, for instance) sparingly. I'd rather double high flute with low bassoon, four octaves down, and stick some contrasting material in the middle. But mostly I try to steer clear of doubling. Why waste your resources in redundancy?

And then consider extreme contrasts: a zippy flute, in rapid staccato motion, against a lazy legato horn figure, or a lugubrious low-reister oboe fighting off a jaunty bassoon. Use the group to invent various simultaneous "musics".

...which further suggests that you avoid excessive uniform legato. These instruments offer a vast menu of non-legato possibilities, from nasty accented staccatissimo to gentle pulsation. Make horizontal space as well as vertical. Silence is essential in wind music.

More about attacks: don't demand unobtrusive entrances in, say, the oboe's low register or the flute's high one. Extreme registers require extreme discretion from the composer, because that's where the player will most likely experience technical difficulties.

But use those extreme registers. Get away from Middle C.

Think of dynamics as part of the meat, not just the sprig of parsley. You can do a lot with woodwind dynamics (as Elliot Carter shows in his Eight Etudes for Woodwind Quartet, a demonstration piece well worth your study). The horn can purr, or blast the audience out of the room. The flute gets louder as it gets higher; the oboe does the reverse. The clarinet is more capable of immense crescendi and diminuendi than are the flute, oboe, and bassoon. Use these and other dynamic capabilities of the group to your advantage. Get away from the constricted mezzo-piano-to-mezzo-forte range caused by too much composing at the keyboard.

Since the bulk of woodwind repertory is modern, players are skillful at counting, and can negotiate tricky time signatures and frequent metrical changes. (My string playing colleagues often envy us our sightreading abilities in contemporary music; but hell, if you're a wind player, what else is there?) Don't stick to unchanging 4/4 or 6/8. Play around with rhythm and metre.

Finding intervals on wind instruments is much easier than on strings, since all we do is push buttons to get our pitch (or pretty near it). Passagework thus doesn't have to be as predictable, as key- or scale-oriented, as string players are accustomed to. Tuning chords is obviously easier, too, so non-traditional (and non-consonant) harmonies work out more easily than they do in string groups. Take advantage of that.

Wind players are good at handling wide leapps, especially articulated (that is, not slurred), and at moderate tempi.

The wind bag is full of new tricks: microtones, bending and sliding pitches, flutter tonguing, key clicking, muting, blowing into detached mouthpieces or instruments without mouthpieces, and so on. The horn can do elephant calls and harmonic glissandi. Use these, of couse, but again be cautious: it's easy to be seduced by them. Don't fool yourself into thinking they will mask a lack of musical substance. Multiphonics are the most recent major development in woodwind virtuosity, but they are beyond the competence of many players, and are somewhat difficult to notate and unpredictable in practice. (Check out Lukas Foss's Cave of the Winds for a wild ride through Multiphonia.)

Most flutists play piccolo; many oboists play English horn; some clarinettists play bass clarinet. You can widen your color range with these, or go even farther: alto or bass flute, oboe d'amore, Eb or alto clarinet, contrabassoon. I've dreamed of writing a movement for the lowest member of each instrument family: bass flute, Heckelphone, contrabass clarinet, contrabassoon and low horn or Wagner tuba. But a dream is what it should probably remain. Practically, unless you know the arsenal of your players, you ought to stay with the basic combination. Many players don't like to fool around with switching axes in mid-swing, anyway.

    I wish I actually practiced half of what I've been preaching here. Usually what happens is that, after a shaky start, I get rolling on a piece and slide into a groove, like a bowling ball in its gutter, with results that lack the variety I was aiming for. And then it occurs to me how presumptuous this has all been, anyway.

    Most of it has undoubtedly been said, and better, in textbooks, or else contradicted by same with unchallengeable authority, and many of you reading it are in a better position to hold forth on the subject than I am, having actually read and even taught from those same textbooks. And further: Can you really learn how to compose by reading about it, in authoritative textbooks or presumptuous articles? And futher still: I can't say that this article is truly about composing at all. It's more like musical cosmetics. The way you ompose for woodwind quintet is, I assume, pretty much the way you compose for anything else; it has something to do with the incarnation of an impulse, a thought, a shape, a mood; of couse the Word must be made flesh, but what good is the flesh if there's no Word behind it? Ives wasn't being merely truculent when he asked what music has to do with sound, anyway.

    Enough, already, of the metaphysical digression. Let's wrap this up, earthbound.

Woodwind quintet, which really is a sort of miniature wind band, works nicely in combination with other forces. I particularly like voice(s) and quintet. The group goes well with piano, especially if the keyboard writing is percussive and motoric, to match the winds' attack. Add solo strings to the basic quintet, and you have a miniature orchestra, as Piston and Martinu, among others, have demonstrated. Some composers have successfully woven electronics into the quintet texture. And then there is Janacek's Mladi (Youth) sextet, where the addition of bass clarinet seems to open new sonic worlds. Unfortunately, quintets don't often get a chance to expand beyond the conventional unit, the concert world being what it is.

To test the waters, try transcribing something. Arguments about the aesthetic validity of transcription always rage noisily, but you won't hurt beloved old Johann, or your local flutist, or your own technique by perpetrating an arrangement or two. The repertory has been fertilized by some excellent transcriptions; they were vital in the decades before a substantial original body of work emerged. Some works have lent themselve beautifully to the medium, ranging from the French baroque to Ravel's "Tombeau de Couperin" (in several versions, notably by Philadelphia hornist Mason Jones and hornist-plus-everything-else Gunther Schuller). You'll probably succeed better with keyboard music than with music originally conceived for strings, for reasons suggested earlier.

Listen to reams of quintet music. The big names from the classic era are Danzi and Reicha, both estimable advocates of the medium. Two persuasive late Romantic works, by Klughardt and Foerster, are worth attention. Acknowledged masterpieces of the repertory include everybody's favorite, the Nielsen, and Hindemith's Kleine Kammermusik Op. 24, No. 2. Schoenberg's formidable quintet, his strictest twelve-tone work, is seldom dared by either players or listeners. The French have predictably excelled: Milhaud's Cheminée du Roi René, Ibert's Trois Pièces Brèves, and dozens of others. Barber's Summer Music is one of his loveliest, most engaging creations, and other major American composers (such as Fine, Piston, Druckman, Carter, Dlugoszewski, Persichetti, and Alec Wilder) have made notable contributions.

    So too in Britain and Eastern Europe (Hungarian Györgi Ligeti wrote two superb works). These few hardly suggest the extent of the repetory. Consortium member Don Stewart's group, the Boehm Quintette, has programmed something like 100 works covering all eras, including some transcriptions and numerous commissions, and there are lots of other groups functioning on a similarly ambitious level. Consortium members who have written quintets include Don, Lou Calabro (IsoNova, a nifty piece), Gwyneth Walker (Braintree Quintet), Jim Grant, Nick Humez, Allen Shawn, and probably about two dozen I don't know about.

    Make friends with a quintet (approach confidently but slowly, without showing fear; they can sense that) and watch them rehearse. You'll discover more in one session than from having read this whole discourse.

(via Zeke Hecker: On Composing for Woodwind Quintet)