#first photo goes so hard it’s its own little ecosystem

[deklo]

I HAVE NOTHING TO DO AT WORK ALL DAY!!!!! i have some mold and bacteria tho

MOLD MONDAY!!!!

[demonologistfucker]

MC wants to meet some Creatures - Obey Me! Brother’s - Fluff

Gn!mc asks one of the brothers to take them to find a magical creature. This is for the main brothers, but if people want one for the newly datables just ask! I would love to do more <3

Lucifer

Is Cerberus not enough? We can go down and pet him if you like 

It’s going to take some convincing to get this trip to happen. Needlessly risking the human's life just to see something neat? I think not 

But your eyes were so big when you asked… fine. He’ll find something worthwhile that isn’t going to get you killed

Prep for the trip is Lucifer covering you in about 50 different protection spells. 

Then you’ll be flying. Hold on tightly and try not to look directly into the wind. That’s not good for your human eyes. Lucifer’s arms are firm around you as his wings stretch out. With a push you’re off. Being lifted from the ground purely from the strength of his wings? It’s an undescribable feeling. 

Soon you are out of the Devildom and flying above the Hell Wilds. A vast landscape of all sorts of terrors. From red grasses that could cut through bone, or the vast tar fields that bubble toxic gas. There is a beauty to it. Especially if you are safe above it all.

A large canyon comes into sight. “This canyon was cut by Lotan’s first rampage, and where Levi made Lotan his pet.” Lucifer begins to descend. Swooping down in a tight spiral to slip into the canyon. 

It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then you can see something glowing. Many somethings glowing. They crawl over the canyon sides. They are nothing like you’ve seen before, but if you were to pin down to something earth like… they are most similar to sea slugs? But they have legs and bright, piercing eyes. With beautiful fins running down their back. Each looks to be a droplet of a rainbow. 

“Gems left in the earth can collect enough magic to come to life.” They have no name, but they could fit in the palm of your hand. Tho please don’t touch they are highly condensed magical creatures and could shred your human body without meaning too.

Mammon

“Can I trust you?” He looks at you with surprising serious. Though he’s scratching his chin which makes it a little hard to take him seriously. When you say Of Course, Mammon quickly cracks into a grin. “Alright, give me a day, but-” He just starts nodding and runs off. Delighted with his own idea too much to tell you more

The Next day you meet Mammon outside the house of lamentation. He is already in his demon form and has a large sack in his hands. Which appears to be full of weird trinkets and a whole lot of grimm. 

Where are you going? The Hell Wilds. Which is… so unhelpful because the Hell wilds are nearly infinite. 

Mammon scoops you up bridle style, and then you’re off into the air. Mammon cannot stop smiling, “I haven’t taken anyone here before.” He mainly says this too himself. But looks at you with so much delighted you can’t help but blush. 

This would be a much longer flight if Mammon wasn’t so good at using the air currents to his advantage. Diving to catch the updraft that send you both rocketing through the air. You’re at not risk of danger. Mammon wouldn’t let that happen to you, but it does feel like a roller coaster. When you level out, you’re facing a dark mountain. It cuts into the air with jagged certainty. Mammon lands halfway up its sides. 

“She doesn’t like it when I fly into the nest. So we’ll have to walk to the rest.” If you ask any questions about what is happening. His response is a grin. “You know how Crows and I get along? Well… this is where that started.”

The mountain is only partial rock. The rest is ash, twigs and mud stuck together to keep the mountain from falling apart. Crows and ravens sit perched along the cliff sides. Some crows come flying to the mountain with fresh mud to repair parts of the mountain. The dark birds watch you and Mammon with intense, unrelenting eyes. Mammon smiles to them, and carries on with ease. 

The path winds up to a crack in the side of the mountain. Mammon gestures for you to wait outside while he walks in first. You can hear something massive stir. The rustle of feathers and the scratch of claws against stone. Then Mammon pokes his head out and beckons you in.

Curled within the mountain is a great beast. It’s hard to tell one part from another because she is massive, and her dark feathers blend into each other. Her head is stuffed into the bag Mammon brought. When she sits up, she has a golden cup in her maw. The Crow Drake is stunning and terrifying. Her eyes are molten red, and her teeth cut through the gold. 

The Crow Drake is the matriarch from all the crows and ravens in Hell. When Mammon was young, he fled to this mountain and was given a drake’s comforts. As well as his first crow familiar. 

She reaches up to get a good look at you. Her beak pressing against you. Nudging you around and bringing her eyes right up to yours. Then she sits back and let's out a satisfied sqwaks. Mammon is about to say something when the Crow Drake leans over and picks him up by the collar of his jacket. Mammon is plopped onto her soft back, and she begins preening his hair. Making little noises every once in a while. “I know I used too much conditioner, stop harassing me” Mammon is blushing fiercely. 

Levi

“Gah! Why can’t Lotan be more gentle.” Levi really wants you to meet Lotan, but it’s highly likely that Lotan would try to kill you the moment you met. All the photos of Lotan have been just… blue scales, or a big eyeball. 

But Lotan is one of many Sea serpents. Actually, there are all sorts of magical creatures in the sea, and Levi is going to tell you about All of them. While he tries to figure out how to make sure you can breathe underwater. 

“I am not allowed near the merfolk palace though, so... Can’t take you there.” If pushed on the matter, he will turn red and stammer about how Lotan just wanted a snack. 

He found a spell! He’ll need Solomon’s help, but it should give you 24 hours of breathing underwater. Now it’s time to go into his tank. 

Did you assume that he just had a normal wall sized fish tank? Of course not. The back wall has been turned into a convenient portal to The Ocean. It’s not an earth ocean, and hell doesn’t actually have a lot of clean water. This Ocean is an in between realm that connects to the abstract of earth’s waters, and all the magic that one could possibly find in those depths. 

At first Levi gets distracted showing you all the fish. Look at the coral! And the trigger Fish! Oh, what a pretty anemone. He’s so caught up in showing you around that he’s not even embarrassed to be holding your hand the whole time.

 Levi is such a strong swimmer he barely even notices dragging you along with him. His tail easily propels you both forward, and with great agility he can swim through the coral reefs. Then you hit the edge. Suddenly there is a vast nothing below you. Light fades below. 

Down you go! It would be more unsettling if you didn’t have leviathan right besides you. Who is practically vibrating with his excitement. Underwater Levi looks so much more comfortable. Moving with such ease and without any hesitation.

You can feel the water begin to shift as something Massive approaches. Levi pauses and let's out a trill. Which is met by a deep noise that rattles your bones. 

Red is a hard color to see in the deep ocean. Not enough light in that wave length can reach that far down. So at first it’s just a dark dot in the distances. Then it’s brilliant red head comes surging towards you. The water rushes around as the sea serpent begins to swim in a spiral around you and Leviathan. Leviathan is beaming and spinning around to keep up with the Serpent’s face. Letting out happy trills sporadically. 

Eventually the Sea Serpent settles down and lets its body relax out. The Serpent stretches out so far that it’s back fines look so small. Yet their face is larger than a bus. The Serpent looks at you for a long while, and then it flicks it head upward. Which makes Leviathan blush a vibrant red. 

She approves

Satan

Satan needs two weeks to prepare! But he has an idea. How do you feel about sewers?

“The Devildom aqueducts are actually one of the cleanest places in hell. It’s really an astounding work of engineering-” he goes on for a while about all the intricate workings. Seems there is a lot of plant filtering the waters, as well as creatures that can digest what the plants can’t process. 

Satan gives you one of his books of magic. “I am their friend, but if you want them to accept your presence, it’s best to provide a gift. To show you mean well.” Unlike the others, Satan will give you a heads-up on whom you’re about to meet. Though, he gives the explanation as you’re walking towards the sewer’s entrance. 

“Their name is Elos, and they are one of the oldest chimera’s alive. They were created in less than stellar circumstances, but handled it rather well.” By eating their creator. “Now they used the leftover alchemical equipment to do their own studying, as well as keep the aqueduct ecosystem in balance.”

The entrance looks like any other sewer grate in a city. Satan can easily move the heavy cover off, and watches as you begin to climb down the ladder. Satan closes the cover as he starts his descent. The sewers are Massive. The tunnel is about 20 feet wide and 20 tall. A perfect circle, except for the walk ways going along the side. A sort of seaweed is growing at the bottom of the waterways. Little fish duck in and out of the waving reeds. Further in more plants grow along the side. Some areas have full banks that cover the waterways. You can also see long claw marks running along the sides of the tunnel. As well as the residue of a recent magical explosion. “Hmm, looks like Elos got annoying company.” Satan smirks at the blast marks. 

One of the original designers of the sewers was the grand wizard who made Elos. So there is a laboratory at the dead center of the sewer system. If one were to look at the blueprints, you’d be able to see a magic circle drawn by the tunnels. Well almost one. Those plans were later worked over to fix the functionality of the sewer system for the devildom. Elos didn’t want to do any city wide magic, so they aren’t really upset about it. 

Outside of Elos’s laboratory is a large blue door. Painted on it are bright yellow runes that start to shimmer green as Satan approaches. Satan knocks, and it’s a full three minutes before the sound of the door unlocking. With effort, it swings inwards, and the smell of chemicals and herbs assaults your nostrils. 

Satan goes about the polite introduction. Leading you into the laboratory, but it’s hard to pay attention. There are so many strange machines littered across the room, and Elos themself is a feat to understand. Their face is divided into three parts, one of a bull, one of a woman, and the other of an ape. They have large arms with hands that drag across the floor. Their fingers are thin claws of a bird. Chest comes from some great lizard not from earth. Hide legs appear to be lion like, and its tail is an arched scorpion stinger. Elos looks at you with deep eyes. 

When you present the spell book Satan gave you. Elos sneers at you but takes the book. “A gift provided from someone else is weaker… but will do.” her voice is a dry and raspy. Speaking with vocal cords never crafted for such intricate language. 

Asmodeous

“Want to meet some of the lovelies that help me torment souls?!”  

They’re the creature Asmodeous has easy access to, so I recommend saying yes if you want to go with him

“They’re for a very specific time of person. The sort who think their beauty makes up for all the harm they caused.” A dark look smolders in Asmo’s eyes, but when he looks at you, it softens. Back to his normal bright heart eyes. 

Asmo summons a cab to drive you both to the outskirts of the devildom. To… a ranch? Soft green meadows stretch out as far as you can see. Wooden fences mark the edge of the road. When you look close, you can see sigils carved into the posts. 

Out in the field you can see them. Powerful horses with glimmering spiraled horns. Some are pure white with long wavy mains, but they are as diverse as any herd of horses. 

“My beautiful unicorns,” Asmo leans over the fences to get a better look at them. “You’ll get to have a closer look at those in the stables right now. They won’t be too happy about being locked up, but they’re so wonderful just to look at.”

These unicorns come from more of a… vicious tradition. Their diets are completely carnivorous and with a strong preference for humans. 

While you enter the stables, Asmo explains that these stables are more for necessary check-ups, and not where the unicorns stayed. They had their own dens somewhere in the meadows. Asmo hadn’t cared to find it, but it is out there. 

So the unicorns that are in are here to have a thorough cleaning by one of the stable works. No you cannot help I’m afraid. These Unicorns would not be able to tell you apart from the souls they are encouraged to feast upon. All the other folk who work at the stable are non-human, and they still get bite. What’s worse is when a Unicorn decided to charge. 

To make sure none of that happens, you’ll be safely on the other side of the door. Even though you can’t get close. You still can see the Unicorns very well. They are beautiful creatures. The shortest is still taller than the average horses. With eyes set more forward on their skull, and sharp angular bodies. Their legs are less brittle. With hooves that are divined into three sharp angles. 

While most of the unicorns with in the stable seem antsy to leave. They all give their own greeting to Asmo. A dappled gray is the most affectionate. Letting Asmo pet the sides of their face, and rubbing up against Asmo’s head. It looks at you with curiosity. Sniffs the air and whinnies. “I know,” Asmo coos. “They are very tasty looking, but you can’t have any. I want this human to stick around.” The Unicorn snorts and flicks it tail in annoyance.

Beelzebub

His eyes light up when you ask to meet some magical creatures. “We won’t have to go too far… but we should wait till the house is quiet.” Que Mammon sprinting through the hallways trying to out run Lucifer. “They don’t like the ruckus.”

Beel asks you to meet him in the kitchen once everyone else has gone to their rooms. When you enter you find him setting out a tray with a dish of milk, honey, and some crackers. He then hands you a block of cheese. “Cut up some cubes of this.” and so you do. Beel doesn’t take any food from the tray, but he does rummage in the fridge while you get the cheese ready. 

Once it’s all ready, Beel sets the tray in the middle of the counter. He then pulls out a little golden bell, and rings it.  There is a beat of silence, and then doors you had never seen before open. One door is tucked into the wall trim, another in the backspace, and a third underneath the cabinets. Who comes tumbling out are small fuzzy creatures. They walk on their hind legs, and have large flat faces. Almost like a bat, but their eyes are old and wise. They are dressed in hand stitched clothes made from old table clothes, towels, or other scraps of fabric they could steal without much fuss. 

“Who is this?!” One of them points pocket knife at you. “My friend,” Beel says and when he looks at you he can’t help but smile. “Hmm… did your friend cut this cheese?” Beel nods. “Next time make them smaller. Our children will struggle to hold these.”

These are House Brownies. A type of fae that can be found in most loving homes. They are a people of high standards but with over whelming big hearts. Beel is the main reason the house brownies live within the house of lamentation. No one else remembers to set out food for them. So no one else gets the help of the Brownies. Beel however often finds that his chores have been done for him, and snacks are often left on his bed side table. Small snack since the brownies can’t carry too much, but he deeply appreciates it. 

Brownies are some of the easiest fae to talk with. The worst you can do is hurt their pride, but they are quick to accept earnest apologies. Not the sort of fae who will steal your name and trick you into dancing yourself to death… well… There have been a couple brownies who have done that. But the people were true assholes. 

One of the brownies who is dress in a floral dress comes up to you. They give you a once over, and then start to climb up the back of your shirt. Now on your shoulder, the Brownie sniffs your face and pokes your cheeks. The Brownie’s whiskers tickle, and it’s hard not to react. But their fur is so soft, and they smell like honey and clove. 

“You should have brought this one sooner.” The floral Brownie says in a sing-song voice. “They can bring us human snacks, yes?” “I want a candy!” Another brownie cheers. “Are human homes as noisy as demon homes?” “What is a cat? We hear the mean one speak of them, but never have seen them.” “Is cat friend or foe to the brownie?” Another brownie is now climbing you. This one decided to perch on the top of your head. “Human smells nice. Keep them Beel.”

Belphegor

“Okay, but you’re paying for their snacks.”

Which turned out to be nearly ten pounds of red meat. You’re also the one who has to carry the bag as you walk into the properly sketchy parts of the Devildom city. Belphegor looks as nonchalant as normal. Except for when he needs to glare at any other Demon who might start making eyes at you. 

Now it’s into the dark alleys you go. Winding past business and into tight brick alley ways. The surrounding buildings seem to tower up through the sky. Blocking the darkness above. There is even a hint of sulfur in the air. 

“Alright, set the meat down.” Belphegor stops at the intersection of four alley ways. It makes a small circle in the middle. The ground is dark and stained from years of murk. Moss grows up the walls, and blooms in the cracks. You set the meat down and then back up next to Belphegor. “Are you nervous?” He grins a little and then brings his fingers to his lips and whistles Loud. 

You can hear them running. Many heavy feet charging down the paths. They’re coming from every direction, and now hear their panting breath. Growling and snarls as they try to be the first to reach their meal. 

If you thought earthly wolves are big. You are blown away by the size of hellhounds. They keep their heads low but still stand at least three feet tall. Their teeth are as black as their fur, and they have barbed tails that whip back and forth in a frenzy. The Hell hounds are at first completely distracted by the food left out for them. 

“When they’re not hungry, they’re really sweet.” Belphegor crosses his arms and leans back against the wall. Patiently waiting for the Hell Hounds to calm down. “They’re in the city to hunt down pests. Lucifer see’s them as exterminators,” One of the Hell Hounds now trots over to Belphegor. It rams its head into his stomach, demanding attention. Belphie laughs a little and starts to scratch its ears. Now content that it’s getting love. The Hell Hound eyes you. First a sniff, and then it tries to bite your clothes. “Hey,” Belphie says in a stern voice, and that’s all the Hound needed. You’re not food? Well then you must be friend too. 

The message is spread through the rest of the pack, and soon you are surrounded. The Hell Hounds breath is rancid, and they will not stop trying to give you kisses. 

Two of the hounds manage to get Belphie on the ground, and sit on top of him. Belphie’s face is flushed, and he only tries to get them off half-heartedly. Then accepts their cuddles and closes his eyes. “They’re not allowed in the house. So I come here a lot… you can join me next time if you want.”

A/N: Thank you @squidubus for the great idea of Mama Crow Drake preening Mammon’s hair. I luuuv uuuu

[hasty-touch]

33. Does your character respect nature, or would they stomp on it if it meant their benefit?

For “FFXIV deity asks” meme!

This one you’ve picked is, I think, particularly interesting, especially for Rosaire.

Pretty much all my characters love and/or respect nature to some degree. Some (Viviko) do so in a more sentimentalized, naive way, where “loving nature” means loving birds and flowers and vistas without really understanding the breadth, complexity, and danger that nature contains. Some (Hyacinthe, Mrhael, etc.) understand well that danger and darkness, that civilization and nature struggle against each other, but still respect it and believe in the importance of living harmoniously with it (because that is in civilization’s best interests). Some (Valroit) similarly understand that nature is harsh and cruel, but also see in it the sublime and beautiful, and that nurture, kindness, and creativity exist in nature too – and so love and honor it, and believe earnestly in growing civilization together with nature in the least harmful, most mutually beneficial way. Across this diversity of beliefs, none of them would really feel right about heedlessly exploiting and harming nature. Even those who are pretty OK with the exploitation of nature, out of self-interest and/or belief that it is Spoken’s Twelve-given right to enjoy nature’s bounties (i.e. Denisot), still care about preserving it for future generations, which means respecting an ecosystem’s balance (even if the character might not have the vocabulary to say that with sophistication).

Besides Rosaire, Kharadai probably has the most developed and interesting view of nature – along the lines of, “nature vs. civilization is a false dichotomy, every being is a part of the world and simultaneously in harmony and discord with other beings.” He’s deeply suspicious of narratives along the lines of “we live in harmony with nature, the same as our ancestors have since the dawn of time, unlike [those other tribes]”, instead suspecting that all organisms are selfish and will exploit each other for their own ends. Spoken just have the advantage of being able to see the bigger picture, and it’s in their best interests not to upset the balance of the star – which is bigger than all of us and not necessarily benevolent.

– Anyway, if you thought that was long-winded, I’ll describe now Rosaire’s conception of nature and man’s relationship to it.

Rosaire is Ishgardian Orthodox and deeply religious, even if his beliefs aren’t quite as orthodox (har har) as some might imagine. His beliefs about nature follow from his faith, chiefly his belief in the covenant made between Halone and Thordan’s people.

Coerthas is the Promised Land, and (as the knight Loanne says in the quest “The Pecking Order”) “the Fury has given us dominion over all creatures of this land.” To Rosaire, however, this is not a privilege that can be complacently assumed: it requires that Ishgard’s people worship the Fury and preserve Her Church. Further, Rosaire believes that if Coerthas is Halone’s gift to the Ishgardians, it is sacrilege to defile and abuse that gift.

In truth, Rosaire is a city man who spent most of life indoors, even before the Calamitous winter; in his twenties and thirties he was involved in a few covert missions in the countryside and the Dravanian forelands, but even he sometimes has a hard time believing that on a few of those, he actually camped out in the wilderness with a bedroll. Him! Yet while it is true that he feels close to Halone in the chapels in the city, and he goes to look upon Her statue in Saint Reymanaud when he aches for Her guidance – in truth, it is in the Coerthan countryside – sometimes gazing across the summer meadows in blazing green or the autumn fields in dark gold, but most oft when looking up at the white-topped mountains, majestic and sublime, graceful, brutal, sharp blades sweeping up to the sky that at the same time gently cradle the vales between – that he has felt Her presence most strongly, the divine hand that sculpted the most perfect land in all of Hydaelyn.

That land was not intended by Halone to be preserved in the state She created it. When dominion over it was given to Thordan’s people, it was Her intention that they cultivate it to support the civilization that would practice Her religion. But the correct way of life for the Coerthan people is one that fit harmoniously into the environment that She sculpted, not one that tries to impose the lifestyle of their southron, plains-dwelling ancestors. The Coerthans farm the lowlands and graze livestock on the alm, drive pigs through the forests, hunt and fish its wild beasts, and pick the fruits of their mountain orchards. Such practices are their divine right – and it is their Goddess-given responsibility to preserve and cultivate the riches of the land for future generations.

Such feelings are one of Rosaire’s motivations for devoting this part of his life to the Alpine Greening Institute. To most people, he tends to emphasize the Institute’s humanitarian motives – the need to restore dignified livelihoods to displaced Coerthan farmers, to lower the damn price of bread, and ultimately to relieve the overcrowding of the Brume. (To self-interested nobles, he tends to emphasize how these moves work to their benefit as well, and how something must be done to head off starvation if they want to preserve Ishgard’s social stability.) But there is this religious motive, too. Coerthas was given to the Ishgardians by Halone, and they cannot give up on it. They must adapt, just as their ancient ancestors must have struggled and adapted when first moving to Coerthans from the southron plains – ideally, they will be able to preserve the most important parts of the traditional Coerthan way of life, but above all they cannot cast aside their agreement with Halone that they will steward this land.

And “stewarding the land,” to Rosaire, means shaping it for the benefit of its Spoken inhabitants. He has an implicit belief in a Great Chain of Being, with Spoken superior to all other creatures; therefore their needs supercede all others’, and they have a right to rule over and exploit the rest. (As a tangent, Rosaire congratulates himself for his enlightenment in thinking of this category as “Spoken”, not “the Five Races” or “[Alpine] Elezen”, believing himself exceptionally anti-racist, while you and I would probably consider this more of a bare minimum. But this is a topic to ramble upon another day.) Spoken, of course, are inferior to the gods, and ideally the Spoken will rule over lesser beings -- the gods’ creation -- with sensitivity, compassion, and care. But if it is necessary, those beings can be manipulated, tamed, and culled for Spoken benefit. It is his hope, therefore, that the Alpine Greening Institute will be able to restore the old livelihoods of Coerthas with minimal change needed -- but if their research indicates that radical changes are necessary, possibly with dramatic side-effects for the environment, he would stand in support of them.

So ultimately Rosaire has an attitude to nature with echoes of -- hm, not sure if this is exactly accurate, but I think I’d say -- a mixture of 17th-18th century European (especially English, probably ‘cause thats the language I speak) ideas and aesthetics. There is an idealization of nature, but it is a sort of nature that is tamed and ordered by the hands of man and God(dess). “The land of Coerthas” is a priceless, treasured gift, and yet Rosaire is troubled little by dam-building, wood-clearing and artificial plantations, introduction of foreign species, etc., as long as these are in harmony with the religious ideal of the land. The idea of the picturesque resonates with Rosaire and I often try to pull on the surrounding tropes -- the idea of the medium between untamed, awe-inspiring nature and the order of a mannered garden, applied to an entire land, and how that resonates with Ishgardian national identity. They are the city-state of poncy nobles who fought a thousand-year war, who survive in the harshness of the rugged highlands and there built an ornate and even decadent religion and culture, much like the very temple of Halone built on the mountain that rises from the Sea of Clouds.

When working on Greening Coerthas stuff, I think a lot about how Rosaire’s attitudes would differ from ours -- “green” is a buzzword for us, too, as is “climate change”, but these mean something different to us, living in the time and place we do. I think about the brazenness that I see in the European inventors and agriculturalists of the Industrial Revolution (and other places/periods like the atomic gardening movement) -- there’s a fascinating mix there of foolhardy confidence in human ingenuity, grotesque entitlement to the land, and yet also optimism, hope, and vision. I think about how those sorts of beliefs and feelings might emerge in an Eorzean context and try to blend that in to my roleplay, so we’re not just roleplaying “farming in Eorzea,” but “farming in Eorzea”, embedded emotionally and ideologically in the landscape of this setting.

And also, as you have come to realize by reading all the way to the bottom here, it is a terrible mistake to send me asks for ask memes because I can and will talk endlessly and meanderingly about these things. WHOOPS.

Photo above is "Hintersteiner See with the Alps in Tyrol, Austria" by Uwe Schwarzbach('s mom), CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

4 Mar 2020: Coronavirus. Insurance: Ford’s black box. Amazon goes big.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: New Scientist/Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library]

Coronavirus: making supply networks visible

UK Government published its COVID-19 plan, which says that up to a fifth of UK workers could be off sick at any one time in the “reasonable worst case”. If that happens there will obviously be strain on systems: you’ll see 

“population distancing strategies (such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, reducing the number of large-scale gatherings) to slow the spread of the disease throughout the population, while ensuring the country’s ability to continue to run as normally as possible.”

That might also mean key parts of the public sector need to prioritise the most essential services, so NHS, social care, emergency services etc may see some streamlining. 

What are big tech firms doing? Amazon is banning non-essential travel. Twitter is encouraging staff to work from home and Google is trying out a work-from-home day in Ireland to test its preparedness. (Amazon is also trying to stop people selling face masks at hugely inflated prices on its platform.)

Very practically: it might seem suspiciously simple, but handwashing with soap is still the best thing to do, because soap is good at ripping apart the fatty envelope around the virus. Some measured “preparing” is probably sensible and helpful because it introduces a little slack into the health and food systems. The wider community benefits because the case load on the healthcare system is spread out over time the. (For the avoidance of doubt, this newsletter is *not* advising anyone to immediately put their camouflage bandana on and barricade themselves into their homes. And nor are public health experts, who are the people to actually listen to.) 

It looks like the virus will make visible some of the things that modern life works hard to keep invisible. Critical national infrastructure - chief medical officers, scientists - explain the situation and the plan. And supply chains also become more visible: if consumer electronics become more expensive, you might get a sense of that supply chain reaching back to China. But it isn’t a single chain, a linear path of supply along which money is swapped for things. It’s really supply *networks* - all the supply chains are entwined. If schools are shut, then there will be knock-on effects: a significant percentage of the workforce would be at home looking after children. This also means that if you wanted to avoid other people by staying at home and getting everything safely delivered to your house, well that still relies on Amazon's delivery people! The virus may eventually force everyone to think at the level of the community, rather than the individual.

Elsewhere: 

“GOV.​UK Notify just helped an NHS team set up a 2-way text messaging service for extreme-risk people to monitor and report Coronavirus symptoms. Took them a few hours, start to finish. Would've been impossible, even a couple of years ago. This is why platforms matter.”

Azeem Azhar wonders if coronavirus will force some political, economic and cultural adaptation upon society.

Insurance: Ford’s black box

Ford will offer drivers better insurance rates in partnership with Nationwide (a US insurer, not the UK mortgage provider). Insurance premia depend on how much you use the car, but also how you use it - drivers will be able to get up to 40% off if they drive safely. It’s one of the first driving telemetry solutions that doesn’t need a “black box” to be installed - the car is the black box. The catch for drivers: you need to be happy sharing your driving data with Ford and your insurer, and no doubt you need to be a safe driver.

Also in car insurance:

Young drivers “let down over insurance app faults” - Carrot uses phone data to measure braking and acceleration, but some say it often fails to work.

How we analyzed Allstate’s car insurance algorithm - data + code = new approaches to journalism.

Amazon goes big

Amazon has opened its first full size cashierless grocery store in Seattle - Go technology at 5,000 product lines in 10,000 sq ft size. (And here’s someone’s inevitable “can we fool the sensors and steal a banana” piece.) You shouldn’t necessarily see this story as Amazon going bigger now that it has *perfected* Go. There will probably be many more experiments with technology, format, size, inventory, location and everything else. Amazon is the experiment machine.

Elsewhere in supermarkets:

Walmart's click-and-collect offering is doing well - 37% growth in US ecommerce (which covers both click-and-collect and delivered).

M&S Food will expand its fill-your-own-container scheme to Manchester after a successful trial in which half of the lines offered outsold their packaged equivalents.

Tesco puts 1,800 jobs at risk as it scales down in-store bakeries - on the other hand Waitrose is selling more bread!

Ridesharing: more pollution, more accidents

Two research reports find unexpected problems with ridesharing: 

ridesharing companies seem to generate 70% more pollution than the trips they displace.

ridehailing is associated with an increase of approximately 3% in the number of fatalities and fatal accidents, for both vehicle occupants and pedestrians. 

When your company started up in car culture’s home country, then naturally the solutions mostly look like… cars. Though this might be part of the problem.

Other news

Lloyds of London will insure crypto wallets - given the last decade of stories about cryptocurrencies and their wallets being hacked, you’d guess the premia will be quite big.

Kickstarter workers vote to form first union in US tech industry. 

Amazon primed to change the fashion industry in new TV series - Amazon’s first big fashion TV-meets-shopping cross-selling project.

Here is your heart-warming retail story: Italian IKEA store opens its doors to local stray dogs.

Co-op Digital news and events

How the Web team used the ‘top tasks’ approach to prioritise.

Sign up for The Federation newsletter!

Public events, most of them at Federation House:

Global Legal Hackathon Manchester - Fri 6 - Sun 8 Mar 4pm.

Digital City Festival - Mon 9 - Fri 13 Mar at venues across Manchester, several of them at Federation house.

Open Data Manchester: Black software (explores racial injustice & the professionals & hobbyists of color who helped build the internet) - Wed 18 Mar 6.30pm.

Returners/Re-trainers (about successful initiatives to create better routes for women returners/re-trainers) - Thu 26 Mar 11.30am

Internal events:

Targeted Marketing (CRM) and Data Ecosystem show & tell - Wed 4 Mar 3pm at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 6 Mar 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

Delivery community of practice - Mon 9 Mar 1.30pm.

Co-operate show & tell - Wed 11 Mar 2pm at Angel Sq 8th floor red core breakout.

Data management show & tell - Thu 12 Mar 2.30pm at Angel Sq 13th floor breakout.

Membership show & tell - Fri 13 Mar 3pm at Fed 6 kitchen.

More events at Federation House - and you can contact the events team at  federation.events@coopdigital.co.uk. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

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[animalistauntamedblog]

Cover photo: Endangered Steller Sea Lions VLADIMIR BURKANOV / NOAA

If the 6th Age of Mass Extinctions we have now entered as a result of our own activities, sees off the human race along with all the other species on the planet, our epitaph might read (should there be a handy alien around to carve it in stone) “They thought theirs were good ideas at the time ….”

In The Magnificent Seven, this was the answer Vin (Steve McQueen) memorably gave to Calvera (Eli Wallach) when the bandit was so puzzled why a man like Vin decided to take the job of protecting the lowly villagers from his pillaging gang: “It seemed to be a good idea at the time ….”

In that instance, things turned out well – mostly. But so many of humankind’s bright ideas that did seem good at the time, have in the longer term proved to be runaway nightmares.

Thanks to modern science and technology we can now design babies to our own requirements; engineer mosquitoes to make themselves extinct; make drones used by conservationists and poachers alike; construct slaughterhouse equipment that make it possible to slaughter 140 hens per minute; choose custom-made dogs in different patterns and colourways; and grow human organs in pigs. We can move mountains, and I mean literally. There is no end to our inventiveness.

Is there anything we can’t do?

For all our cleverness, when it comes to gazing into the crystal ball to foresee where our handiwork might be leading, our talent is zero. Our remarkable human ability to turn every bright idea into concrete reality is matched by our singular inability to predict where those bright ideas might take us. Perhaps we are just eternal optimists, blind to any possible downsides.

Whatever, that blindness has sadly brought us to a point where 26,500 endangered and critically endangered species of plant and animal find themselves on IUCN’s Red List, thanks entirely to us.

Endangered: the California Condor, the Great Frigate bird & the Whooping Crane

Take that once-bright idea very much in the environmental spotlight recently. That material without which life as we know it is unimaginable. Plastic. Invented 1907. I know, I couldn’t believe it either. So useful it’s insinuated its way into every nook and cranny of our lives: from swimsuits to spaceships; cars to clingfilm; windows to wipes; aircraft to astroturf.

Plastic certainly has always seemed not just like a good idea, but a brilliant one. This ultra-handy substance managed to sneak well passed its centenary before we woke up to precisely what we’d let loose on the planet. How were we to know?

Futurology – the science of anticipation

Enter the futurists, those whose task it is to gaze at that crystal ball for us and forecast what kind of world new developments are propelling us towards. More than two dozen of these horizon scanners have got together with environmental scientists – William Sutherland, professor of conservation biology at Cambridge University at the helm – to put their collective finger on which emerging trends are likely to make an impact on Nature and biodiversity in 2019. Perhaps it’s not so surprising that they are hedging their bets on the outcomes of the trends they’ve identified, conscious that any one of them that seems like a good idea right now, may have unintended, unwanted, or even unforeseeable repercussions.

Emerging Trend for 2019 No. 1

And heyho we’re back to plastic

Remember when yellow plastic ducks first started washing up on beaches across the globe?¹ The thought of these tiny bath ducks ‘escaping’ and navigating the vastness of the oceans seemed no more than an amusing story at the time. There were actually 28,000 of them out there, a whole container load, lost overboard in the North Pacific in 1992. “That flotilla of escaped plastic ducks joins millions of Lego pieces, sneakers, styrofoam insulation, plastic crates and a plethora of other items lost at sea.“  It’s reckoned that containers lost overboard every year number in the thousands, and many of them filled with items made of plastic. Items that never even get to be used. A single container can carry 5 million plastic shopping bags.

Add that to the colossal amount of plastic we humans continue to actually use and throw away, and we have one enormous problem. We use 300 million tons of plastic each year, and at least 100 million marine mammals, a truly horrifying figure, are killed each year from plastic pollution.

After all this time, we’ve finally woken up to the environmental devastation our love of plastic has wreaked, and the trend the futurists identify is: people coming up with solutions.

An obvious one is to re-use plastic trash to produce something else we need. An ingenious professor of engineering in India has come up with a highly original use of plastic waste: turning it into hard-wearing, long-lasting roads.

“To date, thousands of kilometers of highways in India have been paved using the process he invented.” 

Another approach is to make plastic plant-based and biodegradable, and NatureWorks based in Minnesota, is doing just that. Their eco plastic ‘Ingeo’ is already in use in everything from 3D printing, through building construction and landscaping, to food packaging. Here’s how they do it.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is proposing a more fundamental shift – an economy based on better design, manufacture and recycling. At present we run on a linear economy – buy something, use it, throw it away. Some of our plastic trash does get recycled, but each time it is recycled, it becomes less and less usable. The Foundation would like to see a circular no-waste economy where items such as cellphones are designed and made so that at the end of their useful life they can be easily broken down into their component parts (glass, plastic, metal) ready to be recycled into equally high quality goods.

“Yay!” we say. All these ideas are impressive, aren’t they? But our futurists are cautious, unwilling to come down off the fence on one side or the other. Because how can they be sure that years down the line, we will not be repeating that refrain, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

As the futurists say,“From changes in recycling approaches, to the use of biological agents to degrade materials, to the manufacture of substitutes for conventional plastics from plants, [which as of now only makes up half a percent of all plastic produced] all alternatives will have ramifications of their own for food security, water use, ecosystem integrity and more. Not only that, but the promise they offer — whether it’s realized or not — could defuse other efforts to reduce rather than shift plastic consumption.”

NatureWorks though is in the early stages of a process to make biodegradable plastic straight from greenhouse gases without even using plants. Can this be anything but good?

If we can make drastic improvements in our plastic use, on an individual as well as corporate and international level, there may still remain sea turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks, sea birds et al, to thank us. They have precious little to thank us for right now.

No. 2  Sunscreen

In 1938 a Swiss chemistry student Franz Greiter got a touch of sunburn while climbing Mount Piz Buin in the Alps. So guess what he did – yes, he went home and invented the first sunscreen. And for decades since, sunscreen’s been protecting us from turning an uncomfortable shade of pink, as well as more serious health issues.

Then in 2016, sunscreen joined the ranks of those brainwaves that seemed so good at the time, but might actually have been a huge environmentally-costly mistake. In that year a scientific study was conducted to ascertain if oxybenzone, an active ingredient of the stuff, was damaging coral reefs. The researchers concluded that it was. And several islands and states in the world have already banned it.

Oh, if only there were something ‘greener’ we could use to block those harmful UV rays!

Well, there is. We can harvest it in small quantities straight from nature, from algae to be precise, and it goes by the appealing name of Shinorine. As of now scientists have proved they can synthesise it. The next step is to scale up production.

Once again, our futurists are reluctant to come down on one side or the other. Is Shinorine going to be good for the environment, or prove as harmful as oxybenzone? All they will tell us is, “Widespread adoption of shinorine without sufficient research could expose corals or other aquatic and marine organisms to a new substance with unknown impacts.”

They are undoubtedly right to err on the side of caution. If only we had been so wise before we unleashed all our agrochemicals, our agro-waste, and yes, our plastic, our fossil fuel gases, our nuclear power, and indeed a superabundance of ourselves on to suffering Nature.

No. 3  Making rain

Last week, “the Department of Royal Rainmaking and Agricultural Aviation said it was preparing to deploy two planes for cloud seeding between Tuesday and Friday, if conditions are suitable.”  Right now Bangkok is shrouded in a pall of smog, and Thailand’s Department of Royal Rainmaking hopes a downpour of the wet stuff will clear the air. (On the website there is a tab called “The King and the Royal Rain”)

Meanwhile in Tibet, China is poised to send up a battery of rockets to release silver-iodide particles in the clouds, with the aim of making it rain over 1.6 million square kilometres of land, a vast area almost the size of Mexico. In 2017, northern China suffered its worst drought on record, With their rockets they hope to ensure water security for their own people, especially farmers, downstream.

Cloud-seeding has been around since the 1940s, but nothing on this kind of scale has ever been attempted before. Unsurprisingly, this is worrying our futurists. They fear such a dramatic alteration to the weather will damage Tibet’s rare alpine steppe and meadow ecosystems, in turn threatening its rare endemic species.

Photos from Wild Animals on the Tibetan Plateau²

Tibet is already the one of the largest sources of freshwater in the world, in third place after the North and South Poles. 46% of the world’s population rely on water originating in that country. Tibet, the Roof of the World, high in the Himalayas, lies three miles above sea level, its water feeding 10 major rivers across 11 countries of South-East Asia.

There are no simple certainties about the Chinese plan. It could all go horribly wrong, and have who knows what consequences, not just on the Tibetan plateau, but across a vast expanse of the globe. It certainly has the perturbing potential to be yet another bright idea that seemed like a good idea at the time…

No. 4  Fishy oilseed crops

The possibilities of genetic engineering are endless. So advanced are we as a species, we now have the knowhow to redesign almost every living thing to our own requirements. So why not modify oil-producing crops to produce “the omega-3 fatty acids that are normally found in fish and prized for their health-promoting capabilities.” Fantastic, especially for vegetarians and vegans. And the wild fish populations.

But… Why does there always have to be a but! The modification will displace some of the plants’ natural oils. How will this affect the insects that feed on them? If one study showing caterpillars metamorphosing into butterflies with deformed wings is anything to go by, the answer is “badly”.

It’s a zero-sum game. Benefitting one side of the equation (us) automatically means disadvantaging the other. This is true of so many of our bright ideas from the past. Yet we still don’t seen to have grasped that disadvantaging other animals, the environment, Nature, in pursuit of our own ends is only a short-term fix that is certain to boomerang back on us. And time is running out.

Other trends the futurists identified

that will make themselves felt one way or another in the environment this year include:

microbial protein for livestock

deeper sea fishing

modification of plant microbiomes

the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s decision not to regulate the use of gene editing in plants

the development of salt-tolerant strains of rice

and China’s creation of a whole new river

Read more here

A couple of biggies they didn’t spot

a. The expanding market for whole-roasted cricket

Insect mass-rearing, though in its infancy is apparently a fast-growing industry. The unfortunate cricket can be fed on nothing but weeds and agricultural by-products, making it a source of protein far more sustainable than the animals we more usually associate with farming.

“Reared insects are increasingly seen as an environmentally friendly alternative to meat, even by the United Nations. The future food for a growing world population.” And a readily available source of protein for malnourished children.“Even very poor people would be able to rear crickets.”³

b. Biodiversity offsets

We’ve grown familiar with the idea of carbon offsets. If you need to take a flight somewhere, you can buy yourself enough carbon credit to offset your own portion of the plane’s emissions. Then the money is used in climate protection projects.

Biodiversity offsets work on a similar principle. Setting aside protected areas for Nature to compensate for and minimise the impact of large-scale industrial projects like new mines or dams, or at the other end of the scale, new housing. Recent research discovered 12,983 of these set-aside habitat projects across 73 countries occupying an area larger than Greece. “153,000 square kilometres is a big chunk of land.” And in spite of its being a relatively new idea, it’s catching on fast.

“This is the start of something major,” says researcher Dr Bull, “‘Biodiversity offsets – ‘No Net Loss’ policies, seeking to protect our natural environment, are being implemented very quickly.”

Could this be a promising step towards Half Earth for Nature?

One final trend the futurists have hope for – Insurance for Nature

The futurists picked up on a joint project involving the Mexican government, the Mexican tourist industry, The Nature Conservancy, and – of all things – the insurance industry. Between them they have set up a trust fund to protect the Mesoamerican Reef in the Caribbean. The fund can be called upon for restoration projects in the case of damage to the reef. In effect, the reef is insured.

The futurists think schemes like this have potential for the insurance industry to “play a role in protecting natural areas and helping damaged habitat recover from disasters.” The model could be replicated worldwide to preserve and restore Nature.

Are they right? Where will it all end? Can our clever innovations save the planet and us with it? Or will they just turn out to be more of our brainwaves that seemed like a good idea at the time? Any crystal ball gazers out there?

¹“Many of these toys inadvertently became part of a massive scientific study: beachcombers have been finding them ever since, helping oceanographers refine their models of ocean surface currents.” The Science Museum

² Clockwise – the Tibetan antelope, the pika, the Tibetan blue bear, the Tibetan wild ass, the snow leopard and the Tibetan wolf

³ This one is not for me as a vegan. But then, I’m fortunate enough not to have to live in poverty with malnourished children

Further reading Fixing the environment: when solutions become problems

Related posts

Futurology Offers More Hope than Fears for the Animals & the Planet

Hope for the Animals & the Planet?

There is Always Hope for the Animals & the Planet

Ten Fascinating Ways Technology is Saving Animals

How Drones Might Just Save Our Endangered Animals & the Planet

‘WILD’ Needs Us to Save Half for Nature

Sources

15 trends with big implications for conservation in 2019 | Ensia

Sunscreen: a history

        Predicting what’s in store for Nature in 2019 Cover photo: Endangered Steller Sea Lions VLADIMIR BURKANOV / NOAA

[mealha]

The iPhone 11 Pro camera is amazing, but it has a few notable issues

A cereal-covered donut at the Big E in Massachusetts is a perfect subject for the iPhone 11 Pro camera. Bright colors, sharp textures, and subject matter that can handle a little distortion from a wide-angle lens. (Stan Horaczek/)

Let's get it out of the way first: The new iPhone 11 Pro has the best overall smartphone camera system I've used. That may change when Google releases the Pixel 4 next month, but for now, the iPhone 11 Pro is the champ. And while I have no problem giving credit where it's due, I'm left with some extremely complicated feelings about Apple's new flagship imaging devices. Even beyond a few notable drawbacks, I wish it was simpler to know what's actually going on inside the camera.

If you only hope to point the camera at a subject and get usable—and often pretty impressive—shots, then the 11 Pro is unbeatable. But if you already know how to use a camera—even a previous iPhone camera—there’s a learning curve that might change at any time thanks to software updates, and it could have a real effect on the look of your photos and videos. Plus, the new phone is a reminder that iPhone photography—and smartphone shooting on the whole—is increasingly different than typical photography.

The hardware

The trio of cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro occupies a square on the back of the phone. (Apple/)

The iPhone 11 Pro comes with a trio of rear-facing cameras, including the familiar wide-angle and telephoto lens modules, as well as a new ultra-wide camera. If you’re serious about taking pictures and video and that guides your phone choice, you might as well jump on the Pro line and get an all-in-one package.

The lens selection makes sense for photographers. Professionals typically concentrate on three basic types of shots, including wide photos to set the scene, tight shots to provide intricate details, and standard middle shots to handle the bulk of the storytelling. Switching between the different camera modules on the 11 Pro makes this pretty straightforward and may even encourage some shooters to expand the kind of photos they capture. I can get behind that.

Shooting with each camera provides its own unique strengths and challenges, so let's break them down individually. You can check out high-res versions of all the comparison shots here.

The wide-angle

A plant store in Troy, NY, provides mixed light and lots of textures and the main camera handles it nicely. Using the depth function to blur the items in the foreground and background would make this look more like it was taken with a dedicated camera (Stan Horaczek/)

The iPhone 11 Pro’s main camera remains the standard wide-angle; it’s by far the most useful and also the most advanced. There’s a new sensor inside that seems to have improved the performance in low natural light. It’s hard to gauge, however, because the overall picture-taking process relies so heavily on the software tweaks. Apple has increased the maximum ISO (the rating that indicates the camera’s perceived sensitivity to light) from roughly 2,300 up to about 3,400. Raising that setting typically increases ugly noise that shows up in your photos, so Apple is either more confident in the sensor's inherent low-light chops or it has added more processing firepower to fix it later. The reality is probably a mixture of the two.

The lens maintains the same basic specs, including an f/1.8 aperture. I wouldn’t expect it to get much faster than that (lower numbers indicate wider apertures to let in more light, making the lens “fast”).

The telephoto lens

Portrait mode seems to have improved in some situations. Most of the blur comes from the natural characteristics of the lens, but I wouldn’t mind darker shadows on the jacket. (Stan Horaczek/)

Telephoto lenses have been showing up on iPhone flagships since the 7 Plus when we first encountered the Portrait mode. The telephoto lens gives shooters an angle of view equivalent to what you’d expect out of a roughly 52mm lens on a full-frame DSLR. Though that makes it a telephoto lens by the strict definition, photographers typically expect such lenses to fall somewhere north of at least 70mm. The extra reach allows shooters to pick their way through complicated environments and single out a subject. The iPhone's telephoto does a better job of this than the wide-angle, but it's not going to replace a dedicated longer lens.

The sensor inside the 52mm is still smaller than it is in the main wide-angle lens, but the maximum aperture goes from f/2.4 to f/2. Letting in more light is almost always welcome, but it’s a relatively small jump. So, if you’re expecting a huge change in the natural blur or low-light performance, you might be disappointed. It does, however, seem to have upped the focusing speed, which it desperately needed.

The super-wide lens

The super-wide camera provides a unique perspective, but its image quality isn’t as high as the main wide-angle camera. (Stan Horaczek/)

At a roughly 13mm equivalent, the super-wide lens is a new addition for the iPhone camera ecosystem. Like the telephoto, its sensor is smaller than the main camera’s, and it doesn’t have access to some of the other features like the new Night Mode (lots more on that in a moment), Portrait Mode, or optical image stabilization. Thankfully, super-wide lenses don’t suffer as much from camera shake, which makes the lack of lens-based stabilization less of an issue.

Some critics immediately discounted the new wide-lens as a novelty, but 13mm isn’t much wider than the wide-end of the 16-35mm zoom lens that photojournalists have been using for decades. Will people overuse it? Oh yeah. But it’s not inherently a special effects lens like a true fisheye.

The camera app bug

Before getting into the features, it's worth noting that some users (including me) have encountered an issue with the iOS 13 camera app in which the screen stays black for up to 10 seconds before you can actually do anything. The iOS 13.1 update is inbound and hopefully, that will fix it, but it's seriously annoying when it happens.

Night Mode

In some situations, Night Mode does a great job revealing details that would otherwise disappear into shadows. I actually turned down the Night Mode level from three seconds to one second because it tried making the grass too bright green. (Stan Horaczek/)

Last year, when Google introduced its Night Sight mode on the Pixel 3 smartphone, I was genuinely impressed. The company used the device's single camera to capture a number of low-light shots in quick succession. It then pulled information from those shots and mashed them into one finished image that was impressively bright, relatively accurate color-wise, and surprisingly full of details that a typical high-ISO photo would obliterate with digital noise.

The iPhone 11 Pro answers Night Sight with its own Night Mode, which uses a similar multi-capture strategy and immediately became a fundamental piece of the shooting experience. Point the iPhone camera at a dark scene and a Night Mode icon pops up automatically. You can turn it off if you want to, but you have to consciously make that choice.

The only light illuminating this scene was coming from the open door in the background. It was dark—around 1 EV. It's impressive that you can get the color of the room (it really is pink-ish) and the green in the plants. Bright areas of the frame will blow out in night mode, so best to crop them out when shooting if possible. (Stan Horaczek/)

The first time you see it, it’s like witchcraft: It brightens up the dark scene to the point where every object in the picture is recognizable. If you’re expecting it to create what you’d get with even the most basic pop-up flash, however, you might be disappointed. Night Mode is great in situations where the light is relatively flat.

Left: This gnome was shot in wide-angle with the Night Mode turned off. Right: With Night Mode on. (Stan Horaczek/)

It’s not always magic, though. Take Night Mode into a situation with mixed or highly-variable lighting conditions and things can get out of hand. Consider, for instance, the picture of a garden gnome above. I turned night mode off for the first version and was pleasantly surprised at how much detail I got and how sharp the image is. With Night Mode on, however, the sharpness is still solid, but the colors get bonkers.

Left: This bush was shot in wide-angle with the Night Mode turned off. Right: With Night Mode on. (Stan Horaczek/)

You can observe the same phenomenon here with this bush. It has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Honestly, it reminds me of the overbearing processing that Samsung typically applies to its photos. Because Night Mode is on by default, it can be hard to fight through the initial urge to leave it on, even when you don’t need it. The picture pops up on screen, and you push the shutter because it's so nice and bright.

This shot was taken in a fully dark environment. It's grainy up close, but the skin tone doesn't look overly wild and you can still make out details in the fish. The camera details suggest this shot used a half-second exposure. The night mode was set to three seconds. (Stan Horaczek/)

When it comes to skin tones, the same flat-light rule applies. In this example, there’s one dim tungsten beam coming from camera right. Without night mode, it was totally unusable. The frame either came out black or absurdly blurry due to the long exposure required.

Mixing color temperatures in a portrait is hard, but Night Mode clearly does some work to try and even out the skin tone. (Stan Horaczek/)

In mixed-light conditions, however, things get more complicated. Few things make a person look less appealing in a photo than blending colors on their face. With Night Mode turned on, it can sometimes augment the effect by amplifying the light sources, making the subject look wacky and cartoonish. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty common scenario in places like bars, weddings, or events. Apple has already done considerable work to make the skin tones look more natural, but I expect this will improve over time.

Generally, I’d love to see Night Mode tone it down a bit. Take this example of these flowers under an ugly street light in the park for instance. The Night Mode version (on the right), ironically, takes away almost any indication that the photo was taken at night.

Left: These flowers were shot in wide-angle with the Night Mode turned off. Right: With Night Mode on. (Stan Horaczek/)

I would also like a little bit more freedom to experiment with it. Night Mode is capable of capture times all the way up to 30 seconds, but you can only access the full time if you put the iPhone on a tripod or something steady and it senses the lack of motion. I’m fine with a recommended length, but I’d like the opportunity to mess up the photos however I want. (Taking screwed-up shots is how you learn, after all.) Also, given that it’s kind of unclear if there’s any direct relationship between the length of the exposure and the overall brightness or characteristics of the image, I’d at least like to easily mess with the capture time and see what I can glean. That is, of course, until the next software update, which could change it completely.

A quick note about flash

I have seen some folks talk about how Night Mode makes flash obsolete. That's mostly true if we’re talking about smartphone flashes, which are little more than glorified LED flashlights. Take a look at this grid of images.

Starting in the top left and going clockwise: iPhone shot with Night Mode on, iPhone shot with the flash on auto (blech), and a Sony A6500 with the pop-up flash on. (Stan Horaczek/)

Not only does the actual flash from the Sony create much higher overall image quality and sharpness (thanks to the short duration of the flash that doesn’t leave room for camera shake), it would also overpower any possible mixed-light temperature situations that you might encounter. In short, if you were thinking about getting a real camera because you can use flash, Night Mode shouldn’t change that at all.

Making tricky choices

The same outdoor setting shot with the standard wide-angle lens on the left and the super-wide on the right. (Stan Horaczek/)

Manual exposure modes in smartphone cameras have always been a scam with fixed apertures and a lack of long-exposure functions. Still, it's still good for users to know what the camera is doing—or have the option to. The iPhone 11 Pro makes a lot of choices that it doesn’t tell you about.

For starters, when you press the 2x zoom button, you’d probably assume you’re going to be using the telephoto camera that literally doubles the focal length of the lens you’re using. But most of the time, like the iPhone XS, you’re actually just enabling 2x digital zoom on the main wide-angle camera. If you’re familiar with camera lenses, you know that shooting with a 52mm lens is fundamentally different than shooting on a 26mm lens and cropping, especially when it comes to the field of view and the relationship between objects in your frame.

I wanted to use the 52mm lens for this shot, but the camera automatically selected the standard wide-angle lens and digitally zoomed for some reason. (Stan Horaczek/)

Above, you’ll find a picture of a transaction happening at the excellent Troy, NY, farmer’s market. I pressed the 2x zoom on this image because it was plenty bright (the camera selected ISO 32) and I wanted to get as much natural blur as possible in front of and behind the subjects. It would also make the field of view easier to manage to crop out distractions like the guy in the sweatshirt on the left. It wasn’t until after I got back home that I realized the 2X zoom button simply cropped a picture from the wide-angle camera. It didn’t optically zoom—it digitally zoomed. As a result, the extrapolated image has some ugly artifacts and sharpening noise in it when I don’t think it should. I pushed a button for something I wanted and got something else.

These tomatoes were too close for the telephoto lens. (Stan Horaczek/)

Even though the portrait lens has a wider aperture now and the sensor has improved, I found that the 52mm doesn’t focus very close. This picture of some tomatoes, for instance, didn’t allow me to use the true telephoto lens because it couldn’t focus close enough to make the composition work. I would have had to leave a third of the bottom of the frame empty and then crop in post.

A similar effect comes into play with long exposures. Night Mode captures images for 30 seconds at a time, but it’s not a 30-second exposure—it’s just 30 seconds spent capturing shorter photos. The iPhone 11 Pro camera is technically capable of long exposures up to one second, but if you try to use that feature in an app like Halide or Lightroom, the camera is so slow and jittery that it’s unusable.

Use Night Mode long enough and you’ll get a feel for what the difference between a five-second shot and a 30-second shot looks like. Still, it hard to quantify it, and if it changes with the next software update or smartphone, you’ll get to figure it out again.

Where to start

Your head might be spinning with all these options and caveats, so let's track back a little. What is it exactly that you want to shoot? I, for one, picture a photo in my head before I even pick up the camera—smartphone or otherwise. Dig into the so-iconic-it's-cliche Ansel Adams book The Print and you'll find a perfect summary of how photographers visualize a photo, then use the tools at their disposal to make it happen. After all, you didn't really have a choice with film because you couldn't preview it.

The iPhone—and pretty much any other digital camera—shows you a picture so that it's as simple as saying, “OK, camera, that’s fine.” Now that the iPhone 11 Pro includes a super-wide angle camera, you can feel its effects even before you select it from the camera app.

The translucent sections of the screen aren't part of the picture, but they could be if you switch to the wider lens. I personally find it distracting. (Stan Horaczek/)

The section of the camera app behind the shutter button and at the top of the phone are now translucent when you use the regular wide-angle camera. It has its uses, like when there’s a distracting minivan parked at the edge of a street you’d like to capture, and you want to preview exactly how wide you can make your picture while still leaving the car out of the frame.

Personally, though, I find the whole effect extremely distracting. It’s not so bad when you’re looking directly at the phone—but when you’re trying to compose a shot at a weird angle, it can be hard to tell where the picture you’re taking ends and the extra stuff behind the translucent veil begins. On a few occasions, I’ve mis-framed shots because it threw me off. I’m sure I’ll learn to use it effectively eventually, seeing that the iPhone is teaching me about how to be a better iPhone photographer all the time.

In the menus, you can actually tell the camera to capture image information outside the view of the normal wide-angle camera and store it for a month in case you realize you hated your initial composition and want to go back and change it. I left this turned off, but if you're just learning how to compose photos and you want more flexibility, it could be a good learning tool.

I wanted the donuts in the center of the frame, but the translucent effect in the viewfinder threw off my composition. Yes, this is the second shot of donuts in this iPhone 11 Pro camera review. (Stan Horaczek/)

Once you actually select the super-wide lens, you’ll likely find a scene that you find “striking.” At a 13mm equivalent, you can capture the entirety of a skyline and a massive field of clouds above it. Or, you can cram the entirety of a scene—especially a small one—into a single picture without having to take multiple images or make a panorama.

The photo is, generally, a little underexposed because of how much space the bright sky takes up, but it does look "striking" as promised. The distortion at the bottom of the frame has compressed and elongated the human. I'd correct that with software before considering it finished and posting it. (Stan Horaczek/)

In general, I love having it as an option. Yeah, it’s wider than the standard lens, but it also makes objects in the frame appear to have more distance between them. So, when you’re trying to show how large and crowded a farmer’s market is, it makes a huge difference beyond the angle of view.

You need to pay attention to the edges and and corners more with the super-wide to make sure you don't end up with big, distracting dead spaces in the photos. The effect can be worth the extra effort. (Stan Horaczek/)

The same goes for nature and landscape photos. I couldn’t get this whole tree and the trademark landscape from Thacher Park in Upstate New York in a single frame with the standard lens. The super-wide handled it with no problem, though.

Nature photos look dramatic on the wide camera. In this shot, the HDR effect is going a little crazy and making things look a little unnatural (especially around the orange horizon). Still, it's a shot that would be practically impossible without the extra-wide camera. (Stan Horaczek/)

With that width, however, comes distortion—and the iPhone 11 Pro works too hard to correct it. Here’s a picture of a metal gate in which all the slats were relatively straight. You can see the distortion poking in, especially at the edges.

The lines on this gate were straight in real life. The super-wide camera adds distortion. (Stan Horaczek/)

You’ll also notice it in the photo above that includes a skyline—the buildings lean hard toward the center of the frame. The app does warn you though if you put a person near the edge of the frame because it knows that the distortion will make them look stretched, squished, and bad in general.

It's not a great picture, but it's made worse by my stupid thumb in the corner. (Stan Horaczek/)

Another drawback that I'm somewhat to blame for: My finger got in the way in quite a few of my wide-angle shots when I tried to hold the phone normally. The lens is so wide that it will easily catch your digit intruding on the frame if you’re not careful. So, I switched to holding the iPhone by the top and bottom instead of from the sides like I used to. Another lesson learned.

If you want a similar effect without the smaller sensor issues, you can opt for an accessory lens like the Moment Wide Angle, which modifies the look of the lens on the main camera.

Portrait Mode

I still think there's too much selective sharpening in Portrait Mode, which can make hair and eyes look too sharp and unnatural. (Stan Horaczek/)

Portrait Mode has come a long way since its start and it's better on the iPhone 11 than it ever has been, at least in the Apple ecosystem. I've typically liked Google's treatment of the fake blur on the Pixel camera slightly better because it looks more natural to me. The 11 Pro, however, seems considerably quicker than pretty much any portrait mode I've used when it comes to finding focus and taking the picture.

The blur can still look unnatural if you shoot something too complicated—I used it on a picture of some horse sculpture made of sticks and it created a real mess—but Portrait Mode is still very solid for headshots. The selective sharpening can get overbearing since it looks for specific elements like hair in an image. The beard hair in the selfie I took above has too much detail for my taste. A little blur can really help someone like me look more appealing in a photo.

I'm generally not much of a fan of the lighting effects, but that's mostly personal snobbery. The Natural light effect flattens the light too much for me, which makes for a very odd contrast against the over-sharpened features. The rest of them still feel like novelties to me, though they are improving. Still, if you want a black-and-white version of your photo, I think you're better off converting it in an app like Filmborn or Lightroom later. Or just slap an Instagram filter on it.

Lens flare

The lenses on the 11 Pro are obviously larger than those in the XS Pro. Larger lenses typically increase image quality, and that’s generally the case here, but I noticed way more lens flare with this model. Some of it is pretty gnarly.

Note the bar of lens flare on the graphics from the sign. (Stan Horaczek/)

The above photo shows one of the worst instances from my test run. The bright sign in the back is a digital screen. It’s a commonplace for tourists in my area to take photos because the historic theater often hosts big Broadway shows and national acts. You can see in the photo that a flipped image of what appeared on the screen appears as a ghost in the image itself. This typically happens when photographers put a filter of the front of their lens; the light hits the front glass of the lens itself, bounces back into the filter, and an inverted reflection shows up in the picture. You can typically fight it by removing the filter, but that’s not an option with the iPhone.

The front glass on the iPhone 11 Pro cameras do a great job protecting the lenses, but they seem to flare a ton. Even when it’s not as bad as the theater sign, it’s easy to catch a bright light in the frame that sends weird elements shooting across the picture.

The lens flare on the wide camera is pronounced, too. (Stan Horaczek/)

Some people like lens flare. J.J. Abrams has made a whole aesthetic out of it. But there are some major negatives to the distortion. First, flare reduces overall contrast in parts of your photo. Second, the flare itself illustrates a lens quirk that users typically don’t see called "onion ring bokeh"—an effect that stems from the aspherical lens elements inside the lens. It also occurs in standalone cameras, especially on lenses that try to cram a lot of glass and refractive power into a small body. You can recognize it by looking in the flare or the out-of-focus highlights in a photo for rings inside the blurry blobs.

You don't get to see the iPhone's true bokeh very often. (Stan Horaczek/)

You typically don’t see the iPhone camera’s real bokeh because the lenses are wide and the sensors are small, which downplays the amount of natural blur and allows the hardware to add its own effect with Portrait Mode. If you want to see it for yourself, however, a scene like this dewy grass in morning light illustrates it perfectly. Focusing the lens super close and providing lots of bright details causes all those little onion rings to pop out of the scene. Maybe you wouldn’t notice it, but once you do, it’s always there (almost like an eye floater). In the iPhone 11 Pro, it shows up more in the flare as well.

On top of the onion rings, I’ve noticed some other weird flare effects. This basic picture shot with the ultra-wide camera in a mall parking lot has a flare with decidedly red, green, and blue streaks. And if you don’t wipe the lenses off regularly before taking a picture, you can expect considerable haze over the images (but you should be wiping your camera lens regularly anyway).

I don’t think this flare is a huge issue or a deal-breaker, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind as you’re shooting with the iPhone 11 Pro.

The verdict

As I said at the start, I think the 11 Pro camera is the best smartphone camera package around at the moment. If you’re expecting it to compete with a dedicated camera, though, that’s still not the case, especially because it makes photos still look Apple-y. Of course, with software updates that may change. I wholeheartedly think the new camera is better than the iPhone XS, which really seemed to overdo it on the HDR effect that sometimes made people look orange and high-contrast situations look like a video game. But, under many lighting conditions, you probably won't notice an enormous difference (barring Night Mode).

The iPhone 11 Pro is on the left and the XS is on the right. Both of these floral scenes are full of contrast, texture, and red tones, all of which are tricky for digital cameras. (Stan Horaczek/)

The iPhone 11 Pro photos look better than the iPhone XS photos overall, and the flexibility of the super-wide angle lens makes it a very substantial upgrade. But it’s not a revolution.

Those frizzy hairs did not need that extra sharpening. (Stan Horaczek/)

You'll also have to accept some minor quirks. For instance, the iPhone camera reportedly increases sharpening on hair, including facial hair. The effect accentuates frizzy flyaways and makes details look too sharp. It sounds weird given that sharpness is typically a good feature in photos, but tell that to the weird artifacts that become painfully obvious in the final captures.

Even as you adjust the exposure settings in the iPhone camera app, the brightness of certain elements will change, while others won't really budge. So, if you're taking a picture of natural scenery in front of a blue sky, raising or lowering the exposure will make the greenery brighter or darker, though the sky will stay a very similar shade of blue that's hard to blow out, even if you try. The iPhone camera knows what's in the scene and is trying to maximize your chances of taking a good photo, even when you kind of want to take a bad one.

What's next?

Have you heard about the specter of Apple tech called Deep Fusion reportedly coming later this Fall? The AI-powered software will reportedly change the iPhone's photo and video performance drastically again. And it won't stop there. Once you learn to shoot with an iPhone camera, there's a good chance you're going to need to learn it all over again in a generation or two. Or you could just accept the iPhone's suggestions and shoot like it wants you to. It makes life a lot easier—and technicolored.

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[theinvinciblenoob]

Shortly after announcing the Home Hub, a Google exec told me the timing was simply about “getting the product right.” Still, it’s curious launching your own entry in the space more than half a year after a trio of hardware partners debuted their own.

It’s easy enough to give the company the benefit of the doubt when you consider all of the variables in a nascent tech category that’s been around since, well, last summer. Amazon won the first to market prize with the Echo Show. It was a big, clunky thing, constructed from budget hardware — but it demonstrated the possibilities of adding a display to smart speaker.

The Echo Show 2 refined the concept, with a more thoughtful design and improved hardware, while a trio of devices from LG, JBL and Lenovo offered a glimpse at what Google Assistant could bring to the table. The Home Hub, announced a few weeks back (alongside a slew of hardware from the company), attempts to deliver that in the hardware sweet spot.

The smart screen sweet spot is, of course, a wholly subjective thing, depending on personal preferences and individual needs. It seems entirely plausible that next year will bring a Home Hub Max, but for now, Google’s settled on a seven-inch display. That puts the product in between the Echo Spot (2.5) and new Show (10-inch). But in spite of sporting the same screen size as the first-gen Show, Google’s managed to keep things compact.

I’ve seen the “ it’s just a tablet” criticism levied against the category by several angry/bored commenters. Google apparently said “screw it” and leaned in. The company insists that all of the tech was built from scratch here, but at first glance, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re looking at an OEM-ed Android tablet mounted on top of a speaker.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it, at first. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting from the Home Hub. I’ve grown to like it, though. From the front, it looks a bit like a tablet floating an inch above the table, mounted at a ~ a 25 to 30 angle. The design implies a future upgrade sporting a swiveling screen with an adjustable viewing angle, but as it stands, It’s small but bright and easily spotted across the room.

The speaker stand is fully covered in in fabric, in keeping with the longstanding aesthetic of the Home line, which has since found its way into the latest generation of Echo devices. Unlike other Home products, the device doesn’t exactly blend in with its surroundings any more than your tablet of smartphone. That said, the wide range of optional screen savers offers a generally more pleasant appearance when not in use, ranging from an AI-curated selection of your Google Photos to fine art to Earth and space shots from NASA. I’m partial to the Earth images myself.

The digital picture frame didn’t die, exactly. It simply disappeared for a bit, only to return as something far more useful.

The bezel is fairly sizable, owning, in part, to the light sensor and far field microphones up top. The display is 1024 x 600, as initially suspected — confirmed, oddly enough, by this tweet. We’re not talking top of the line hardware here, but it’s certainly up to serve as a playback portal for YouTube videos. And honestly, given the size, you’re probably not going to want to watch anything much longer than that.

Hi there, we saw your tweet and wanted to help. Google Home Hub screen has a 1024 x 600 resolution rate.

— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) October 12, 2018

The absence of a camera is a bit of a curiosity in the broader context of the smart screen category. That goes double after Facebook’s recent introduction of Portal, which basically exists for that reason alone. Here’s the Google’s official line on the decision, courtesy of a blog post from VP, Diya Jolly, “We consciously decided to not include a camera on Google Home Hub, so you feel comfortable placing it in the private spaces of your home, like the bedroom.”

It’s a good line, certainly. And given how many of these things are destined to end up bedside, as a sort of smart alarm clock, coupled with general concern over Google’s core business of collecting data, that will likely give potential buyers some peace of mind. Nipping those privacy concerns from the electric taping webcam contingent in the bud was likely a driver here. The lack of webcam also also no doubt helped keep the price down.

Either way, the inability to video chat may well be a dealbreaker for some, given what a core feature it is on Amazon and Facebook products. If there’s enough of a user outcry for the feature, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company ultimately reverses course. A camera and no camera SKU seems like a pretty solid way to please everyone.

That said, you can still use the built-in mics to call folks on your contact list or “Broadcast” messages to other Home devices on your network, as a kind of makeshift intercom system.

As for the microphone, there’s a physical switch on the rear of the device, which is easily accessed without having to turn the device around. When flipped, Assistant lets you know, “the mic’s off,” along with an icon that flashes on screen. A small red light also appears next to the light sensor up top. I’ve spoken to hardware designers who’ve debated the best way to acknowledge this, given the fact that, on many cameras, the red light signals recording. Practically all have landed in the same camp as Google here, however.

The other physical button is a volume rocker, located on the left rear of the device. You can also tell the Assistant to turn down the volume for you, but the inclusion of buttons is a nice touch for easy access when the display is nearby.

The speaker is actually the cleverest bit of Google’s design here. Compare it to the new Echo Show, whose speaker surface faces the wrong direction, requiring that the product be positioned around six inches from a wall, in order to get the best sound. Or there’s the Lenovo Smart Display, whose front-facing speaker significantly increases its surface area.

With the Home Hub, a majority of the speaker still faces back, but the raised display affords the ability to blast some of that sound forward. As for sound, it’s about what you’d expect on a product in this class. Like the screen itself, it’s perfectly fine for short videos or casual music listening. I wouldn’t, however, rely on it as my primary home speaker. The Home Max, among others, does a much better job.

There’s no auxiliary out port here, either, which is something I like to see on smaller speakers. That said, Google long ago built in the simple, “Hey Google, connect to bluetooth feature,” which searches for and connects to paired devices. It’s something I use regularly to connect my laptop to the Google Max — and a feature Amazon still hasn’t added at last check.

If you’ve got multiple Google speakers set up, the easiest way to switch between them without missing a beat is through the Home app. Otherwise things can get a bit confused. Pairing them into a single group (such as Living Room), meanwhile, will break the speakers up into stereo channels, offering a fuller version of the music, from either side of the room.

It’s a nice effect, especially when paired with the Hub’s display for a visual dimension. There are still some kinks to work out here, however. For example, when I said, “hey Google, volume down,” only one speaker responded. It would be great if the system assured both sides were operating at the same level.

The Home Hub is, of course, voice first. Given its size and shape, however, it ought come as little surprise that there’s plenty you can still accomplish via touch. At any point, for example, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access brightness, volume and settings. Swipe down from the top and you get access to Broadcast and all of the home devices you’ve connected.

This control panel is one the Home Hub’s killer app. Broken down into different categories like lights and cameras (no action), the interface serves as a one stop shop for monitoring and controlling all manner of different settings on connected devices. Google’s embrace of touch controls are really what make this work, with the product serving as a kind of holy grail for home control, similar to what Apple’s been working on with its own Home app.

The device should connect quickly with all Made By or Works With Google devices. It’s a nice list, though the lack of an actual smart home hub is glaring — it’s right there in the name, in fact. The addition of Zigbee functionality was a pretty central upgrade in the last Echo Show. Google, on the other hand, is more focused on building its own ecosystem of products, as evidenced by the recent addition of GE smart bulbs that connect to Home devices via Bluetooth .

It will be a nice system when enough products have jumped on board. For now, however, the company has limited its device ecosystem a bit. That said, Google’s own device ecosystem is pretty robust at this point, between Nest devices and, of course, the Chromecast, which lets you stream video directly to the hub and control content from HBO NOW, CBS All Access, Starz and Viki via voice.

There are two more killer apps that require mention here. The first, YouTube, was already highlighted above. But Google owning the world’s largest video hosting service is pretty huge. There’s a reason it’s been the centerpiece of an on-going tug of war between Amazon and Google — not the mention the fact that Amazon’s reportedly been working on its response to the service.

The Echo’s browser-based workaround just isn’t the same. These things were built for YouTube.

The other is the depth of Assistant’s knowledge base. Google had a tremendous amount of search, context and machine learning here. And as a whole, its offering just feels smarter than Alexa. There are also nice little touches to to the interface that borrow design language from Gmail, Android and other Google properties. For example, when you open your calendar, you get a slew of dialogue boxes:

Add an Event to My Calendar

What’s My Next Meeting

Show My Agenda for Tomorrow

Set an Alarm

Set a Reminder

Tap one, and you can add listings with your voice. It’s one of the best on-board examples of how the touch and voice functions work in tandem.

The Home Hub, like so many of Google’s hardware devices, is the culmination of years worth of software advantages. Here, they all come together in a nice, compact package, which, at $149 undercuts the competition pretty dramatically.

There are still a number of kinks to work out and some features the company ought to mull over for generation two. But on a whole, it’s a strong first entry for Google in the smart screen space, and one that’s mostly worth the wait.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Google Home Hub review

Shortly after announcing the Home Hub, a Google exec told me the timing was simply about “getting the product right.” Still, it’s curious launching your own entry in the space more than half a year after a trio of hardware partners debuted their own.

It’s easy enough to give the company the benefit of the doubt when you consider all of the variables in a nascent tech category that’s been around since, well, last summer. Amazon won the first to market prize with the Echo Show. It was a big, clunky thing, constructed from budget hardware — but it demonstrated the possibilities of adding a display to smart speaker.

The Echo Show 2 refined the concept, with a more thoughtful design and improved hardware, while a trio of devices from LG, JBL and Lenovo offered a glimpse at what Google Assistant could bring to the table. The Home Hub, announced a few weeks back (alongside a slew of hardware from the company), attempts to deliver that in the hardware sweet spot.

The smart screen sweet spot is, of course, a wholly subjective thing, depending on personal preferences and individual needs. It seems entirely plausible that next year will bring a Home Hub Max, but for now, Google’s settled on a seven-inch display. That puts the product in between the Echo Spot (2.5) and new Show (10-inch). But in spite of sporting the same screen size as the first-gen Show, Google’s managed to keep things compact.

I’ve seen the “ it’s just a tablet” criticism levied against the category by several angry/bored commenters. Google apparently said “screw it” and leaned in. The company insists that all of the tech was built from scratch here, but at first glance, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re looking at an OEM-ed Android tablet mounted on top of a speaker.

I wasn’t sure what to make of it, at first. It certainly wasn’t what I was expecting from the Home Hub. I’ve grown to like it, though. From the front, it looks a bit like a tablet floating an inch above the table, mounted at a ~ a 25 to 30 angle. The design implies a future upgrade sporting a swiveling screen with an adjustable viewing angle, but as it stands, It’s small but bright and easily spotted across the room.

The speaker stand is fully covered in in fabric, in keeping with the longstanding aesthetic of the Home line, which has since found its way into the latest generation of Echo devices. Unlike other Home products, the device doesn’t exactly blend in with its surroundings any more than your tablet of smartphone. That said, the wide range of optional screen savers offers a generally more pleasant appearance when not in use, ranging from an AI-curated selection of your Google Photos to fine art to Earth and space shots from NASA. I’m partial to the Earth images myself.

The digital picture frame didn’t die, exactly. It simply disappeared for a bit, only to return as something far more useful.

The bezel is fairly sizable, owning, in part, to the light sensor and far field microphones up top. The display is 1024 x 600, as initially suspected — confirmed, oddly enough, by this tweet. We’re not talking top of the line hardware here, but it’s certainly up to serve as a playback portal for YouTube videos. And honestly, given the size, you’re probably not going to want to watch anything much longer than that.

Hi there, we saw your tweet and wanted to help. Google Home Hub screen has a 1024 x 600 resolution rate.

— Made by Google (@madebygoogle) October 12, 2018

The absence of a camera is a bit of a curiosity in the broader context of the smart screen category. That goes double after Facebook’s recent introduction of Portal, which basically exists for that reason alone. Here’s the Google’s official line on the decision, courtesy of a blog post from VP, Diya Jolly, “We consciously decided to not include a camera on Google Home Hub, so you feel comfortable placing it in the private spaces of your home, like the bedroom.”

It’s a good line, certainly. And given home many of these things are destined to end up bedside, as a sort of smart alarm clock, coupled with general concern over Google’s core business of collecting data, that will likely give potential buyers some peace of mind. Nipping those privacy concerns from the electric taping webcam contingent in the bud was likely a driver here. The lack of webcam also also no doubt helped keep the price down.

Either way, the inability to video chat may well be a dealbreaker for some, given what a core feature it is on Amazon and Facebook products. If there’s enough of a user outcry for the feature, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if the company ultimately reverses course. A camera and no camera SKU seems like a pretty solid way to please everyone.

That said, you can still use the built-in mics to call folks on your contact list or “Broadcast” messages to other Home devices on your network, as a kind of makeshift intercom system.

As for the microphone, there’s a physical switch on the rear of the device, which is easily accessed without having to turn the device around. When flipped, Assistant lets you know, “the mic’s off,” along with an icon that flashes on screen. A small red light also appears next to the light sensor up top. I’ve spoken to hardware designers who’ve debated the best way to acknowledge this, given the fact that, on many cameras, the red light signals recording. Practically all have landed in the same camp as Google here, however.

The other physical button is a volume rocker, located on the left rear of the device. You can also tell the Assistant to turn down the volume for you, but the inclusion of buttons is a nice touch for easy access when the display is nearby.

The speaker is actually the cleverest bit of Google’s design here. Compare it to the new Echo Show, whose speaker surface faces the wrong direction, requiring that the product be positioned around six inches from a wall, in order to get the best sound. Or there’s the Lenovo Smart Display, whose front-facing speaker significantly increases its surface area.

With the Home Hub, a majority of the speaker still faces back, but the raised display affords the ability to blast some of that sound forward. As for sound, it’s about what you’d expect on a product in this class. Like the screen itself, it’s perfectly fine for short videos or casual music listening. I wouldn’t, however, rely on it as my primary home speaker. The Home Max, among others, does a much better job.

There’s no auxiliary out port here, either, which is something I like to see on smaller speakers. That said, Google long ago built in the simple, “Hey Google, connect to bluetooth feature,” which searches for and connects to paired devices. It’s something I use regularly to connect my laptop to the Google Max — and a feature Amazon still hasn’t added at last check.

If you’ve got multiple Google speakers set up, the easiest way to switch between them without missing a beat is through the Home app. Otherwise things can get a bit confused. Pairing them into a single group (such as Living Room), meanwhile, will break the speakers up into stereo channels, offering a fuller version of the music, from either side of the room.

It’s a nice effect, especially when paired with the Hub’s display for a visual dimension. There are still some kinks to work out here, however. For example, when I said, “hey Google, volume down,” only one speaker responded. It would be great if the system assured both sides were operating at the same level.

The Home Hub is, of course, voice first. Given its size and shape, however, it ought come as little surprise that there’s plenty you can still accomplish via touch. At any point, for example, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access brightness, volume and settings. Swipe down from the top and you get access to Broadcast and all of the home devices you’ve connected.

This control panel is one the Home Hub’s killer app. Broken down into different categories like lights and cameras (no action), the interface serves as a one stop shop for monitoring and controlling all manner of different settings on connected devices. Google’s embrace of touch controls are really what make this work, with the product serving as a kind of holy grail for home control, similar to what Apple’s been working on with its own Home app.

The device should connect quickly with all Made By or Works With Google devices. It’s a nice list, though the lack of an actual smart home hub is glaring — it’s right there in the name, in fact. The addition of Zigbee functionality was a pretty central upgrade in the last Echo Show. Google, on the other hand, is more focused on building its own ecosystem of products, as evidenced by the recent addition of GE smart bulbs that connect to Home devices via Bluetooth .

It will be a nice system when enough products have jumped on board. For now, however, the company has limited its device ecosystem a bit. That said, Google’s own device ecosystem is pretty robust at this point, between Nest devices and, of course, the Chromecast, which lets you stream video directly to the hub and control content from HBO NOW, CBS All Access, Starz and Viki via voice.

There are two more killer apps that require mention here. The first, YouTube, was already highlighted above. But Google owning the world’s largest video hosting service is pretty huge. There’s a reason it’s been the centerpiece of an on-going tug of war between Amazon and Google — not the mention the fact that Amazon’s reportedly been working on its response to the service.

The Echo’s browser-based workaround just isn’t the same. These things were built for YouTube.

The other is the depth of Assistant’s knowledge base. Google had a tremendous amount of search, context and machine learning here. And as a whole, its offering just feels smarter than Alexa. There are also nice little touches to to the interface that borrow design language from Gmail, Android and other Google properties. For example, when you open your calendar, you get a slew of dialogue boxes:

Add an Event to My Calendar

What’s My Next Meeting

Show My Agenda for Tomorrow

Set an Alarm

Set a Reminder

Tap one, and you can add listings with your voice. It’s one of the best on-board examples of how the touch and voice functions work in tandem.

The Home Hub, like so many of Google’s hardware devices, is the culmination of years worth of software advantages. Here, they all come together in a nice, compact package, which, at $149 undercuts the competition pretty dramatically.

There are still a number of kinks to work out and some features the company ought to mull over for generation two. But on a whole, it’s a strong first entry for Google in the smart screen space, and one that’s mostly worth the wait.

Via Brian Heater https://techcrunch.com

[gesteckt1]

Dell Inspiron 1370 Battery all-laptopbattery.com

The XPS 13 performs valiantly, pushing just over nine hours of playback before dying. Unfortunately, the XPS 15 easily bests it with just over 14 hours of 4K video playback.How is it possible for a higher-performance (and theoretically power-hungrier) laptop to win this fight? The most obvious reason is the battery size: the XPS 15 has nearly twice the battery capacity, at 96Wh vs. the 51Wh fuel tank in the XPS 13. Even though the XPS 15 has demanding CPU, RAM, and graphics components to feed, video is usually handled by the integrated graphics cores in the CPU. For the most part, the high-performance parts are kicking back and playing dominoes.

Certainly playing a game or a video encode, or anything that works the GPU or CPU cores hard will drain the battery faster, but video playback is actually among the easiest chores a laptop can do today.You know why there are nine Supreme Court justices? To avoid splits like this. Even though we didn't intend for this to end in a tie, it's exactly what we have. In the end, your personal needs will guide you. If you're looking for dominant performance and bang for the buck, the XPS 15 is the one to get. If you value portability and can "settle" for good performance, the XPS 13 is the go-to unit.GARY — Police released surveillance photos Monday of several people suspected of breaking into Gary Middle College on Sept. 4 and stealing 20 laptop computers.The men broke out a glass window on a rear door at the school, 4030 W. Fifth Ave., the evening of Sept. 4, police said.

School staff boarded up the window and hole, but the suspects returned and removed 20 laptops using a cart from the school.A camera captured images of two of the four suspects, police said. One of the men might have worn a jacket with a logo from Clark High School in Hammond. FOR THOSE DIGGING the convertible notebook concept, solid choices abound. HP’s Spectre x360 has been at the top of the heap for a while, neck and neck with the Microsoft Surface Book. As it goes with these things, HP has updated the x360 to keep with the times and the competition. While it hasn’t reinvented the converti-wheel with this 2018 release, it has re-solidified its position at the top of the pack.

If you’re familiar with recent vintages of the x360, this version will look awfully familiar. It carries the same 360-degree convertible hinge to allow for use as a laptop, a slate tablet, and everything in between, plus a similar, all-business color scheme of slate gray and coppery metallics. (That’s "dark ash silver" for those in the know; two other colors are also available.) While the design has been lightly tweaked here and there, it’s a very close sibling to the 2017 model.While specs have been updated for 2018 components, my review unit was on the lower end of HP's configuration spectrum. That means a relatively slow 1.6GHz Core i5 processor. Also onboard were 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and screen with the resolution capped at 1920 x 1080 pixels. Those are largely entry-level specs today, but the new Spectre x360 still performed roughly on par with the beefed-up 2017 model on most of my benchmark tests—and bested it by a healthy margin on a few of the more up-to-the-moment graphics tests. Connectivity includes two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports (one is used for charging), a full size USB 3.1 port, and a microSD card reader. A tiny fingerprint scanner is built into the right side panel as well.

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The HP Pen (included with this model, but $51 if it goes missing) is an impressive active stylus with a significant weight to it. Designed to work with the Windows Ink ecosystem, it’s responsive and intuitive, though trying to write directly on the open screen in laptop mode results in the LCD bouncing a bit, which makes the stylus stutter across the display. Tablet mode works better when significant pen work is required.While the keyboard and touchpad are well designed and work without complaint, I did notice some springiness in the chassis beneath the center of the keyboard. This caused more bouncing when typing. If you’re heavy-handed with your keystrokes, this could be a nuisance, though I wouldn’t classify it as a huge problem.

If there’s one area where the x360 shined brightest, it’s in battery life. I complained about its limitations in this department last year. For 2018, HP has dramatically boosted life from a little over five hours to well over eight hours. That may be in part due to the device carrying a considerably dimmer screen than last year’s model, as well as the lower-end (and less power-hungry) specs, but either way it’s a welcome upgrade that puts HP at the top of the heap when it comes to unplugged longevity.All in all, HP hasn’t really rocked the boat here, turning in a 2.8-pound, 13-inch convertible that takes baby steps toward correcting its predecessor’s flaws while introducing only a couple of minor ones of its own. If you have a recent-model convertible, there’s not really a compelling need to upgrade today, but those moving up from a machine that’s more than two years old—or entering this category for the first time—should be quite satisfied with the x360 13.

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Let's face it, battery technology isn't experiencing any miracles in advancement. For years the PC industry has focused on gradually improving time away from the wall by cleverly stuffing larger batteries into our laptops, doubling down on power management tools and focusing on CPU and GPU efficiency. It's fair to say Intel has worked diligently to gradually improve CPU efficiency, so now its tackling enemy #1 of battery drain: the display.During a keynote at Computex in Taipei, Intel SVP Gregory Bryant announced Intel Low Power Display Technology, a potentially radical new approach to laptop displays that was co-developed with Sharp and Innolux. How radical? It's a one-watt LCD panel that could add up to 8 hours of battery life to an ultrabook or 2-in-1 laptop.

To prove its point, Intel brought my new favorite laptop -- a Dell XPS 13 -- onstage that was outfitted with the new display tech and showed that it could loop video for 25 hours. The existing XPS 13 is capable of "only" 15 hours of video playback under the very best circumstances using Intel's Core-i7 8550U and a 60 wH battery. That's looping video. It's technically possible that under lighter workloads (browsing, email, etc) the time away from the wall could exceed 25 hours.Note that it's unclear whether Intel retrofitted an existing XPS 13 with the 1W panel, or if this is a prototype. At any rate, users obviously won't be able to magically add this battery life-boosting technology to their existing systems. Laptop vendors will need to incorporate it into future designs, and of course the components inside will need to feature an Intel processor.

Crucially, Intel claims that users won't be able to distinguish any differences in brightness or resolution using Low Power Displays. Obviously claims like these and the 25-hour battery life demonstration will need to be put under a microscope using real-world scenarios, but there's no denying that a 1W display could do wonders for laptops, especially those already boasting efficient components and slimmer designs.As is the case at events like these, details were sparse. We'll have to wait and see what announcements follow, and if Intel's new display tech will have any impact on the price of future laptops. In any case, I'm excited about it.Stop me if this sounds familiar: you’re about to sit down with your laptop, but as soon as you open the lid, you’re instructed to plug in for power, as you only have about 5% battery left.Now you need to get the AC plug, find an outlet, and plan on being tethered to the wall for a while.Energy management has plagued portable computing since its inception, but thanks to more powerful batteries, newer processors, and smarter software, it's getting better all the time.

[coreymichaelsmithson]

An Imperfect Mirror

Pamela and I were rocketing through the big empty dark of southern Utah … a darkness broken only the moonlit silhouettes of the Wasatch Range … happily blasting Led Zeppelin and scaring off all the jackrabbits, when her gas warning blinked on. Over the last several hours of driving, the needle had been dropping too close to E for my comfort, but we hadn't encountered a single gas station for hundreds of miles. We had no choice but to press on. This wasn't a matter of forgetfulness; I'd made sure to fill up Pamela's tank before we climbed the twisting passes leading away from Bryce Canyon. But when the dreaded yellow symbol finally appeared, inevitable as a utility bill, we were still 69 miles from salvation, and running on reserves. We had no cell phone reception, no other traffic to speak of besides the occasional horn-blaring big rig, and nothing to assuage the feeling that we were in real trouble.

I tried to remember what to do in situations like this. Should we just try to coast through? We were, after all, in very hilly terrain, with lots of steep grades and long slopes … maybe we could just roll through most of the remainder? I tried to position myself behind trucks, following in their wakes to lessen our drag, but that didn't seem to make much difference. I put my hazards on whenever we climbed a hill, as I didn't dare give her too much gas, and I braked sparingly. But the yawning desert darkness remained, thick and menacing, and now it was being interrupted less frequently by porch lamps or distant feed lots or ... well ... anything. We were in the high desert now, the real deal, nothing but rocks and sagebrush and, presumably, the skeletons of stranded motorists.

Desperate, my thinking veered towards the magical. I prayed, I cursed, I bargained. I even changed the music I was playing, as if any particular genre or sound might tax Pamela's resources too heavily. "Nirvana? Nah … too intense. Gotta stay calm. Calm, calm, calm. WE'VE GOT TO STAY CALM. Sondheim? Too wordy. Nat King Cole? Perfect."

The moon rose from the horizon, looking sanguine and engorged. There were only a handful of hamlets on this stretch of road, and not a one of them offered gas. Town after town had "NO SERVICES" emblazoned on their exit signs. Assholes.

But somehow, by dumb luck or the grace of benevolent angels, we limped back into civilization. Just barely. We coasted into the gas station, sputtering as we arrived at the one vacant pump. I'm convinced that Pamela wouldn't have made it another fifty yards. It is a staggering miracle that we landed where we did, when we did. All of the tiny decisions I made (or didn't make) on the road, all of the accidental delays … like the open-range cattle plopping themselves on the highway, the recklessly leaping deer, the long traffic light, the occasional photo opportunity … everything came together so perfectly, like the tiny wheels of a fine watch, just so that Pamela would cough out within feet of a pump.

I shouldn't be so surprised, though. Utah has been challenging me with such suggestions of perfection, over and over again.

I had started out my day in a completely different but equally spare environment. After a stunning sunrise over the Bonneville Salt Flats, one of the weirdest ecosystems on our planet, I chugged down a bunch of bad gas station coffee and drove a considerable distance to reach Bryce Canyon, one of my biggest "bucket-list" items. Between the Great Salt Lake and the upper edge of America's Grand Staircase lie hundreds of miles of cattle ranges, broad mountain valleys, and abandoned mine shafts. When you see a car commercial … you know, the kind of commercial where throaty rock music and vaguely pornographic narration lends some machismo to a gas-guzzler, the kind with plenty of helicopter shots and acceleration, all for an SUV with the name of a desert town or a Native tribe … this is the landscape they're driving through. Long stretches of the road were almost cartoonishly perfect, with fluffy white clouds in the blue and just the right number of horses prancing across the sagebrush. I enjoyed some of the longest stretches of empty road I've ever seen, right up until I arrived at the touristy zoo of the park.

The dramatic forms of Bryce Canyon were formed by not only the usual suspects of wind and water, but also by the expansion of ice. Water seeps into existing fissures, and then it freezes, which helps to pry the cracks further open. This unrelenting freeze/thaw cycle acts as a giant chisel, whittling away the softer rock layers and leaving weird stacks of the hard stuff behind. The same thing happens over and over again: a protruding plateau gets weathered down into a fin, which is then undercut by a number of small holes, holes that slowly grow into windows and arches, and the lashing rain and howling winds continue to do their work, until eventually you're left with only a freestanding tower … a hoodoo. In this particular area, where the process seems to have been magically sped up, the collective results of all this sculpting are simply mind-blowing. Thousands of these pinnacles are clumped together, standing in such close proximity and order that they have the organized look of soldiers, or sentinels. Some of their forms seem architectural. With a little imagination, your mind transforms these shapes into the components of a fantastic castle: spires, turrets, crenellations, a portcullis.

As I stood at the rim, gazing down with absolute astonishment at the natural amphitheater, an elderly woman standing next to me whispered, reverently, "It's just so perfect." And she was right. The canyon feels like a living sculpture. Studying its spatial complexities, color palette, and fine balance of space and density, one might struggle to grasp how it's all just one big geological accident. It just looks so … designed.

Beyond the seeming perfection of the landscape, though, I was struck by the perfection of my arrival time. I had somehow managed to get there when the horde of tourists … pink noses and plastic visors and big woven purses and sunglasses with the stickers left on … had thinned down considerably, leaving me alone for long stretches on the rim trail. The weather could not have been more pleasant, not too hot and not too cold, but occupying that wonderful Goldilocks zone of "just right". The ratio of clouds to sunlight meant that my view was full of roving shadows and dazzling beams. I had rolled in just as the giant buses were rolling out, at the hour when the ponderosas provided some shade but the canyon remained brilliantly lit.

On the surface of things, my time at Bryce Canyon might seem utterly distinct from what I experienced earlier at Bonneville. It's hard to believe these two different environments could occupy the same planet, much less the same state. But their spiritual impacts were quite identical: first there was awe at the visual grandeur, and then there was a deepening appreciation for the forces at work, and then there was a profound gratitude for the timing of our arrival.

Let me take you back a little, to the night before.

The Bonneville Salt Flats, as the name suggests, is a broad, flat expanse of hardened salt, the compressed remnants of a long-evaporated inland sea. The crust of crystals is so thickly packed that it makes a surface durable enough to drive upon, even at high speeds; as a result, Bonneville has become a world-class destination for racing and speed trials. Many world records have been broken on this stretch, and many movies have been filmed before its fantastic backdrops.

For much of the summer, the flats are bone dry, swept clean by the winds coming down off of the Silver Island Range. Occasionally, though, some water collects on the surface. It's never much, maybe only two inches deep or so, but the whiteness of the salt, and the water sitting atop it, are enough to create the effect of a huge mirror. Throughout the day, the atmosphere and mountains are reflected, creating a spectacular symmetry at the horizon. As visitors wade across the shallow pool, this sight gets disrupted in a jarring way … everybody seems to be tiptoeing across the sky.

The flats are supervised by the Bureau of Land Management, which allows the public to visit and explore the region at will. It's a pretty sweet spot for camping, though everything you own will get encrusted with salt, and the brackish solution will totally rust out your vehicle's undercarriage if you don't promptly wash it out. The single road that leads onto the crust only goes about three miles or so, and then it kind of peters out. Everyone leaves their shoes behind at this threshold, and for good reason … take just a few mucky transitional steps beyond where the asphalt ends, and your feet are standing on the hard salt.

After a few hours of wandering about, I struck up a conversation with an angelically beautiful engineer from Illinois. He was traveling through the West, wandering at will, camping in his pimped-out van and filling his phone with neat pictures of national parks and monuments. Together, we decided to venture out a mile or so across the waste, watching the light change as the sun sank behind the mountain peaks. The salt crust was hell on our bare feet … really, just murder on our poor soles … but the water felt soothingly warm, the breeze remained refreshing, and the total scene was electrifying. A faint haze on the horizon, the fuzzy edges of which blended into the deepening blue of the water, got tinted the most delicate salmon pink by the sunset; it was so particular a hue, so subtle, that no photograph could ever do it justice. It was the kind of evening light that manages somehow to be both gentle and vivid, the kind of light that makes your eyes feel really alive. It cast a special mood over things. Our voices remained quiet, though our shared amazement rose. I was happy to share this walk with someone else.

This liquid mirror never remained entirely smooth. The wind would skim across the surface, creating lots of little chevrons and moirés. And as my new friend and I walked, and chatted, our ankles sent more ripples outward, ripples which encountered various small obstacles … pebbles, forgotten bits of tire tread, a rusty nail, irregularities in the salt surface … and then these got split into other, lesser waveforms, which in turn further fragmented the clouds and mountains. The crust would sometimes slough off a few flakes or clumps, which whirled and bumped each other like tiny rafts caught in opposing currents. But, somehow, all of these imperfections served only to heighten the sense of unreality, the surreal and dreamlike quality of it all. It felt like we were two bold explorers, traversing an alien landscape for the first time. We watched in awe as the twilight deepened, and the stars emerged, and then the moon, nearly full and orange as a pumpkin, rose above its shimmering counterpart. At one point, as the last of the sunlight dimmed behind the peaks, the color of the sky/water precisely matched the engineer's eyes, so much so that it seemed like he was of a piece with the environment, or that he was perhaps an embodiment of the experience itself. And it is this collection of odd details that I will remember most fondly from my hours at Bonneville … the smile of the stranger with sky-colored eyes, the unexpected flowering of friendship in a flowerless place, a shallow lake that twinned the moon and doubled the stars, a reflection with plenty of compelling flaws, an imperfect mirror, the essence of perfection.

[infotainmentplus-blog]

Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S Review: The luster remains See Also Shanghai through the lens of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S After the launch of its updated full-screen smartphone, Xiaomi invited us to take the Mi Mix 2 out for a packed day around Shanghai, China. This brand new device is admittedly an iterative upgrade to … Hot off the heels of Xiaomi announcing its IPO, we’re taking a look at the latest version of the company’s most unique smartphone offering. In a world full of notches and similar tweaks to the full screen experience, this mid-year update provides a worthy alternative, now with a dual camera setup. This is the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. During the final stages of our Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S review, Google and Xiaomi announced that the Mi Mix 2S is part of the Android P Beta Program! We are putting the new beta on the phone now and will report our experiences in a new piece soon. Design A side by side comparison to the original Mi Mix 2 makes it pretty clear what has been added — a second lens adds telephoto and portrait capabilities to the shooting experience. Aside from that, much of the phone is still the same, right down to the ceramic body. The sleek backing is separated from the full screen front by a metal frame and looks very sleek in this black version and striking in the white version. While the previous version had special editions with a unibody ceramic design, that is the not the case here. The ceramic backing is still one of the most unique and eye-catching materials of any smartphone and Xiaomi continues to use it. It can be a little slippery at first, but after some time the heft and potential smudges make it easier to keep a secure grip. A form fitting and minimalist black case that slips on perfectly is included in the box, providing easy and tactile access to the button layout. Ceramic has become a Xiaomi calling card, and it continues to make their devices shine. As before, there are no buttons on the front due to the full screen experience, but the usual offerings — a volume rocker with a power button below it — are all on the right. Jumping down to the bottom, the little bezel that remains allows for not only the front facing camera (yes, it is still bottom mounted) but also the USB-C charging port and a single bottom speaker. There is no headphone jack on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. This is still Xiaomi’s best design, and ceramic goes a long way to keep what is ultimately familiar still great to look at. Just like before, it’s hard not to like the phone. Display Part of that good design is owed to the phone’s full screen display. Of course, the compromises of the Mi Mix 2 return in this mid-season update. The 6 inch 18:9 display is still a Full HD+ display, but it renders elements quite well, mostly due to the MIUI’s tighter use of space. Colors look a bit muted compared to some of the saturated displays out there, but it didn’t take away from any form of usage — from media to gaming to work. More enjoyable viewing experiences are out there, but the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S is no slouch — after all, just look at how much screen you get, especially since nothing cuts into the panel. The Mi Mix 2S doesn't have a notch, but the bottom front facing camera might be its own form of annoyance. I wish that the display got brighter in broad daylight. Even cranking the brightness to max didn’t seem to help very much with the sun baring down. The auto-brightness was also a bit hit or miss. I had to go into the quick settings to bring up the level in situations where auto should have already done it. MIUI still crowdsources its features from its robust forum community, and its newest addition is a feature Apple introduced with the iPhone X: full screen gestures. If you really want to open up the whole screen, you can make the softkey bar go away and simply use swipes from the edges of the screen to either to back, go home, or bring up recent apps. Personally, I am not a fan of these kinds of gestures, but I got used to them after a little while. What is annoying about this shift in navigation is how it clashes with other functions. Watching Youtube in landscape orientation makes swiping up for related videos hard to do because it might trigger the MIUI home button instead. In other apps, swiping from the sides to go back could cut into Material Design menus which are supposed to come from the left side. Without a home button to press and hold, I had to find other ways to get to Google Assistant. To its credit, Xiaomi bucks the notch trend with the Mi Mix line. A number of other phone makers centered front facing cameras at the top their phones, usually by carving a notch in the center of the screen. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S keeps the front camera at the bottom, which is the only place where there’s any substantial bezel on the phone. This compromise is annoying on its own, so maybe the bottom bezel is just as bad an idea as the notch. Performance Where Xiaomi really gets things right is in the spec sheet, at least in terms of performance. The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S now sports the Snapdragon 845. The base model comes with 6GB of RAM and either 64 or 128GB of onboard storage. If you want to spend a little bit more, there is an 8GB RAM edition with a whopping 256GB of storage. This extra storage option softens the blow of having no microSD card slot, so heavy media or camera users have plenty of space to play with out of the box. I had no issues with any performance whatsoever. The phone worked just as fast as any current flagship phone should. A lot of media play took up the majority of my usage and I played a good amount of Fire Emblem Heroes without any stutters, issues, or problems. Even popping in and out of the camera was a smooth experience — if you recall the previous unit I was using had performance issues mainly with the camera — rest assured that my final review unit had accounted for all of that. Hardware This phone still has global bands, so it can be used anywhere outside of its core markets. There is little new to talk about with the hardware offerings, as the same connectivity bits and pieces from the original Mi Mix 2 remain. The phone speaker is noteworthy — it uses a small slit above the massive screen for a normal phone call experience instead of the bone conduction Xiaomi attempted in the very first Mi Mix. The phone also still uses the ultrasonic sensor to give the phone automatic screen deactivation when the device is near one’s face during calls. Where we took exception to the sound experience was with the speaker, which is still a single bottom mounted unit without any impressive tuning. Audio lacks body and is quiet compared to some of the far better experiences in competitors’ flagships. The Mix line already made it clear to its fanbase that the headphone jack is not a consideration, but it is still a sore point that an adapter is required for any wired headphones. Battery life is about the same between the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S and the Mi Mix 2. The Full HD+ resolution display helps the battery last a bit longer, it seems. In my somewhat heavy usage that was generally on Project Fi data and constantly playing either YouTube videos in the background or podcasts, the phone could easily get up to 5 hours of screen-on time, with a full work days of usage. Because of my typical level of usage, I did not get many instances of a day and a half but I am certain it is more than possible for more casual users. Xiaomi's own wireless charger is only $15! The phone now supports wireless charging, even with its ceramic backing. This is an exciting development not just for the phone specifically, but for the Mi ecosystem. After all, this facilitated the creation of a very affordable and simple wireless charging mat. It is priced at just 99 yuan (~$15) and supports pretty much any phone with wireless charging capabilities. It wouldn’t be surprising if this mat became as popular as other peripherals in Xiaomi’s catalog, like the Mi Band. Camera Aside from just adding a telephoto lens, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S also has a better sensor, which should lead to better overall quality. The main lens now has an f/1.8 aperture with pixels at 1.4 micron sizes. The zoom lens, on the other hand, is at f/2.4 aperture and has 1-micron sized pixels. Only the main shooter has OIS. Before we get into the main camera quality, let’s talk briefly about the front facing shooter and its positioning. This is the same placement as always, so I can’t add much on how inconvenient its location is. True, you can turn the phone over when in the main camera app and shoot selfies in a more conventional manner, but applications like Instagram would lead to upside down pictures. Of course, you can always take the pictures and import them into whatever platform you desire, but the bottom-mounted lens is still not good for live video or video calling. The pictures out of the front facing camera are decent but not particularly exciting. A depth effect mode can add background bokeh effects but it softens the overall photo. Activating this setting turns off HDR outright, however. The softening is also due to the beauty mode settings which are at a three (out of five) by default. Xiaomi’s beauty mode is still pretty aggressive — even my freckles disappeared from my face. No beauty mode Beauty mode 3/5 Beauty mode 5/5 The rear shooter provides the necessary tools for better portrait mode photos all around — namely, the telephoto lens. Using the two cameras together, the frame zooms in a little and is always detecting for a face. When it finds one it will add the depth effect to elements outside of the subject cutout. The cutout is still software based, which means the effect can sometimes mess up the lines. In terms of detail, the portrait mode shots are ultimately pleasing. The same can be said for most photos coming out of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S. You may recall a vlog and photo journal of my time in Shanghai, shot entirely through the lenses of the Mi Mix 2S preview unit. The software has been updated since then, with fixes primarily focused on the camera app performance. While those problems have been remedied, the picture quality is still mostly represented in those previous photos. I was very impressed with the photos from Shanghai and continue to enjoy the pictures I captured using the final software since then. When shooting on auto, colors come out looking good without overdoing the saturation. Dynamic range could be a little bit better even when HDR tries its best to compensate for an uneven scene. Video capture is pretty detailed when the exposure is dialed in properly, as you may have noticed in mainly the low light footage of the Shanghai skyline from my photo journal post. Audio could be much better, however, as plenty of my videos exhibited a lack of clarity. Normal AI Food Normal AI Building The camera’s last addition is the AI engine, denoted by a simple AI icon on the top. When activated, it cycles through different modes depending on what is in the viewfinder: Flower for flower, building for building, person for portrait, and so on. Except for that last one, where we wish the auto AI would change the mode over to Portrait automatically. AI pictures didn’t seem very different from normal ones in those instances. For food and flower situations, however, it seemed like the camera’s main priority was brightening up the frame and increasing the saturation. I hardly felt like the AI mode was doing much more than that in most cases, which makes me think some more work has to be done on the software development of their engine. Pictures out of the phone already look pretty good so you won’t need even toggle AI on. It was a decent first attempt by Xiaomi but it needs to be fleshed out more in the future. The AI engine seems to require a bit more work, but at least pictures in general look good so you don't have to turn it on. Software The crowdsourced Android skin MIUI essentially gave Xiaomi its start. It retains a lot of the same elements and features as before, from a quick ball for floating navigation keys, a complete “second space” where a fresh user space can be created, and no app drawer, which means a bit of work has to be done to make the homescreens look clean. A new homescreen has also appeared to the left, called the Guide. It is a little bit like the OnePlus Shelf which allows adding app shortcuts. One widget gives quick access to a note taking area. It is a simple but welcome addition that doesn’t try too hard to flood the user with information, though we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it turns out. There is plenty more in the software settings that users can tweak. We promptly put quite a few Xiaomi-installed applications into their own folder for a cleaner interface. MIUI can do a lot. A lot of old issues with localization have been fixed — every element seems further refined and easy on the eyes. MIUI still won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. As the operating system carrying the Xiaomi experience, it does a fine job on top of Android Oreo. Specifications Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S Display 6-inch IPS 2,160 x 1,080 (FHD+) 18:9 aspect ratio Processor 10nm, 64-bit, octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 GPU Adreno 630 RAM 6 or 8GB Storage 64, 128, or 256GB Cameras Rear: Dual cameras Primary: 12MP Sony IMX363, 1.4μm, and f/1.8 aperture Telephoto: 12MP Samsung S5K3M3, 1.0μm, and f/2.4 aperture Front: 5MP, 1.12μm, and f/2.0 aperture Battery 3,400mAh Non-removable Fast wired charging with Quick Charge 3.0 Qi wireless charging Network 4x4 MIMO Connectivity 43 global bands (8GB + 256GB model) Dual nano SIM 2.4/5G Wi-Fi Wi-Fi Direct Wi-Fi Display NFC Software Android 8.0 Oreo MIUI 9 Dimensions and weight 150.9 x 74.9 x 8.1mm 191g Colors Black, White Final Thoughts The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S is yet another high end phone from the Chinese company that’s yet to make its way to the west. Though Xiaomi is strong in India and slowly popping up in Europe, plans for the U.S. seem inevitable but continue to be an ongoing internal discussion. For those in the U.S. that really want to get their hands on the phone? Your best bet will be to import the phone, which goes for around 3,299 yuan (~$520) — a great price considering its nearly $1000 competitors. We hope it can maintain prices like that if and when it ever come to the West. For now, we can look at the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S as a sign that Xiaomi isn’t lounging around — it is doubling down on the full screen experience. Even if it is a bit rough around the edges, the Mi Mix 2S is a top Xiaomi phone and a top device in the Asian market. If you are looking to upgrade, the camera alone makes the move worth it. So that’s it for our Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S review. What do you think of Xiaomi’s latest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. , via Android Authority http://bit.ly/2pIzjmk

[lendoco]

Modern Finance Chain (MFX)

What Is Modern Finance Chain/MFChain? Modern Finance Chain is what MFChain stands for and it can be seen at the website of the same name with a .org at the end. The platform is designed to bridge the massive gap occurring between the merchants and the consumers plus a public blockchain technology smart contract platform. You can watch a lengthy video on the company website with more information on the platform plus you can also read a detailed whitepaper explaining the business model that goes into even more detail than you’ll learn in this review.

How Does MFChain Work? The digital economy is where consumers can buy more goods and services with any cryptocurrency they currently own in their possession. And they can use it at any number of their favorite merchants. This is a place of people who have visions that are gamechangers, not only that – but its where the visionaries and gamechangers can meet each other and collaborate their ideas to bring them to the light of day. And then eventually launch their innovative new ideas to distribute them as applications across the digital world that is highly dependent on trustless transactions in any type of currency they see fit to choose.

The platform is also where any developers who are international can get full support in a multitude of different languages, that have a capability and library of different smart contracts. Each of them will be designed to help promote the fastest development and deployment. It’s an ecosystem that is designed to embrace each of the various blockchains in existence, so they can be accepted in one place as a type of cryptocurrency/blockchain utopia.

Modern Finance Chain is designed to help the world adopt to new cryptocurrencies as very real types of money and be seen as the same way they would traditional fiat currency. It’s a platform that will help the world transition into a new type of solution for payments and rewards program for vendors and consumers that make it simpler for them to embrace using digital cryptocurrencies for making payments on a daily basis.

The company has an even bigger vision that for finance that will create a system that has a multitude of features and is highly intelligent. More so, then any other system of its nature currently online. MF Mainnet will be fully integrated with the different types of blockchains on multiple levels as well as be able to be verified through a sequence of digital identification process that also work in conjunction with government related compliance when they are needed as well as user-controlled privacy features like not seen on other platforms.

The platform will also operate with multi-currencies for the purpose of ICOs on the platform. And allow them to be accepted under any number of ICO projects that need to use multiple currencies through a form of live token generation and events.

Multi-programming languages are used as well, some of them through the use of the most advanced smart contracts the world has seen, and they will be compliant with C++, C#. Java, Python, NodesJS & Solidity.

There are private blockchains as well, and they operate at a business enterprise level for corporations to use for the distribution of their code on uniquely run private chains. And to add to that, any cross-chain transactions without the of a centralized exchange platform will work through an atomic swap process with third party authority.

The smart contract library is also prebuilt and beneficial to all users. Along with the incubator the system has that is considered to be extremely innovative and provide the most intelligent minds with the resources they need to bring their marvelous ideas to life.

Modern Finance Chain MFX ICO Details There is about seven days until the private offer for the coin sale is live. The ICO has a soft cap of 4,500 ETH minimum funds needing to be raised. With a hard cap that is 33,000 ETH for the initial coin offering cap. The contribution cap on the ICO is a minimum of 0.1 ETH to get involved and a maximum of 200 ETH for investors.

There’s a private offer of 2500 ETH with 28 million tokens for allocation. And the presale will have an available 5000 ETH with 36 million tokens for allocation. And the ICO is a total 24500 with 237 million tokens for allocation.

The bonus schedule is 10% bonuses for investors who contribute 10 – 24 Ether. Those who contribute 15-25 will get a 15% bonus of tokens and anyone who contributes 100 Ether or more will get a 20% bonus.

The tokens will be allocated with 8% going to developers and advisors, being unlocked in the second quarter of 2019. The rewards pool will get 16% and that also goes into the incentive program as well. There is a total supply of 512 million tokens to make a note for yourself. As for the rest of the allocated tokens, the presale of the tokens is 57% or 301 million of the maximum tokens available for the public purchase. Lastly, the innovations and marketing are 19% and tokens are locked to support for future development, operations and marketing purposes.

There is even an ICO guarantee for the project as well. It’s a multi-signature escrow feature that will lock any allocated funds in the initial coin offering until certain specific conditions are met. The reason for this is that the methods will guarantee the contributors of the ICO will see the development milestones they need met, to be met before the project can move forward and coins are unlocked.

Basically, the team can’t spend any of the funds until the obligations they’ve made have been fulfilled in whole. 50% of the ICO funds are locked and 20% of them will be locked until the chain payment system for MF is completely developed and released. And the other 30% of the funds will remain locked until the release and deployment of the finalized system starts.

The escrow management system is handled via the blockchain directly by the MFX ICO smart contract built on the Ethereum blockchain. They are only distributed and locked according to the contract, and then live for each of the ICO contributions that have gone through transactions.

50% of the funds on the ICO will be used for the developed and promotion of the entire project once the ICO is finished. The other 50% of the capital that is raised is locked inside two different escrow wallets.

20% of the capital from the ICO will be locked until the release of the fully function MF payment chain platform. The escrow will require board approval before it can be released as well. The last 30% of the ICO funds are going to be locked until the entire release of the MF Chain Mainnet is completed. This also requires the approval of the board for the escrow to be released.

Lastly, the token airdrop is free for a limited time for anyone who is an early investor and contributor to the community. The airdrop will have a total supply of one million tokens.

Who Is Behind MFChain? The team is comprised of extremely high-level programmers and mathematicians, cryptocurrency specialists, cryptographers and people with PhDs as well as computer scientists. You can see a list of top team members on the website. And they are currently looking to expand their team. Whether you’re a developer, or advisor, if you have something you can contribute, you can contact the team via the website.

So, as of now there are eleven team mates listed on the company website. Each of the members has their name and title on the website. And if you highlight them you can see a full bio of each member. But there are no social media accounts you can see for any of the teammates, so there is no way to validate the authenticity of their experience or to tell if they are even real. And, some of the team photos are extremely low quality in resolution. Hopefully, there will be a way to further verify the team members in the future. Until then, everything about the site has to be taken with faith. And that is something I personally have a hard time doing with all the fraudulent ICOs that are currently appearing and disappearing in the industry.

Use your best discretion and perform more research before investing with the company. I recommend you attempt to contact them, so you can get more proof they are a valid company with actual team members. If they are open and transparent, they will heave no reason answering any questions or providing information and if they don’t, there is a very good chance they are a fraud.

Modern Finance Chain Conclusion The company website is very thorough, with a solid road map and lots of information. Verify the information given on the team mates and perform a little more research on the team and company before making major investments. Other than that, MFChain seams like they’re a good company to consider investing into. Lastly, the company cannot be invested into from the Unites States or China – this last piece of information would make me consider them a very high-risk investment, as these two countries have the strongest regulations with cryptocurrency to protect their citizens.

submitted by /u/pauliuchenia [link] [comments] Modern Finance Chain (MFX) published first on https://icoholder.tumblr.com/

[junker-town]

A day with Hornets assistant coach — and NBA lifer — Stephen Silas

See the intense work that goes into every game.

Stephen Silas, the associate head coach of the Charlotte Hornets, is the ultimate NBA lifer. He was literally born into the league in Boston, where his father Paul, a former NBA star and coach who spent more than 40 years in the league, was helping the Celtics win a pair of championships. Stephen can remember toddling around the Kingdome while his dad completed his playing career for the Sonics under Lenny Wilkens.

While born to a great player, Stephen has always considered himself the son of a coach. More than that, he wanted to be around his dad as much as possible, so he grew up going to practices in San Diego when Paul coached Donald Sterling’s Clippers. Later, he was a ballboy for the Knicks while his father was an assistant under Pat Riley.

Young Silas played games of HORSE on the Garden floor with Patrick Ewing’s son (little Patrick) and mopped sweat while Big Patrick was shooting free throws. He also learned an essential lesson in those years.

“Being on the sideline I knew I had to be quiet when Pat Riley was coaching,” Silas says. “Be seen and not heard was how I grew up.”

That may as well be the essential credo of assistant coaches everywhere. Do your work, stay on top of things, and keep out of the spotlight. Some teams go so far as to keep their assistants completely off limits. The Hornets are not one of them.

They’ve granted me access to Stephen while the team prepares for a mid-November game against the Celtics. I’ll be with him from shootaround through pregame and postgame, with a film session sandwiched in the middle, to document the largely opaque daily world of an NBA assistant coach.

His boss, Hornets head coach Steve Clifford, shrugged when I thanked him for agreeing to the project. He knows what it’s like to toil in anonymity. Silas, frankly, doesn’t need the extra publicity. He has interviewed for the head jobs in Charlotte and Houston and annually shows up on lists of up-and-coming coaching candidates.

If Silas is unknown to the general public, he’s practically family within the larger NBA ecosystem. He worked with the retired players’ association after graduating from Brown with a double major in sociology and management. Later, he cut his teeth as an advance scout working both the college and the pro circuit, where he first met Clifford almost 20 years ago.

When a job opened up on his father’s staff in 2000 with the Charlotte Hornets, friends suggested he hire his son. Paul wasn’t sure. Neither was Stephen, for that matter. Enough people convinced them it would be a good idea and Stephen had his first coaching job at the age of 27, then the youngest assistant in the league.

“To be Paul Silas’ son in the world of basketball wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to do right away, but it was a way in,” Stephen says. “Being my dad’s son has always been great. That’s one thing I’ve just had to deal with.”

Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

Paul Silas

Father and son stayed together through stops in both Charlotte and Cleveland. Stephen later worked with the Warriors under Don Nelson before returning to Charlotte in 2010, where he’s been ever since.

After almost two decades on the sidelines, the 44-year-old Stephen has outgrown his father’s shadow. His fellow coaches find him to be thorough and meticulous. Players respond enthusiastically to his even-keeled, yet demanding, approach.

“He’s always been around the game,” says Hornets forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who has worked with Silas since his rookie season. “He knows it inside and out. He coached my cousin in Cleveland, Dajuan Wagner. It’s like damn, feel me? He’s old, but he don’t look old.”

In a league that is trending toward more and more toward specialization, Silas’ coaching profile is broader and more diverse. He’s done offense with Nelson and defense with Clifford, two of the game’s great tacticians. He’s worked individually with guards, big men, and wings. He’s coached summer league.

“There isn’t much in the NBA that I haven’t done,” Silas says.

There also isn’t anyone he doesn’t know. As we chat following a practice session at Emerson College, Silas nods toward an Emerson coach. “That’s my guy,” he says. “We met at Dave Cowens’ camp.”

9:30 a.m. Shootaround

There’s something about the cold quiet of the morning shootaround that says it’s time to go to work. There are no frills to be had in this environment, least of all heat. The players and coaches arrive on buses in their workout gear, while the support staff stocks their locker room with uniforms and equipment.

After watching film, the Hornets hit the court at 10 a.m. for a 50-minute walkthrough, which, like all NBA walkthroughs, is closed to the media. There’s 25 minutes of offense and 25 minutes of defense. Everything is planned in advance.

“When I first started, shootaround would be literally, shoot around,” Silas says. “You go and play some shooting games, maybe walk through four plays. And that’s it. Everybody get on the bus and go.”

Things change. Under Clifford, the Hornets are known for preparation and attention to detail. Before they get to the Garden, the coaches will have gone through a thorough scouting report that was compiled by one of the assistants.

“Cliff is so detailed,” Silas says. “He’s got it down. If we have an opinion, we’ll give it to him. As the years have gone on he’s leaned on us a little more.”

When Clifford got the Hornets job four-and-a-half years ago, he didn’t even bother to interview Silas. He simply asked him if he’d like to stay on staff. As the number two man, Silas runs practices on occasion and takes the lead in game-planning. During games, he’s responsible for substitutions.

“He can do everything,” Clifford tells me. “It’s healthy for the team to not have to listen to the same voice 82 times. I have so much trust and he’s so thorough and knowledgeable in what he does that I’m never worried. The preparation is going to be as good or better.”

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Stephen Silas talks with Kemba Walker

That’s in addition to his other duties, which include working individually with the wing players. If Silas has a speciality, it’s player development — Clifford was immediately drawn to how Silas interacts with players.

A special education major in college, Clifford notes something a former professor had told him about teaching: “If you gain the right type of communication with your group they will try hard to meet your expectations,” Clifford says. “That’s what he’s very good at. He has a way to gain their respect and establish the right kind of credibility so they know he can help them. There’s nothing more important than that.”

Silas is perhaps best known by hardcore NBA aficionados for his work with a young Steph Curry. He taught Steph his two-basketball dribbling routine and he gets a chuckle when fans come to the arena early to watch Curry’s pregame workout. Their relationship has deep roots.

Silas had known Steph since he was a kid growing up in Charlotte. His niece and nephew went to the same school and Paul Silas had coached Dell Curry with the Hornets. They were both sons of former players and hit it off immediately. Curry would come over on off days and watch games or eat dinner. They’d go to church together or go to the gym and get up shots.

“He’s like the perfect student,” Silas says. “He listens all the time, asks great questions, challenges you a little. You can tell him something and he’ll get better right after you tell him. He stretches you, which was good for me as a coach.”

After the walkthrough is completed, everyone heads back to the bus for the short ride back to the hotel. Now it’s time to think about a future opponent, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

12:30 p.m. Film work

Still in his sweats from shootaround, Silas has a tablet setup on a stand next to his MacBook, where he’s watching film of Cleveland’s game against Houston. We’re in a suite on top floor of the Ritz, where the team is staying. Being the number two man has its perks.

Like most teams, the Hornets divide the scouting work, with each assistant taking 20 games. Silas has the lead for the Cavs, which consists of watching five games worth of film and compiling his notes into the scouting report that goes to Clifford. He’ll then go over the report with the head coach before they present it to the group.

In his early days, Silas would travel with a plastic bag full of VHS tapes. He once spent a lonely Saturday night in a Los Angeles Walmart looking for two VCRs so he could make his edit on the road. Now the team has its own software for watching film.

As with everything, there is a routine. Silas likes to watch two games back-to-back, which helps him recognize patterns. He never watches live so he can skip past commercials and free throws. He keeps the sound on because he can occasionally pick up a tidbit or two based on what they’re talking about on the broadcast.

Once he has his five games he’ll compile the scouting report, which sounds a lot cooler than it actually looks. The report is only a few pages long, but it’s crammed with offensive and defensive keys, matchups, and individual play sets. Silas and the other assistants draw the sets in black ink and make notes in red because Clifford prefers it to computer generated diagrams.

“Our game plans are pretty substantial,” Silas says.

Before he even gets to the video, Silas will have received an email from the team’s advance scout, Drew Perry, who sees each team live at least twice. Perry tracks all the play calls and forwards them to the team’s video department.

The video team then syncs them with the film so they appear on the bottom of the screen. They also catalogue them for the scouting report software they use where Silas makes his notes on the tablet. After watching games all the way through, he can jump back and forth between specific sets, individual personnel, or outcomes.

Perry will also send along a playbook consisting of diagrams as well as his own notes. Silas flips through the diagrams that run on for several pages detailing how the Cavaliers try to score: early offense, secondary offense, post-ups, corner, high posts, Hawk cuts, UCLA cuts, zippers, catch and shoot, loop action and spread, Princeton, dribble hand-off, step ups, horns, middle pick-and-roll, side pick-and-roll, side out of bounds, deep corner out of bounds, baseline out of bounds, ATOs, and crunch time plays.

It’s literally everything you could ever want to know about how the Cavs run their offense in every conceivable situation. Even for someone who consumes a ton of NBA basketball, the diagrams look like hieroglyphics. For coaches, they’re an unspoken method of communication.

“Drew is unbelievable,” Silas says. “He’ll do seven different options on double drag, which is just two picks in transition. It’s a little bit of overkill, but it’s better to have more than less.”

Advance scouts are the true information brokers in this league. They see everything from play calls to player reactions on the bench and in the huddle. Silas learned the art of scouting from his days doing advance work and it was an invaluable apprenticeship. He used to diagram everything. Now, he instantly recognizes actions and traces them back to the root.

“Slice 4 Pop,” he says as the Cavs run through a set. “A Kevin Love play. This is actually a play they used to run for Amar’e Stoudemire in Phoenix where the small will pin down on Kevin Love coming up to the top.”

On the screen, all of this happens in a few seconds. A guard runs toward the baseline to set a screen on Love’s defender that will allow Love to catch the ball about 18 feet from the basket near the top of the key. Within that set are variations, and within those variations are options if the play breaks down. Silas can diagnose all that in less than the time it takes to watch the full clip.

On defense, he’s looking for coverage patterns. Do they shoot the gap on a stagger screen or lock-and-trail? Do they get up in the passing lanes and deny everything or lay back and pack the paint? Always, he is looking for tendencies in pick-and-roll coverage. “That’s the nitty gritty of offense,” he says. “Try to get two guys to the ball.”

Despite all those tactical adjustments, there is a fairly consistent collection of sets and calls from team to team. The difference is philosophy, as well as personnel. Right on cue, as the Cavs bring the ball up in transition, LeBron James waits a half-beat and then hits a trailing Love for an open three at the top of the arc.

“Those transition threes,” Silas says, shaking his head. They will be an adjustment for Dwight Howard, a traditional center in a world that emphasizes speed and shooting.

“Dwight is programmed to run back to the rim,” Silas says. “But with the game changing and more spacing [for centers], he has to be conscious of staying up. So when I do my writeup it will talk about all those aspects. Kevin Love running into that trail three.”

When his film work is done, Silas will have a few hours to himself before heading back to the arena.

5 p.m. Arrive at the Garden

Before every road game Silas will catch a ride with forwards Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Treveon Graham 30 minutes before the first bus leaves from the hotel. Guards Jeremy Lamb and Malik Monk will arrive around the same time, and the next part of the workday will commence.

They are his guys and they run the gamut of experience levels and roles. They all need something different from their coach. Silas is responsible for them and takes ownership over good plays and bad ones. The bad ones linger. Maybe he could have found another clip or talked through a coverage one more time.

“You’re always thinking about your guys,” Silas says. “Every guy is completely different. You can’t approach it the same way. Some guys are better learners on the floor. Some guys need 20 clips, they want to see everything. Some guys want 10 of their good and 10 of their bad.”

Each player gets his own individual time with Silas for a pregame shooting routine and going through more film on the bench on a laptop. The order is set and never deviates.

Graham is up first. The 24-year-old from Virginia Commonwealth caught on as an undrafted free agent last season after a year in the D-League. Graham earned a role off the bench in the absence of Nicolas Batum, but he’s out with a thigh contusion. Coach and player sit on the bench and talk.

“For him, it’s, ‘Are you good? Is there anything you need a little more work on?”’ Silas says. “If it’s a veteran that’s not playing much they’re completely different than a young guy who’s not playing much. They have to know you have their best interests at heart and you understand what they’re going through. If a guy’s not playing much you can’t hammer them all the time because they’re going to hate coming to work every day.”

Kidd-Gilchrist, a low-maintenance defensive stalwart, takes the court next. He always gets exactly what he needs. No more. No less. Before a game against the Rockets, Silas sent him a clip defending James Harden. The next day Silas asked if he got the text and MKG nodded. Silas laughs. “I can’t get a thumbs up, or an OK, or a black fist or something?”

That’s MKG: quiet and dependable. They’ve been together for six years and their connection grows deeper every season. “He’s more than a coach, man,” MKG tells me after finishing his pregame routine. “He’s a friend. He’s a mentor.”

Lamb, a thrice-traded former lottery pick from Connecticut who is off to the best start of his career, is up next. His emergence as a starter in place of Batum has been one of the team’s positive developments. It’s early in the season, but Lamb appears to finally be achieving a breakthrough six years into his career. Then again, it’s not that early. He and Silas spent much of the summer working out in Charlotte.

“It was real this summer,” Silas says. “That’s a win. A good summer is a win and now he’s had 11 really good games. He’s super confident, he works, and is very conscientious.”

Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

Stephen Silas

Lamb always has to get shots up after practices and shootarounds. They hit the same areas of the floor day in and day out. Devising a routine and sticking with it has been an important part of his development. And he’s always asking for clips. Silas makes it a point to mix in positive plays so Lamb can leave the session feeling good about himself.

“When you do have a coach who cares about you and really likes to develop players and make people better that’s huge,” Lamb tells me. “You don’t always find that in the NBA. People always talk about how hard players work and stuff like that. At the end of the day, they never get a day off. He’s always texting me, ‘What time do you want to go tomorrow?’ Even when I’m late, he’s there. It’s great having a coach that believes in you but also pushes you.”

Because he is a rookie, Monk gets the final pick and winds up with the last shooting slot right as the arena countdown clock gets to 90 minutes. “He got the best time,” Silas says with a bemused look. “Go figure.” Silas has to bring Monk up to speed quickly but not overload with him with too much information. It’s a delicate balance.

“This is completely different than anything he’s ever seen before,” Silas says. “It has to be enough but not so much that they don’t tune you out, which I would have done when I was 19 and someone was showing 20 clips of pick-and-roll protection.”

Monk, who is already getting important rotation minutes, is full of boundless energy and enthusiasm. On our way off the court for a quick interview, he stops to sign an autograph and winds up signing for every person in the section. This is still new and fresh and he’s eager to please. I ask Monk if Silas ever loses patience with him.

“Never. Never. Never. He doesn’t get mad,” Monk says. “You make a mistake, he’s going to tell you and you learn from it. In the tone that he talks. No get mad, no get frustrated, nothing like that. Coach Clifford is the one that gets mad.”

After their workouts, there’s still more time for film and final prep. The crowd is starting to arrive and the Garden is coming to life.

Gametime 7:30 p.m.

The gameplan has been well established since early this morning. On offense, they want to run multiple actions to try and gain an advantage against the Celtics’ switching defense. Any possession that ends with one pass or or one screen is probably not a good possession. On defense, they want to keep the Celtics’ new star point guard Kyrie Irving out of the paint and off the three-point line.

The Hornets catch a break when it’s announced that Al Horford won’t play because he’s recovering from a concussion. That solves one issue since Horford is a mobile big man who takes opposing big men out to the perimeter, and the Hornets prefer to pack the paint. His replacement, Aron Baynes, also isn’t as likely to switch on pick-and-rolls. They catch another break when Irving crashes into Baynes and suffers a facial fracture less than two minutes into the game.

The first half goes according to plan. The Hornets limit transition and dare the C’s to beat them from the outside. The offense runs through multiple sequences and keeps turnovers to a minimum. Even though All-Star guard Kemba Walker struggles with his shot, he still hands out 10 assists in the first half as the Hornets build an 18-point lead.

They’re still up a dozen points going into the fourth quarter, but that’s when things fall apart. Walker is suddenly the only player who can score and the Celtics make an inspired comeback to extend their winning streak to 12 games. It’s a brutal loss for the Hornets, even more so because it’s their fourth straight defeat and they won’t play again for five days.

As I head down the tunnel to catch up with Silas, Celtics coach Brad Stevens pulls me aside and says the Hornets were as prepared as any team they’ve played this season. “Whatever we did, they were on it,” Stevens says.

I relay the complement to Silas, who grimaces. “Great,” he says. “What does that get us?”

The Hornets mood is forlorn, even angry. Coaches and support staff walk by sporting thousand-yard stares. It’s only November, but these setbacks hurt. I ask Silas how he deals with the losses. “Not well,” he says.

He’s got family waiting for him and he’d rather not deal with any of that right now. There are postgame duties to handle on the plane ride home, and he’s already thinking of clips to show his guys. The Cavs’ report is waiting to be finalized when he lands.

The bus is leaving for the airport in 10 minutes, and it occurs to Silas that they’ve been on the road for a week and a half. As he searches for something positive, he says, “It will be good to go home.”

[jeroldlockettus]

Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It?

Google spent nearly $5.4 million on lobbying in the second quarter of 2017. (Photo: Vladislav Reshetnyak/Pexels)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

Corporations and rich people donate billions to their favorite think tanks and foundations. Should we be grateful for their generosity — or suspicious of their motives?

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

I’m sure you’ve been hearing the ever-more-anguished calls to regulate the huge tech firms collectively known as GAFA: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.

Barry LYNN: These companies, these super-large platform monopolists, they have developed the capacity to manipulate us, to control us, to control the information that is delivered to us, to control the pricing at which products are delivered to us, to control us as producers.

The GAFA companies are far bigger, richer, and arguably more dominant than tech companies in the past. Google, for instance, has more than 80 percent of global search-engine market share. Facebook has nearly 2 billion monthly active users. Amazon has an estimated 90 million prime members in the U.S. — that’s something like 70 percent of all American households! It’s estimated that 40 percent of all online spending goes to Amazon. This kind of scale creates a lot of concern. We’ve examined this concern in previous episodes, like “Who Runs the Internet?” and “Is the Internet Being Ruined?”

Zeynep TUFEKCI from a previous Freakonomics Radio episode: We’re seeing the birth of a new center of real power. We depend on these technologies that have been, in many ways, wonderful and fascinating. But they’re making significant decisions unilaterally.

There’s also the question of whether the mission of these firms is as socially beneficial as many people believed they were in the early days of the internet:

TUFEKCI: There’s all these really smart engineers. They’re the brightest computer scientists, and all they’re thinking about is, “How do I keep someone on Facebook for 10 more minutes? What’s the exact combination of things that will keep them staying on the site as long as possible so that we can show them as much advertisement as possible?”

So here’s a question: if you were one of those huge, dominant, super-wealthy firms, what would you do to ensure that the good times stay good? You’d probably spend a lot of money lobbying politicians — which, yes, they do. There’s been a huge ramping-up lately in lobbying by tech firms. But you might also do something a bit subtler than that.

Robert REICH: Yeah. There’s been a parallel ramping-up of the philanthropy that’s associated with the tech firms. That philanthropy comes in a variety of different forms.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: corporations using philanthropy to shape the public debate — and how that can go terribly wrong:

Barry LYNN: That was on June 27th. And on June 29th, I was told that my entire team had to leave.

*      *      *

Our story today begins with a journalist …

Franklin FOER: I’m Franklin Foer, a writer with The Atlantic.

Stephen J. DUBNER: You are one of three brothers who write books. Talk about that for just a minute, and the family that produced all of you.

FOER: Right. So I have two brothers: Jonathan, who’s written a good number of novels, including Everything is Illuminated. I got a younger brother named Josh, who is a science writer [and] wrote a book called Moonwalking with Einstein. It’s actually incredibly uncomfortable for us to talk about growing up in a family of other writers just because— I’m sure in some ways, we benefit from the novelty act of being three brotherly writers. But then we all, of course, want to be known for our own accomplishments.

DUBNER: Right.

FOER: But our parents didn’t do anything— They didn’t force us to play violin four hours a day or sit down and study the great chess masters. We watched a lot of He-Man and Addams Family reruns on television when we were growing up. But one of the things that they did was they gave us a credit card, which they said we weren’t allowed to spend essentially on anything except in the event of an incredible emergency. There was one exception to this: they said that we could basically spend the credit card at will at the bookshop. They basically guided us to one thing.

DUBNER: Your first job in journalism was at Slate, one of the very first mainstream online publications, which was started by Microsoft. There was this huge enthusiasm, certainly among the chattering classes.

FOER: There was a certain amount of utopianism that was associated with the emergence of the internet, this idea that we were going to tie the world together. I love search engines. I love the fact that I can access every book in human history in a nanosecond. I love that I can get things delivered to my door incredibly quickly. These things, arguably, make life much better; maybe inarguably make life much better. These technologies were incredible! Amazon is an incredible company. The Kindle was an incredible invention. The iPad and the iPhone were incredible innovations. We were right to marvel at them.

DUBNER: After writing for Slate for a while, you moved on to the New Republic — as you call it, the “intellectual organ for hard-nosed liberalism.” You ultimately became editor there not once, but twice.

FOER: The New Republic was this little magazine that always had outsized influence in politics and culture. It was an incredibly elitist organ and it managed to persist over a hundred years while never really turning a profit. As we entered the Internet Age, that became a more and more difficult thing to continue to do. We ended up shifting from one ownership group to the next. I got so exhausted trying to find an owner and sick of that, I ended up resigning as editor. But then a couple of years after I resigned, the magazine got bought by a guy called Chris Hughes who had been Mark Zuckerberg‘s roommate at Harvard, and co-founder of Facebook. He bought the magazine and, to me, this seemed almost too good to be true. You had this guy who understood social media, who had incredible number of resources, and seemed devoted to this little magazine that I was also devoted to. So I came back, I edited the magazine, and Chris and I tried to re-make it.  

DUBNER: The relationship in the beginning seemed like it was unbelievably good.

FOER: We became really good friends and it was exhilarating. We felt like we were trying to save something that was imperiled in the world and that maybe we could help provide some dignified solution to the rest of journalism, which was grappling with a lot of the same issues that we were grappling with. But there was a moment when things just took this turn. Chris had always talked about wanting to make a profit with the New Republic, and he suddenly decided that he didn’t want to lose, at least not a whole lot of money with it.  So we had to turn around our financial position incredibly quickly. He insisted that we start chasing clicks. In 2013, the surest way to get clicks was to post a clip from last night’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart. You slap a headline on it and maybe write a couple sentences about it and everybody would click on it.

DUBNER: You got caught up in, at least, monitoring the numbers, right?

FOER: Yes, I did. Look, data is crack cocaine. If you’re the guy who had a hard time getting a date in high school, to suddenly find yourself producing things that are extremely popular — you become obsessed with replicating that popularity. In some ways, everybody in the magazine wanted to be successful on Facebook. We wanted to master social media and this new environment. But we didn’t want that new environment to dictate how we did our jobs.

DUBNER: All right, so we should say that [you were] quitting as you were about to be fired from the New Republic.

FOER: Yeah. I took the brave decision to resign when I learned that there was some guy who already had my job and was offering other people jobs at the New Republic.

DUBNER: It’s funny. You’re describing what was happening to you at the New Republic. But it sounds as though you’re also perhaps describing your view of what happened at places like Google and Facebook over time, where you may begin with a certain set of motivations, but as those motivations lead you to this overwhelming commercial success, you’re so seduced by the magnitude of that success that you can’t help but want to replicate it over and over again.

FOER: Yeah, that’s completely right. In retrospect, I realized that I was living this compressed version of recent history.  

The recent history of the internet at least. Over the years, Franklin Foer’s views of the internet had shifted. The same guy who used to think this …

FOER: There was a certain amount of utopianism associated with the emergence of the internet.

And this:

FOER: I love search engines!

And this:

FOER: These technologies were incredible! Amazon is an incredible company.

Has now come to think this:

FOER: Amazon thinks of itself as “the everything store.” It’s gotten itself in pretty much every conceivable business. It owns Whole Foods, it powers the cloud, it houses data for the C.I.A., and so on. There’s really nothing that it doesn’t try to squeeze into its empire.

He also thinks this:

FOER: As Facebook shapes the way that we consume news, as Google shapes the way that we interact with information, and as Amazon has shaped the way that we interact with books, the dominance that these companies exert ends up trickling through the cultural intellectual ecosystem. With Amazon, my concern is that the book business has become utterly dependent on them, that they hold one of the few true monopolies in the world.

Actually, that’s not quite true.

Swati BHATT: My name is Swati Bhatt. I teach at Princeton.

One course she teaches: The Economics of the Internet.

BHATT: The existence of a monopoly — of a single firm in any product space, unless it’s a government-granted monopoly — is rare in the digital economy.

So even though Amazon has, for instance, at least 70 percent of e-book sales, that doesn’t make it a monopoly.

BHATT: Technically, no. Because that leaves 30 percent for some other set of firms.

When describing firms like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, Bhatt prefers the term “behemoth.”

BHATT: Yes, there is a difference. “Behemoth” suggests that it’s simply a large firm, whereas a “monopoly” suggests that it’s the only firm.

Okay, economic semantics aside: Bhatt does see strong parallels between these modern behemoths and what we traditionally think of as monopolies. But a modern tech behemoth has a particularly modern advantage:

BHATT: Ownership of a scarce resource is the definition of a natural monopoly. What we’re seeing with the behemoths today is an ownership of a scarce resource called “personal data” or “data” in general. There’s an interesting self-reinforcing dynamic here. Whereas a firm transacts, buys and sells, [a behemoth] acquires data about its consumers. That enables it to grow by producing more personalized products by advertising more effectively. That brings in more customers, which brings in more data, which then enables the firm to grow even further and that leads to the behemoth status.

And that is what Franklin Foer, and a growing chorus of other critics, are so concerned about. Foer recently published a book called World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech. It’s part-memoir, part-screed against the dominance of the big tech firms. It’s not a particularly empirical book; and it’s hard to say how much of Foer’s argument was informed by personal experiences, like the New Republic disaster. It also turns out that Foer’s family, in addition to encouraging his love of books, encouraged his distrust of monopolies.

FOER: My dad was a University of Chicago-trained lawyer who’d worked in the antitrust division of the Carter administration. I grew up in this household where antitrust was part of the family religion. My dad would drive around in a car that had a bumper sticker that said “bust the trust” on it. It was a real obsession and passion of his. For a long time he was this lonely activist who was railing for greater, more aggressive enforcement of these laws prohibiting monopolistic behavior. I always admired him for this quixotic stand that he took, but I never really fully bought into his arguments until Amazon got in this fight with the book publishers, when it started to hit close to home.

DUBNER: This was the Hachette deal, yes?

FOER: Exactly. Let’s just say something about book publishing, which is that book publishing is an incredibly oligopolistic industry. There are four or five big companies that dominate book publishing. They’re oftentimes jerks. It’s hard to have a whole lot of sympathy for the book publishers. But suddenly you have these five big companies that were up against one big company, which was Amazon. Amazon basically controlled their access to the marketplace. Amazon was renegotiating their ebook contract with the publishers one by one, trying to strong-arm them with their market power into pricing their books lower and lower. To me, it was grotesque and ominous that Amazon was able to use its market power to try to dictate to the publishers in this incredibly aggressive way.

DUBNER: Where do you draw the line between winning — or competing — and being evil?

FOER: Right.

DUBNER: Persuade me that it’s not just a case of big companies being really good at what they do and winning and you having sympathies with the people who are not winning.

FOER: My book, in some ways, is a valentine to competition. I believe that a marketplace is most healthy when you have a number of market players. I might not love book publishing. It might be too concentrated in some ways for my taste. But at least there are five companies competing against one another for the marketplace. If I don’t like the way that one company is treating me, I can always go to another company. Or if I don’t like the goods that one company is selling, I can go to another company. The problem with Amazon, and the problem with Google, and, to an extent, with Facebook, is that they become the only market player. The choice that we have as consumers is limited and competition is limited. My argument is against the big technology companies, which are racing to expand into every nook and cranny of our lives.

As it happens, this expansion had just raced into Franklin Foer’s own life. We spoke to him in early September, just before his book was to be published. And there had been a plot twist.

FOER: The New America Foundation supported my book.

The New America Foundation is a center-left think tank devoted to “renewing American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age.” It’s run by the political scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter, who’s a former top official in the Obama State Department.

FOER: One of the cool things that New America does is that they give money to journalists who are writing book projects. I didn’t get a lot of money from them, but I got a small sum. They were especially generous to me because I’d just been fired from a job at the New Republic.

And the partial funding of Foer’s book about the dominance of firms like Google suddenly became relevant because—

FOER: That’s since become relevant just because they fired a vociferous critic of Google from the foundation. Which is noteworthy because the foundation has received a fair amount of money from Google chairman Eric Schmidt.

DUBNER: Right. How much fun is it for you to be publishing a new book and already distancing yourself from the foundation that funded the writing of it?

FOER: It actually doesn’t feel good because New America has been supportive of me over time. I’d rather not seem like a jerk and disavow them when they’ve been so nice to me. But this does feel sadly reflective of a much bigger issue.

DUBNER: Who was the critic who was fired?

FOER: His name is Barry Lynn and he ran something called the Open Markets program there. Very active opponent of monopoly and a very vociferous critic of Google.

LYNN: We used to have an affiliation with the New America Foundation, but that ended on August 31st. We were kicked out of New America.

And that is Barry Lynn.

LYNN: And I direct the Open Markets Institute.

So the name of his project has not been taken away; but his affiliation with the New America Foundation has.

LYNN: We’re working out of a WeWork on the 1400 block of G Street in Washington.

Coming up on Freakonomics Radio: the story is not as neat as the headlines would have it:

Anne-Marie SLAUGHTER: At no point did Google or any funder tell me to fire Barry Lynn.

Also: funding controversies can reach across many decades. Like all the way back to the founding of Stanford University.

REICH: There is an effort to unearth the sordid history of the university’s initial benefactor.

*      *      *

Barry Lynn started out as a journalist …

LYNN: I worked in Venezuela and in Peru as a foreign correspondent. Then, I ran a magazine called Global Business Magazine.

We should say it was a pro-business magazine.

LYNN: We were a magazine that aimed at the people who ran businesses. We had a[n] inside look at how globalization actually works at the institutional level.

That inside look led to Lynn crossing over to the other side. He came to believe that corporations are too powerful, and that their power is too concentrated. This was a theme he pursued in a couple of books and, since 2002, with the New America Foundation. His project came to be known as Open Markets.

LYNN: We got the work going. We did it with increasing effect over the last seven years, to the point where in 2016, we had a number of folks on the Hill starting to understand that, indeed, America has a monopoly problem. The first person who really reached out and said, “I want to actually help shine a light on this problem,” was Senator Warren. The result was a speech that she gave on Capitol Hill.

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s speech was part of a conference, organized by Open Markets, called “America’s Monopoly Problem.”

Elizabeth WARREN: Today in America, competition is dying.

LYNN: This was probably the most important speech about concentration in the United States, about the monopoly problem, since a series of speeches that F.D.R. gave in the 1930s.

WARREN: Google, Apple, and Amazon provide platforms that lots of companies depend on for survival. But Google, Apple, and Amazon also, in many cases, compete with those small companies. That platform can become a tool to snuff out competition.

LYNN: She said, “It’s not just an issue that affects us as consumers. It also affects our democracy, because it’s this concentration of power that leads to concentrations of wealth. Concentrations of wealth lead to concentrations of control over government, and other institutions of authority.”  

This line of criticism would seem to be very much in sync with the mission of not only Open Markets, but also its parent organization, the New America Foundation.

SLAUGHTER: In my own scholarship, I’ve written about monopolies and risks of consolidation and data ownership.

That’s Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former State Department official and Princeton professor, who’s now president and C.E.O. of New America.

SLAUGHTER: What convinced me to leave Princeton and become head of New America — which was a big move, because I had a wonderful position at Princeton — was this idea that we really could be a place that hosted fundamental debates about our future in the digital age.

But as Barry Lynn tells the story, New America didn’t share his enthusiasm for the conference he put together where Senator Warren spoke.

LYNN: Well, a few people in my organization at New America were not happy with the way we were framing the conference, and the fact that we were focusing some of our attention on the platform monopolies and especially on Google.

What was wrong with focusing on Google in a conference about monopoly? Remember, they do own some 80 percent of the global search market.

LYNN: Or I guess the question is, “Why was our work at New America problematic for Google?” Eric Schmidt, who is now the chair of the board at Google, was also, for a long time, on the New America board and then for a period of time served as the chair of our board.

Eric Schmidt, who was C.E.O. of Google for 10 years, has also given New America a lot of money, both personally and through his family foundation. So did Google itself. Between Schmidt and Google, New America had received roughly $20 million since its founding in 1999.

LYNN: There was a relationship between our two organizations. This is a relationship goes back to the very early days at New America and actually had never seemed to result in any problems at New America up to this point.

But now, it seemed, there was a problem. Were Schmidt and/or Google leaning on New America as Lynn’s critique of the company grew more intense? A year after the New America conference where Senator Warren spoke against Google’s domination, European antitrust regulators hit Google with a huge fine, $2.7 billion, for allegedly tilting search results in its own favor. Barry Lynn posted a statement on the New America website. It congratulated European regulators for giving Google such a good spanking, and it urged American regulators to do the same.

LYNN: We released this statement in support of the decision in Europe. That was on June 27th. And on June 29th, I was told that my entire team had to leave. We had two months to leave.

One natural conclusion to draw was that Google had stepped in and asked New America to do something about Barry Lynn. Indeed, that’s how it was portrayed in The New York Times. Their headline read: “Google Critic Ousted from Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant.”

LYNN: At that point I asked for this decision to be reconsidered, and if it could not be reconsidered, I asked for more time. I was told that neither of those was possible.

The writer Franklin Foer, who happens to sit on the board of Barry Lynn’s Open Markets Institute, told us a similar version of events. He made it clear that Lynn’s statement about the European regulators’ decision—

FOER: This was something that was a bit too far for Google. New America was very generous in supporting me, and they never did anything to interfere with my own work. But I was fairly outraged by their treatment of Barry. I can’t resign from New America because I’m not affiliated with them. I’m not taking any money from them now, but I’m extremely disappointed.

But Anne-Marie Slaughter offered a substantially different portrayal. First of all, she says—

SLAUGHTER: No funder at New America has ever influenced New America content in any way.

And, this:

SLAUGHTER: New America has a set of principles on our website that makes very clear that no funding can affect the integrity of our research and/or shape the research in any way. We do not pay to play. We take funding and we do our work. Those two things are separate.

But the timing of Lynn’s firing certainly gave the appearance that Google and/or Eric Schmidt had asked Slaughter and/or the New America Foundation to get rid of Barry Lynn and Open Markets. And Slaughter found herself on the defensive.

SLAUGHTER: At no point did Google or any funder tell me to fire Barry Lynn, and at no point did Google or any funder try to influence the work of anybody here. If any funder ever did tell me that, I’d tell them to take a hike!

That’s Slaughter at a New America event a few weeks ago called “Is Big Tech an Existential Threat?” The event was actually in support of Franklin Foer’s book.

SLAUGHTER: I did not part ways with Barry Lynn for anything to do with Google. I decided that Barry Lynn and I had to part ways because he could not work respectfully, honestly, and cooperatively with his colleagues.

So Slaughter says she got rid of Lynn, not because of a funding conflict of interest, but because he was a difficult employee. That said, she acknowledges a real and long-standing tension between the people who fund research and the people who do research.

SLAUGHTER: I don’t actually think this is just a think-tank issue. I worked at three universities, and universities have private funders for centers and for different bodies of research. Even newspapers have constant tensions between advertisers and reporters that reporters don’t have to navigate, but the management does. There is a general tension wherever you need to protect the integrity of research and you also need to fund that research.

New America says all its major funders are listed on its website. We asked Slaughter for a breakdown:

SLAUGHTER: Only 12 percent comes from corporations. By far, the largest amount comes from foundations and then from private individuals.

LYNN: Taking corporate money does not mean necessarily that the work of the entire institution is suspect—

Barry Lynn again.

LYNN: —but it definitely can create a slippery slope that will lead to pressures being brought to bear on those people who are questioning concentrations of power or the use of corporate power in other ways.

REICH: People are right to have a skeptical, maybe cynical, orientation to corporate lobbying or corporate philanthropy.

And that’s Robert Reich, a political scientist at Stanford.

REICH: My research interests these days focus a great deal on philanthropy and the role philanthropy plays in democratic societies.

And that philanthropy increasingly comes in the form of foundations.

REICH: There are lots of foundations.

DUBNER: What is the median size of assets? It’s really small, right? A million or so dollars—

REICH: Oh yeah, it’s not much. It may be a couple of million dollars. But there’s an enormous growth in the number of foundations, and that’s just a logical consequence of the growing inequality in the United States.

DUBNER: Just talk about your thesis essentially — the role, the influence, and the complications around modern philanthropies.

REICH: I’d start by saying most people’s attitude about philanthropists and about foundations is that we should be grateful that people are trying to do good with their own money. That’s the attitude I want to try to sweep away. I don’t think philanthropists deserve that amount of charity, if you will. Why is that? Because philanthropy, especially large philanthropy, in the form of a foundation or especially wealthy person represents the exercise of power in which they attempt to use their own private wealth to affect public outcomes or to produce public benefits or make social change. Power deserves scrutiny in a democratic society, not gratitude. I’d add on top of that that a foundation, in particular — which is a legal form that allows a wealthy person to create a donor-directed, unaccountable, barely transparent, perpetual, and tax-subsidized corporate form in order to use their private assets to affect the public — is an especially interesting and potentially worrisome form of power.

DUBNER: Let’s talk about think tanks, per se. Is there such a thing as a truly nonpartisan think tank, or is it just too hard because of where the money is coming from?

REICH: Well, I’d say that you’re more likely to make the case that there are nonpartisan universities, universities which are funded in not entirely dissimilar ways from think tanks. Officially, they have to be nonpartisan, so do think tanks. In other words they can’t declare themselves in favor of particular political candidates. But think tanks have become far more popular in the United States as a result of the polarization and inequality in the United States. Idea generation that happens in think tanks — the policy frameworks and proposals that get disseminated from think tanks — flow from philanthropic interests with particular policy positions in mind.

DUBNER: Tell me what you know about Google’s history of philanthropic, foundation, or think-tank giving and especially the timeline because I understand it’s accelerated quite a bit recently.

REICH: Google, like lots of other tech firms, has gotten much more aggressive in its formal lobbying efforts. I think it’s now the case that the top five Silicon Valley companies are amongst the largest sources of lobbying, greater even than the five top Wall Street firms in New York. There’s been a parallel ramping up of the philanthropy that’s associated with the tech firms. That philanthropy comes in a variety of different forms.

DUBNER: Rob, knowing what you know about the situation with the New America Foundation and the Google money and the controversy, what would your advice be for them, for the New America Foundation?

REICH: The New America Foundation needs to be aware of the soft power, the agenda-setting influence that donors can have to the think tank even in the absence of calling someone up and saying “we disagree” or “we object to the work that someone does.” When Anne-Marie Slaughter — whose job is chiefly to ensure the existence of the New America Foundation into the future, which involves fund-raising — does her work, she needs to be cautious that she hasn’t internalized the policy preferences of the donors such that she shapes the work of the foundation around the donor interests. The idea is you’re worried about the conversation you’ll have with your donor in the future. You orient the work that you do to please the donor, rather than to displease the donor. That has, functionally, the same outcome from the donor’s perspective, without even having to say anything.

DUBNER: Now, your own fine university, Stanford, benefited, was founded from the private largesse of a man, Leland Stanford. Most of history paints him as a classic robber baron — a railroad man who did all kinds of stuff that we would frown upon today. Talk to me about that and whether that’s a conversation that takes place regularly at Stanford. Or is it avoided?

REICH: I’d say people here are aware of the history of the university and the deep connection between philanthropy and the well-being of especially wealthy universities. People here, I think, know something about the history of Leland Stanford. There is an effort on campus to unearth the sordid history of the university’s initial benefactor.

DUBNER: Has there been any movement of any magnitude to rename the university?

REICH: Not that I know of. They’re starting with lower-hanging fruit — monuments and places on campus named for people with no obvious connection to the university and whose historical records are not so appealing.

DUBNER: Let’s say I have some money, Rob. I want to set up a foundation. I come to you and I say, “I’m a big believer in bringing critics into the inner circle. I know that you’ve been critical of how foundations behave, and that it’s undemocratic, and so on. But Rob, I’d like to make you the executive of my foundation.” Let’s say I made my money in ammonia fertilizer. How would you go about setting it up in a way that takes advantage of my largesse to try to accomplish something that we could all agree is some public good without falling into all the traps that you’ve been describing to us?

REICH: First, I’d say, despite the fact that laws don’t require me to be especially transparent about what the foundation is doing, I pledge to make completely available to the public all of the grant-making we do, the evaluations of the grants that we make. I’d want to invite in outside experts as well. I would want to find ways in which to organize the foundation’s efforts to seek out the most severe critics of what we were doing in order to try to learn the most in order to give grants away to greater effect.

DUBNER: Let’s say I also make you chairman of the board. Tell me about that board, how you’d set it up. What would the elections look like? What would the terms be like? Who’s on it?

REICH: Well, “elections” already reveal that you don’t know much about how foundations are operating. There are no elections on the boards of foundations. The boards are hand-picked by the initial donor. You can create the governing board of a foundation in such a way as you guarantee that only family members and heirs ever serve on the board. There’s no public representation necessary. The Gates Foundation, with something in the neighborhood of $40 to $80 billion devoted to philanthropy, has as its governing trustees Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, and, I believe, Bill Gates Sr. I’d like to see possibly experimentation with a form of foundation peer review in which an effort analogous to what happens in academia happens within the foundation world. It would be surprising if the philanthropic efforts of corporations were purely altruistic. Corporations seek to advance their own interest especially in their lobbying — quite possibly often in their philanthropy. I’m trying to stimulate people to be morally awake and in the same moment, to get people to consider what types of public policies or frameworks ought to govern and structure our collective lives, which is a moral and philosophical question.

That was the Stanford political scientist Robert Reich. We also heard today from Anne-Marie Slaughter, Barry Lynn, Swati Bhatt, and Franklin Foer. Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt drops by to answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions:

Steven LEVITT: That is one of the weirdest definitions of social good I’ve ever heard in my entire life—

LEVITT: The thing you want to do, from a public policy perspective, is not put people’s identity and their morality in conflict with efficiency—

LEVITT: As you take the knife and think about whether you’re going to stab the person with it, you’re not thinking about what’s going to happen 15 years later when I apply for a job and I have to check the box—

That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Brian Gutierrez. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Greg Rosalsky, Stephanie Tam, Eliza Lambert, Emma Morgenstern and Harry Huggins; the music throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio@freakonomics.com.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Swati Bhatt, professor of economics at Princeton University.

Franklin Foer, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute.

Robert Reich, professor of political science at the Stanford University.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, president and C.E.O. of New America.

RESOURCES

“America’s Monopoly Problem: What Should the Next President Do?” Elizabeth Warren, New America (June 29, 2016).

“Antitrust: Commission Fines Google €2.42 Billion for Abusing Dominance as Search Engine by Giving Illegal Advantage to own Comparison Shopping Service,” European Commission (June 27, 2017).

How Digital Communication Technology Shapes Markets: Redefining Competition, Building Cooperation by Swati Bhatt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

“Is Big Tech an Existential Threat?” Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America (October 5, 2017).

“Repugnant to the Whole Idea of Democracy? On the Role of Foundations in Democratic Societies,” Rob Reich (July, 2016).

“What Are Foundations For?” Rob Reich, Boston Review (March 1, 2013).

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer (Penguin Press, 2017).

EXTRA

“Is the Internet Being Ruined?” Freakonomics Radio (July 14, 2016).

“Who Runs the Internet?” Freakonomics Radio (November 14, 2013).

The post Thinking Is Expensive. Who’s Supposed to Pay for It? appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/thinking-expensive-who-pay/

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Coffee Conscious At Bean & Wheat In London

Global warming is real. Food waste is causing all kinds of havoc. We don’t need scientists, or politicians even, to remind us. And the cognoscenti of the caring food and hospitality industries continue to search out ways to not worsen the crisis. One such bloke is chef Adam Handling, who recently opened Bean & Wheat in London’s Spitalfields. Bean & Wheat’s philosophy, similar to Handling’s other restaurant The Frog E1, is to only source local ingredients—including, in this case, a focus on coffee roasted here in London.

“London is full of people that respect food. It can also be very fast-paced, and I think a lot of us survive on caffeine,” says Handling. “In all seriousness, I think Londoners are willing to spend that little bit more on products that are ethically and thoughtfully produced.”

Adam Handling. Photo courtesy of Bean & Wheat.

While Handling is feeling rather optimistic about coffee as a whole—“I think large-scale coffee production is going to start decreasing in popularity, with speciality coffee taking over as the mainstream choice,” he says—climate change remains an issue for coffee as with so many other things. It will, says Handling, “have huge implications for the growth of coffee as it affects the delicate ecosystems which are integral for quality coffee production.”

In keeping with an earth-conscious mindset, Bean & Wheat is also zero-waste. “I don’t feel like anyone else in the city or country is being as practical as we are about our zero-waste policy,” he adds. “Using not just our own kitchen waste but branching out further to the fruits that would be thrown away for not being aesthetically pleasing enough and creating an entire juice range from the would-be wasted fruits, I feel shows real determination to utilise the potential of the ingredients we have available to us on a level I feel no one else has quite reached.”

All the drinks here are espresso-based, prepared on a workhorse La Marzocco Linea Classic. Iced lattes have been popular, and Handling soon hopes to add filter brew options to the menu.

Their coffee partner in all of this good work is Union Roasting Coffee. “They provide farmers in the countries they work in with great opportunities and the chance to become speciality coffee producers,” smiles Handling. “What’s great about them is that they don’t just search for already established coffee growers, they find areas with possibility and work with farmers to help them use the land to its greatest potential. Their ethos goes hand in hand with ours.”

Right now some of the shop’s coffee grounds are sent offsite as part of their compost, which is used for growing fruits and vegetables for the restaurants. But they also use it in a nitro tiramisu: using chocolate truffle and a shortbread base, 50% of the coffee grounds, and then dehydrating other grounds, blitzed into a fine powder and sprinkled over the top, “giving the tiramisu a really intense coffee flavour,” says Handling. And they’re also hoping to start making hand soap from the ground coffee at some point—great for exfoliating and the environment.

Alongside coffee, there is also a range of potted products—from duck liver parfaits to chicken butter. “All the products are made using by-products from The Frog [restaurant], ensuring waste levels are kept to a minimum and nothing which has the potential to create some great tasting food is thrown away,” says Handling. 

“As I’m sure any chef could tell you, being a chef and working full-time in busy restaurants can be hard work, so you can’t help but fall down the coffee hole,” says Handling. “Especially in London, coffee is such a big part of the culture here,” he says. And at Bean & Wheat, the two are tied together in a loving knot.

Bean & Wheat is located at 13 Artillery Passage, London. Visit their official website and follow them on Twitter and Instagram.

Daniel Scheffler is a Sprudge staff writer at large. His work has appeared in T Magazine, Travel And Leisure, Monocle, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Butt. Read more Daniel Scheffler on Sprudge.

The post Coffee Conscious At Bean & Wheat In London appeared first on Sprudge.

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[crypto101]

Bitcoin Mining: the Back-End Beauty of Blockchain

A true understanding of blockchain technology requires a little digging into the process it takes to bring cryptocurrency to market.

While old-fashioned, the term mining is incredibly fitting to describe the elusive process of bringing Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, to life. Shedding some light on this process and it’s far-reaching impact gives legs to why block chain is so beautifully necessary in today’s world.

What does it mean to mine Bitcoin?

Bitcoin mining is a process of verifying transactions and adding them back to the block chain, or public ledger. This alone is the means through which new bitcoins are released.  Anyone able to access the Internet and has access to suitable hardware can be a miner, however, many factors make this more difficult for the average person and computer.

Mining itself involves the compilation of recent transactions into blocks and finding solutions to complex computational puzzles. Each block can be considered a file that contains transactional data about an exchange of value similar to a record book where deeds and titles for properties would be stored or a stock transaction ledger.

Solving the puzzles first gives the miner the ability to place the next block and claim the rewards for doing so. These rewards come in two forms; transaction fees associated with the new compilation in the block and newly released bitcoin(s) for solving the problem/adding to the blockchain.

The blockchain for Bitcoin, the public ledger, was started on the 3rd of January 2009 at 6:15p UTC. Satoshi Nakamoto, founder and mythical figure of Bitcoin, is most likely the creator of this aptly named genesis block in which he was rewarded 50 bitcoins for creating. While just a simple fact, the concept that even the creator of Bitcoin had to release his currency through the same process that is used today could be the subject of academic essays on economics, technology, and personal accountability.

Why is this important?

Blockchain technology is built on a sequence. The records of transactions are what fabricate the entire ecosystem, help to verify legitimacy, retain anonymity and decentralization, while continually strengthening security with each new block. As this is of the utmost importance to the blockchain, it is equally important to the value of bitcoin.

The overall simplicity of the concept is comforting but make no mistake the act of mining is designed to get harder and harder, both technically and financially. Bitcoin’s blockchain was designed, from the beginning, to scale. Each new block created continues to diversify and complicate the chain, which is one reason things become more secure over time, making difficulty and computer power required to increase commensurately. Just think about working with and storing a file that holds 3 documents versus 3 million.

And, since that alone isn’t enough security, the blockchain reward halves every 210,000 blocks so as technical demands for mining goes up the reward in bitcoin goes down. Since the value of bitcoin has gone up, which was obviously intentional from the beginning, then the juice is still worth the squeeze - if you have the right gear.

How hard is it to mine Bitcoin?

In the simplest terms, not very easy. Technical know-how, computing power, and cost of electricity all play into making this crucial job out of reach, or desire, for most. As in most things blockchain, the Bitcoin network is always adjusting to the activity within the marketplace.

Originally, mining could be done using a CPU, central processing unit - i.e. your everyday personal computer. Over time GPU’s (graphic processing units) became more effective and popular as miners worked towards higher efficiency, yielding more dollars for their time. The next technical iteration involved Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) which were designed specifically for mining Bitcoin. From their initial release in 2013 many different innovations have continued to add competition to the market from nearly every corner of the world. This competition has created a system in which the highest grade computing hardware is nearly required to become profitable in mining bitcoin, mostly from an energy consumption standpoint in that older systems burn more money in electricity in the time it takes to mine a profitable amount of currency.

Photo cred: Mirko Tobias Schäfer

Additionally, the Bitcoin network protocol adjusts the difficulty of the puzzles every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks) in order to stabilize the rate of block discovery. So as more computational power is utilized for mining then the difficulty of the mining increases as well. Conversely, when computing power slows within the entire network then the puzzles become easier.

Mining pools, competition, and the dreaded 51%

With each incremental upgrade in hardware technology required to be profitable in mining many people have gotten priced out of their ability to effectively mine for bitcoins. As a result, the collective, collaborative nature of the tech world began building mining pools to overcome these challenges. Instead of going months without a reward, pools act as a co-op for miners to be routinely rewarded for their efforts. These pools make up some of the largest miners in the Bitcoin network, below are the top 5.

1. AntPool - Chinese based mining pool, maintained by BitMain. Accountable for ~15% of all blocks.

2. DiscusFish also known as F2Pool, is based in China as well and has mined 12% of all blocks over the past six months.

3. BitFury Pool is one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips and pulls 12% of all bitcoins in three data centers across Georgia. It is also a privatized pool and cannot be joined freely.

4. BTCC is the 3rd largest Bitcoin exchange in China and is responsible for 7% of all blocks.

5. ViaBTC is the newest player in the space and growing in popularity.

As many of these pools grab larger amounts of the mining market it begs the question of competition within the blockchain. Certainly cryptocurrency is in essence anti-centralization and couldn’t one entity accounting for nearly 1/6th of all mining pose potential problems?

Well, yes, and there’s a heated debate about the importance of greater diversity in the coin mining universe. Centralization, or a few pools accounting for most of the mining, allows coins to reach the market faster. This could potentially help the currency to be more stable in the short term and grow more consistently over time. However it poses risks for the same reasons. Bitcoin and blockchain are purposefully slow, unconsolidated entities - their strength and security depends on it.

The primary concern is that one entity could somehow obtain control of 51% of a currency. Or a majority player in the mining space could dictate the ease or difficulty of mining by using its computing power to manipulate the network protocols advantageously.

Decentralization, of course, puts more power and responsibility in the hands of many. However it also puts more risk on the individuals who get involved and could ultimately lead to a more centralized system out of sheer necessity. After all, this is the same reason why so many big box stores exist and the mom and pop shops go out of business.

If Bitcoin founders wanted a centralized system to distribute currency then the model would look drastically different than it does today. Miners construct this system and the more miners driven by their own individual motives then the more self-regulation inherently exists within the network. Blockchain is a fascinating technology that will likely reach far beyond finance and currency. It democratizes information into an incorruptible digital ledger that is stored and verified by every participant within the network.

Blockchain is one of the most innovative technological developments of our time and the importance of it is becoming ever more apparent on an international stage. Whether you want to mine, invest in crypto, be an intrigued bystander, or hate on the entire industry - blockchain will affect the way you interact, do business, and secure your information in the future. Better to understand this technology now so that you too can add to it, cultivating a culture of sovereignty for the individual. A globalized commonwealth of information independence.