#sell iPhone in new york | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mostlysignssomeportents · 7 months

Text

Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Mar 13) in SAN FRANCISCO with ROBIN SLOAN, then Toronto, NYC, Anaheim, and more!

Another characteristically brilliant Kashmir Hill story for The New York Times reveals another characteristically terrible fact about modern life: your car secretly records fine-grained telemetry about your driving and sells it to data-brokers, who sell it to insurers, who use it as a pretext to gouge you on premiums:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html

Almost every car manufacturer does this: Hyundai, Nissan, Ford, Chrysler, etc etc:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2020/09/09/ford-state-farm-ford-metromile-honda-verisk-among-insurer-oem-telematics-connections/

This is true whether you own or lease the car, and it's separate from the "black box" your insurer might have offered to you in exchange for a discount on your premiums. In other words, even if you say no to the insurer's carrot – a surveillance-based discount – they've got a stick in reserve: buying your nonconsensually harvested data on the open market.

I've always hated that saying, "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," the reason being that it posits decent treatment as a customer reward program, like the little ramekin warm nuts first class passengers get before takeoff. Companies don't treat you well when you pay them. Companies treat you well when they fear the consequences of treating you badly.

Take Apple. The company offers Ios users a one-tap opt-out from commercial surveillance, and more than 96% of users opted out. Presumably, the other 4% were either confused or on Facebook's payroll. Apple – and its army of cultists – insist that this proves that our world's woes can be traced to cheapskate "consumers" who expected to get something for nothing by using advertising-supported products.

But here's the kicker: right after Apple blocked all its rivals from spying on its customers, it began secretly spying on those customers! Apple has a rival surveillance ad network, and even if you opt out of commercial surveillance on your Iphone, Apple still secretly spies on you and uses the data to target you for ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product – provided the company can get away with treating you as the product. Apple can absolutely get away with treating you as the product, because it lacks the historical constraints that prevented Apple – and other companies – from treating you as the product.

As I described in my McLuhan lecture on enshittification, tech firms can be constrained by four forces:

I. Competition

II. Regulation

III. Self-help

IV. Labor

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

When companies have real competitors – when a sector is composed of dozens or hundreds of roughly evenly matched firms – they have to worry that a maltreated customer might move to a rival. 40 years of antitrust neglect means that corporations were able to buy their way to dominance with predatory mergers and pricing, producing today's inbred, Habsburg capitalism. Apple and Google are a mobile duopoly, Google is a search monopoly, etc. It's not just tech! Every sector looks like this:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Eliminating competition doesn't just deprive customers of alternatives, it also empowers corporations. Liberated from "wasteful competition," companies in concentrated industries can extract massive profits. Think of how both Apple and Google have "competitively" arrived at the same 30% app tax on app sales and transactions, a rate that's more than 1,000% higher than the transaction fees extracted by the (bloated, price-gouging) credit-card sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

But cartels' power goes beyond the size of their warchest. The real source of a cartel's power is the ease with which a small number of companies can arrive at – and stick to – a common lobbying position. That's where "regulatory capture" comes in: the mobile duopoly has an easier time of capturing its regulators because two companies have an easy time agreeing on how to spend their app-tax billions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

Apple – and Google, and Facebook, and your car company – can violate your privacy because they aren't constrained regulation, just as Uber can violate its drivers' labor rights and Amazon can violate your consumer rights. The tech cartels have captured their regulators and convinced them that the law doesn't apply if it's being broken via an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/18/cursed-are-the-sausagemakers/#how-the-parties-get-to-yes

In other words, Apple can spy on you because it's allowed to spy on you. America's last consumer privacy law was passed in 1988, and it bans video-store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history. Congress has taken no action on consumer privacy since the Reagan years:

https://www.eff.org/tags/video-privacy-protection-act

But tech has some special enshittification-resistant characteristics. The most important of these is interoperability: the fact that computers are universal digital machines that can run any program. HP can design a printer that rejects third-party ink and charge $10,000/gallon for its own colored water, but someone else can write a program that lets you jailbreak your printer so that it accepts any ink cartridge:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Tech companies that contemplated enshittifying their products always had to watch over their shoulders for a rival that might offer a disenshittification tool and use that as a wedge between the company and its customers. If you make your website's ads 20% more obnoxious in anticipation of a 2% increase in gross margins, you have to consider the possibility that 40% of your users will google "how do I block ads?" Because the revenue from a user who blocks ads doesn't stay at 100% of the current levels – it drops to zero, forever (no user ever googles "how do I stop blocking ads?").

The majority of web users are running an ad-blocker:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Web operators made them an offer ("free website in exchange for unlimited surveillance and unfettered intrusions") and they made a counteroffer ("how about 'nah'?"):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

Here's the thing: reverse-engineering an app – or any other IP-encumbered technology – is a legal minefield. Just decompiling an app exposes you to felony prosecution: a five year sentence and a $500k fine for violating Section 1201 of the DMCA. But it's not just the DMCA – modern products are surrounded with high-tech tripwires that allow companies to invoke IP law to prevent competitors from augmenting, recongifuring or adapting their products. When a business says it has "IP," it means that it has arranged its legal affairs to allow it to invoke the power of the state to control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

An "app" is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it. This is what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model" and it's everywhere. When companies don't have to worry about users deploying self-help measures to disenshittify their products, they are freed from the constraint that prevents them indulging the impulse to shift value from their customers to themselves.

Apple owes its existence to interoperability – its ability to clone Microsoft Office's file formats for Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which saved the company in the early 2000s – and ever since, it has devoted its existence to making sure no one ever does to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Regulatory capture cuts both ways: it's not just about powerful corporations being free to flout the law, it's also about their ability to enlist the law to punish competitors that might constrain their plans for exploiting their workers, customers, suppliers or other stakeholders.

The final historical constraint on tech companies was their own workers. Tech has very low union-density, but that's in part because individual tech workers enjoyed so much bargaining power due to their scarcity. This is why their bosses pampered them with whimsical campuses filled with gourmet cafeterias, fancy gyms and free massages: it allowed tech companies to convince tech workers to work like government mules by flattering them that they were partners on a mission to bring the world to its digital future:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

For tech bosses, this gambit worked well, but failed badly. On the one hand, they were able to get otherwise powerful workers to consent to being "extremely hardcore" by invoking Fobazi Ettarh's spirit of "vocational awe":

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

On the other hand, when you motivate your workers by appealing to their sense of mission, the downside is that they feel a sense of mission. That means that when you demand that a tech worker enshittifies something they missed their mother's funeral to deliver, they will experience a profound sense of moral injury and refuse, and that worker's bargaining power means that they can make it stick.

Or at least, it did. In this era of mass tech layoffs, when Google can fire 12,000 workers after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years, tech workers are learning that the answer to "I won't do this and you can't make me" is "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out" (AKA "sharpen your blades boys"):

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/

With competition, regulation, self-help and labor cleared away, tech firms – and firms that have wrapped their products around the pluripotently malleable core of digital tech, including automotive makers – are no longer constrained from enshittifying their products.

And that's why your car manufacturer has chosen to spy on you and sell your private information to data-brokers and anyone else who wants it. Not because you didn't pay for the product, so you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

Cars are enshittified. The dozens of chips that auto makers have shoveled into their car design are only incidentally related to delivering a better product. The primary use for those chips is autoenshittification – access to legal strictures ("IP") that allows them to block modifications and repairs that would interfere with the unfettered abuse of their own customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that it's a felony to reverse-engineer and modify a car's software opens the floodgates to all kinds of shitty scams. Remember when Bay Staters were voting on a ballot measure to impose right-to-repair obligations on automakers in Massachusetts? The only reason they needed to have the law intervene to make right-to-repair viable is that Big Car has figured out that if it encrypts its diagnostic messages, it can felonize third-party diagnosis of a car, because decrypting the messages violates the DMCA:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy

Big Car figured out that VIN locking – DRM for engine components and subassemblies – can felonize the production and the installation of third-party spare parts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

The fact that you can't legally modify your car means that automakers can go back to their pre-2008 ways, when they transformed themselves into unregulated banks that incidentally manufactured the cars they sold subprime loans for. Subprime auto loans – over $1t worth! – absolutely relies on the fact that borrowers' cars can be remotely controlled by lenders. Miss a payment and your car's stereo turns itself on and blares threatening messages at top volume, which you can't turn off. Break the lease agreement that says you won't drive your car over the county line and it will immobilize itself. Try to change any of this software and you'll commit a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Tesla, naturally, has the most advanced anti-features. Long before BMW tried to rent you your seat-heater and Mercedes tried to sell you a monthly subscription to your accelerator pedal, Teslas were demon-haunted nightmare cars. Miss a Tesla payment and the car will immobilize itself and lock you out until the repo man arrives, then it will blare its horn and back itself out of its parking spot. If you "buy" the right to fully charge your car's battery or use the features it came with, you don't own them – they're repossessed when your car changes hands, meaning you get less money on the used market because your car's next owner has to buy these features all over again:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

And all this DRM allows your car maker to install spyware that you're not allowed to remove. They really tipped their hand on this when the R2R ballot measure was steaming towards an 80% victory, with wall-to-wall scare ads that revealed that your car collects so much information about you that allowing third parties to access it could lead to your murder (no, really!):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

That's why your car spies on you. Because it can. Because the company that made it lacks constraint, be it market-based, legal, technological or its own workforce's ethics.

One common critique of my enshittification hypothesis is that this is "kind of sensible and normal" because "there’s something off in the consumer mindset that we’ve come to believe that the internet should provide us with amazing products, which bring us joy and happiness and we spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return":

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-have-great-conversations/

What this criticism misses is that this isn't the companies bargaining to shift some value from us to them. Enshittification happens when a company can seize all that value, without having to bargain, exploiting law and technology and market power over buyers and sellers to unilaterally alter the way the products and services we rely on work.

A company that doesn't have to fear competitors, regulators, jailbreaking or workers' refusal to enshittify its products doesn't have to bargain, it can take. It's the first lesson they teach you in the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Your car spying on you isn't down to your belief that your carmaker "should provide you with amazing products, which brings your joy and happiness you spend hours of the day on, and should ask nothing back in return." It's not because you didn't pay for the product, so now you're the product. It's because they can get away with it.

The consequences of this spying go much further than mere insurance premium hikes, too. Car telemetry sits at the top of the funnel that the unbelievably sleazy data broker industry uses to collect and sell our data. These are the same companies that sell the fact that you visited an abortion clinic to marketers, bounty hunters, advertisers, or vengeful family members pretending to be one of those:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

Decades of pro-monopoly policy led to widespread regulatory capture. Corporate cartels use the monopoly profits they extract from us to pay for regulatory inaction, allowing them to extract more profits.

But when it comes to privacy, that period of unchecked corporate power might be coming to an end. The lack of privacy regulation is at the root of so many problems that a pro-privacy movement has an unstoppable constituency working in its favor.

At EFF, we call this "privacy first." Whether you're worried about grifters targeting vulnerable people with conspiracy theories, or teens being targeted with media that harms their mental health, or Americans being spied on by foreign governments, or cops using commercial surveillance data to round up protesters, or your car selling your data to insurance companies, passing that long-overdue privacy legislation would turn off the taps for the data powering all these harms:

https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms

Traditional economics fails because it thinks about markets without thinking about power. Monopolies lead to more than market power: they produce regulatory capture, power over workers, and state capture, which felonizes competition through IP law. The story that our problems stem from the fact that we just don't spend enough money, or buy the wrong products, only makes sense if you willfully ignore the power that corporations exert over our lives. It's nice to think that you can shop your way out of a monopoly, because that's a lot easier than voting your way out of a monopoly, but no matter how many times you vote with your wallet, the cartels that control the market will always win:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

2K notes · View notes

gaysheep · 9 months

Text

Touching is Good: A Retrospective

My trusty Nintendo 3DS, which has held out since I was gifted it for my 15th birthday, has turned one decade old with my 25th birthday this past November. Given new life with custom firmware and nds-bootstrap via TWiLightMenu, the 3DS is stellar for visiting any past handheld title or console title up to (and somewhat including) the N64. (Quick plug for the CFW/hacking community for the less popular PS Vita, too, which has accomplished some pretty crazy-cool stuff this last year.) I use my 3DS more often than I use my Nintendo Switch most weeks.

The Nintendo DS (minus the three) launched in late 2004. The second display and stylus support were novel tools for developers to experiment with, and the NDS is best remembered for its robust catalogue of RPGs and visual novels. Where it lacked in power, narrative-focused games flourished under its technical limitations.

That being said, while browsing the ROM archives on Vimm's Lair to pick up some titles, I was reminded of what an interesting era the mid-to-late 2000s were for games. While Sony and Microsoft were fighting over the "core gamer" demographic, who had outgrown Nintendo mascots, Nintendo led a series of wildly successful marketing campaigns for its hardware after the light failure of the Gamecube, where the Nintendo DS and then the Wii were targeted at...everyone else.

[Image source. Image description in alt text.]

If you look at ads for the DS and the Wii, you'll see that adults are featured much more prominently than children, especially women and seniors. (This did not go unnoticed, as I found this ancient relic of misogyny while looking for images for this post.) A Nintendo handheld was already an easy sell to parents with small children (though I think it's also notable that ads which do focus on children often prominently feature girls. Munchlax is pretty hot...), but Nintendo's angle for the DS and Wii was that their hardware wasn't just for children. The Wii was a way to get up off the couch and to play board games with grandma. The DS was a great gadget for a working woman to keep in her pocketbook.

This worked. The Wii and DS were two of the best-selling consoles of all time. In particular, the DS's marketing campaign only worked because it came out in the perfect window of time. PDA-phone hybrids had been around since the 90s, and the Blackberry had been kicking around for a few years, but the iPhone wouldn't be introduced until 2007, and the 4G LTE standard wouldn't be released until 2009. While the Blackberry was popular with businesspeople and the PDA was out of style, smartphones were luxury toys for several years; they wouldn't become near-ubiquious until the mid-2010s. I didn't get my own smartphone until probably around the same time I got my 3DS, a full handheld generation later.

Browsing the software library for the Nintendo DS and DSi with that in mind is really interesting. Many titles released for the platform serve the same purposes that would be fulfilled by simple smartphone apps less than a decade later: planners and diaries, fitness trackers, calculators, language learning and SAT prep software, even a guide to the then-most-recent version of the driver's test in the UK. These proliferated with the release of the DSi's virtual store, but they existed even with the base model. You could go to a brick-and-mortar store and buy them on physical cartridges. (You might be wondering, "Why would you bother carrying those around over just buying a Blackberry?" You can't underestimate how expensive the service bills for a smartphone were before companies realized they were the most powerful spyware tool in history.)

There was never a time where every single businesswoman in New York carried a DS Lite, but adults did buy and use them, and a not insignificant portion of the DS's software library is aimed at a casual adult audience. Another niche covered mostly by smartphone games these days—games designed to be picked up and played in short sessions on-the-go, in places like waiting rooms and subway commutes.

Nintendo made crazy bank in the seventh console generation. Publications of the time talked about a console war between Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, but the real battle was between the PS3 and the Xbox 360 over the gamer demographic. Nintendo was producing hardware for a niche who would quietly disappear once smartphone sales began ballooning by hundreds of millions per year over the course of the early 2010s.

After the failure of the Wii U, Nintendo's marketing strategy pivoted again, though I doubt they'll ever completely abandon their family-friendly image. Currently beat out only by the PS2 and the DS, the Nintendo Switch may very well climb to a status as the best-selling console of all time before the end of its lifespan, but the "gamer" demographic is much bigger than it was two decades ago at the dawn of the DS. As more and more devices become consolidated into the Swiss army knife the smartphone has become, consoles can only carve out a role as dedicated gaming machines.

I'm not sure we'll ever see anything like the Nintendo DS or the Wii again. I think they're worth looking back on for their uniqueness in that way as much as they are for the more celebrated parts of their libraries.

#mine #this is the first in a series of posts i have in mind on this general subject. my next one will be more entertaining i think.

30 notes · View notes

floosies · 7 months

Text

Radio

early 2000s au

eddie munson x fem!oc

warnings: mentions of drugs, cursing, eventual smut, mentions of abuse, friends to lovers 18+

a/n: i just wanna say this fic is an ode to what i wish i could have be doing in the early 2000s if I hadn't been in elementary school. i know alot of us twenty somethings wish we would have been older than we were.

Sophomore year, 2007

Eddie had repeated the eighth grade, so when he started high school, he should have been sophomore, but his uncle was determined that kid needed to be held back, his teachers too, he's wasn't stupid but living with his dad in the early years of his childhood had fucked with his education. He either did or didn't go depending if his dad was on the run for jacking a car or something. So much for no child left behind, and in Hawkins of all places, they would hold him back as much as they could, not just in school, but in life too. Most of the student body saw him as trailer trash and nothing more. His uncle had taken him in before he entered middle school, and while he tried his best to stay out of trouble, he wasn't gonna let assholes bad mouth the only real father figure he had.

It didn't matter though, he'd gotten his shit somewhat together to get into high school. Barely passing and not really caring, he wanted to at least try and get his diploma for his uncle's sake. System of a down was blasting from his best friend's room. He'd known Jeff for some time and even though his parents didn't like the 'influence' Eddie had on him, he was thankful for him. Jeff had been one of the few kids who actually thought Eddie was cool. They'd been friends since, and he was kind enough to let him hang at his place afterschool, where'd they'd use his computer to post band stuff and update their myspace accounts.

Today though Ed had gotten lucky. He'd jacked some kid's locker and scored an ipod in there. Sure stealing was wrong, but he was broke, too broke at least to afford an ipod. He'd spent the summer trying not to get caught working for his dad's friend to make enough for the iphone. It was easy money in reality, but he knew his uncle wouldn't have been happy to know he was selling drugs to people. The phone was easier to hide than what'd he'd been up to in the summer, even then he still sold every once in a while. Band equipment and his car were never ending needs he had to deal with.

The plan had always been the band, he'd learned to play the guitar on his own accord, rock music was his home away from home. It helped having friends like Jeff who understood what music was really about. Anything they ever earned at a gig was saved in a one of those gallon jugs, they were midway but the hope was to make enough to get to LA or New York and get a studio session. Their live demos and shotty youtube videos got them some online views but not enough to call the attention of anyone yet.

Julie had a whole different life from his. Her parents were loving sociopaths, who controlled her life as best they could. Nevertheless, it didn't do much. She would still sneak around and hang at house parties on the weekends or get drunk at sleepovers with her best friend. She was well known online as a party girl and whether it was her myspace or livejournal she had somewhat of a following for her antics.

At most she was thankful her parents had no clue about the internet. They'd gotten her a digital camera and an ipod with no clue what she really did with them. They were naive at best but could be ruthless at worst. They'd take away her things for months on end if they felt she had been on some sort of weird or rude behavior. It didn't stop her though. Despite her popularity online, in school it was a whole quieter ordeal. Sure she was known, but people only want to associate with others under certain circumstances. Her group was small, and the outfits she'd wear on a friday night weren't what'd she'd been seen in on a monday morning in class.

She wasn't a genius by any length but she wasn't an idiot, she was getting by with decent grades and fake persona for her teachers and parents. It's the only thing she had to keep them from really looking into who she really was, or was at least trying to be.

Blame the internet, they met through their myspace accounts. She had mentioned one of their songs or more like she was looking for one of their songs because they had played at a party she had gone to the weekend before. Eddie couldn't believe he didn't know her, they went to the same high school and were in the same grade. They started talking almost immediately, about everything and anything.

It didn't take long for cellphone numbers to be exchanged and to agree to finally meet at lunch. She had told him not to ditch for her lunch period but he didn't really care about it. To Eddie she was someone who finally understood what he was trying to do here. They were both surprised when they finally met up, she swore she could feel her heart racing out of her chest. It was one thing to talk on the phone or through text, but being actually with him felt like something else.

He felt the same way about near her, she had mentioned to him that he probably didn't recognize her because she wasn't wearing the kind of stuff she usually wore on the weekends out. Its what they ended up talking about that whole lunch period, about how few moments they had where they could really be themselves. Only difference is Julie still felt her parents held the control in her life. That's something Eddie no longer tied him down. Still, he felt for her, from their long talks on the phone and at lunch, he was getting to know this girl for who she really was and that mattered to him. He even ended up walking her to class.

Her friends did give her a couple of glances when she walked into class that day. Questions on why she was hanging out with him and who even was he? One of her classmates heard her mention his name and said Eddie had always been chaotic and liked to start shit for fun. Sure she could have listened to them, but all the stuff they were saying didn't matter because she knew him well enough after a month or so of talking to him, to know that if he came off that way it was intentional.

From that point on, they would try to hang out as much as they could. Parties and after school days when she would go over to his place, despite him initially saying that she probably wouldn't wanna be seen at a trailer park. She honestly didn't care, all that mattered was not being near her hellhole house and that she was able to do her homework. Meanwhile he played guitar hero for her and showed her songs he was working on. Every now and then she would try and get him to do his homework too, which would in turn lead to them not doing anything because he'd use anything as a means of distraction.

Then there was a week when he got suspended for accidentally bringing a pocket knife to school. He told her he had been helping his uncle fix up a patch on the roof and forgot he had left the knife in his jeans pocket but they probably just wanted an excuse to get him out of their hair. His teachers ended up confused when she showed up that week asking for the notes and missing assignments he would have. Maybe she shouldn't have but she did them for him and when they met up on friday night she handed them in exchange for a couple of pre rolled joints and some tabs.

He watched as she went off with her girlfriends that night and got blacked out. They were only getting to know each other though, he didn't wanna overstep anything with her, but he made sure she got home alright. The following Monday it was as if it had never happened and he didn't really mind.

Sophomore year had been a trial and error of getting to know each other and figuring out how the friendship would work. By the summer they had it down, they were comfortable enough with each other to not really care too deeply about things, but also were practically glued to one another. She met the rest of the band and his other friends. She'd shoot their sets for them and post them on their youtube, hell she even added them to her top five. Of course everyone around them could see that there was more going on between the two but neither Eddie nor Julie were going to ruin whatever they had going on already to start something intimate.

#stranger things #eddie munson #2000s au #joseph quinn

5 notes · View notes

cyarskj1899 · 2 years

Text

Darnella Frazier Focuses on Healing After George Floyd's Death, Porsha Williams Shares Wedding Plans, and Vivica Fox Says Being 'Breadwinner' Contributed to Divorce

Porsha Williams gears up for a three-part wedding, Vivica Fox sheds light on what ended her brief marriage, Darnella Frazier reflects on the death of George Floyd, and more in The Daily Rundown.

Darnella Frazier Still 'Trying To Heal' In Wake Of George Floyd's Death

In a reflective post shared on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, Darnella Frazier, the teen who filmed his fatal arrest, said that her life has been changed forever. “It’s a little easier now, but I’m not who I used to be. A part of my childhood was taken from me," Frazier wrote in a Facebook post. "Having to up and leave because my home was no longer safe, waking up to reporters at my door, closing my eyes at night only to see a man who is brown like me, lifeless on the ground.” While many have dubbed her a hero for capturing the video, which played a key role in the conviction of Derek Chauvin, Frazier says that “behind the publicity, I’m a girl trying to heal from something I am reminded of every day.”

Kristen Clarke Confirmed As First Black Woman To Lead DOJ Civil Rights Division

Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Kristen Clarke making her the first Black woman to lead the Justice Department as the civil rights chief, USA Today reports. Clarke was confirmed in a 51-48 vote, with just one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voting in favor of her confirmation.

Porsha Williams Shares Elaborate Wedding Plans

Porsha Williams intends to go all out for her upcoming wedding. In fact, the "Real Housewives of Atlanta" star shared during a recent episode of Dish Nationthat she intends to have three weddings. One ceremony will be a traditional American wedding, one will be a native law and custom ceremony in Nigeria, and the other will take place at a home that her fiancé, Simon Guobadia, owns outside of the country. Williams announced her engagement to Guobadia earlier this month.

Vivica Fox Says Money Issues Contributed To Her Divorce

Actress Vivica A. Fox says that her short-lived marriage to Christopher Harvest ended in 2002 because she did not wish to be the "breadwinner" in the relationship. “He didn’t go out and then pursue things with the same drive that I had for my career,” Fox said in an interview with Vlad TV. “You know, a woman doesn’t like paying all the bills all the time. I can only ask for help so many times before I had to come to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be the breadwinner in this family. My mother didn’t raise me to take care of a man. And that was the deciding factor.”

Roxane Gay Launches Publishing Imprint

Roxane Gay wears many hats and the best-selling author, professor, and editor is about to add another title to her resume—publisher. According to the New York Times, the social commentator recently announced the launch of her new book imprint, Roxane Gay Books, through which she will release three titles per year. The imprint, which will focus on underrepresented voices, is in partnership with Grove Atlantic and will publish titles from other authors in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and memoirs.

Sights, Sounds and Style at Afrochella 2022

Sent from my iPhone

26 notes · View notes

the-puffinry · 2 years

Text

this is wild. Don't upload pics your stolen paintings to print on pillows I guess.

The Worcester Art Museum is on the verge of recovering a painting nearly 45 years after a brazen art heist—and it’s all thanks to an $18 throw pillow.

The robbery took place way back in 1978, at the Worcester home of Helen and Robert Stoddard. He was a former museum trustee who had promised to donate much of his art collection to the institution. Under cover of night, burglars made off with 12 pieces currently estimated to be worth $10 million, including an Pierre-Auguste Renoir canvas and a J.M.W. Turner watercolor.

[...]

A simple reverse image search of the 17th-century Dutch master’s winter scene by Schorer turned up a throw pillow featuring a print of the canvas—but in much higher fidelity than any known photographs taken of the work prior to the theft.

And it wasn’t just the pillow. At Pixels.com, which sells merchandise on demand, you could put the painting, listed as the work of Barent Avercamp—Hendrick’s nephew and student—on an iPhone case, a canvas tote bag, a puzzle, and even a face mask, among other products.

So when he found the Avercamp throw pillow, Schorer trusted his instincts. He downloaded the image of the painting and found a clue embedded in the metadata. There was the name of an art library, as well as a New York art dealer. He called the dealer, who remembered the painting from a 1995 art fair, but said that a now-defunct gallery had conducted the sale.

After four months of research, Schorer tracked down the niece of that dealer, who in turn dug through the old company records to identify the buyers. Schorer estimates it cost less than $200,000—a bargain considering that Avercamp’s auction record is $8.6 million, according to the Artnet Price Database.

Somewhere along the way, it appears someone had altered the painting’s signature to read “B. Avercamp” instead of “H. Avercamp,” making it easier to move the stolen work on the open market. Barent’s top price at auction is just £378,000 ($460,919).

The owners, a Dutch couple, had since died, so Schorer sent a letter to their heirs on behalf of the museum in 2021, looking to make arrangements for the work’s return. They never responded.

This month, Schorer had a Dutch lawyer reach out, with a warning that after 40 days, the museum would instigate a criminal case in the Netherlands. He’s hopeful that the painting’s recovery is now close at hand.

#art theft #heists #paintings #Hendrick Avercamp

22 notes · View notes

90363462 · 2 years

Text

MUSIC

21 Savage Should’ve Just Kept Quiet About Nas

The Atlanta rapper claimed that the legendary rapper isn’t relevant but still has a loyal fanbase.

Noah A. McGee

PublishedToday 10:54AM

Alerts

Nas just can’t catch a break lately. Over the weekend, his Los Angeles home was burglarizedwhile he was celebrating the release of his new album, King’s Disease III. Now, he’s getting stray shots from 21 Savage.

Watch

Handmade Eyelashes by Black-Owned Minx + Mane Is Our Swag of the Week

08:59

Unpack That | How Black New Orleans Rebuilt Itself with Bounce

August 27, 2020

02:27

‘Respect’ Star Jennifer Hudson Shares When and How She Found Her Voice

August 10, 2021

On Monday, while the Her Loss rapper was in a Clubhouse room titled, “Is Nas the Greatest Rapper or What?” The Atlanta-based artist stated that the legendary MC is not nearly at the level he once was when he was in his “prime.” But, did claim that he has been able to sustain a loyal and expansive fanbase.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

#AppleBooks #ReeseBookClub #audiobook #iPhone #AppleVisionPro #AppleWatch #socialmedia #news #technews #technology #technologynews #technologytrends #govindhtech

0 notes

novumtimes · 4 months

Text

G/O Media Sells Gizmodo to Keleops Media

The tech website Gizmodo has been sold to a European media company, the latest brand from the publisher G/O Media to go out the door. The buyer is Keleops Media, Jim Spanfeller, G/O Media’s chief executive, told the staff in an email on Tuesday. Mr. Spanfeller did not disclose the financial details of the sale, but said that it represented “a substantial premium from our original purchase price for the site.” A G/O Media spokesman declined to comment. Mr. Spanfeller said Keleops, which is based in France and Switzerland, had agreed to keep all of Gizmodo’s staff members, who would continue working in G/O Media’s New York office “at least for the near term.” “The site’s new owners are very excited to be getting a great brand with a talented group of journalists,” he wrote in the email, which was viewed by The New York Times. Keleops publishes four consumer tech websites: Journal du Geek, 01net, Presse Citron and iPhon. Jean-Guillaume Kleis, the chief executive of Keleops, said in an interview on Tuesday that the company had been looking to make an acquisition in the United States for several years and Gizmodo was “an obvious choice.” He declined to comment on the financial details of the transaction, but said it was “a sizable deal for us.” “In the next year, we just want to make sure it stays an iconic brand and it becomes even stronger,” Mr. Kleis said. He added that his team would work with Gizmodo’s editorial staff in the coming weeks to see what was needed to improve the website and potentially make some hires. “What is very important for us is the quality,” he said. “We are looking for high-quality journalists.” Gizmodo is the latest website sold by G/O Media, which was formed in 2019 as a collection of websites that once belonged to the Gawker Media empire. At the time, Gawker’s sites included Gizmodo, The Onion, The Root, Kotaku and others. G/O Media, which is owned by the private equity firm Great Hill Partners, sold the satirical news site The Onion in April to a group of digital media veterans. It has also sold off Jezebel, Lifehacker, Deadspin and the A.V. Club in recent years. The websites it still owns are the business news site Quartz, the auto site Jalopnik, the gaming site Kotaku, the Black commentary and news site The Root and the reviews site The Inventory. In his memo on Tuesday, Mr. Spanfeller said that the advertising market, which the websites rely on heavily for revenue, was seeing signs of improvement and that G/O Media had seen “some terrific sales wins on both the direct and programmatic advertising fronts” in the past few months. Source link via The Novum Times

#The Novum Times

0 notes

mariacallous · 7 months

Text

Photographer Dmitry Markov died in Pskov on February 16. He was 41 years old. Markov was one of the most significant photographers in modern Russia. Not only did he chronicle everyday life in the country’s regions, but he also tried to make it better through volunteer work. Markov’s work was shown around the world, with exhibitions in Paris and New York. He took part in the advertising campaign for the iPhone 7. In fact, his smartphone was his primary camera for many years. Markov also worked as a photojournalist, including for Takie Dela and Meduza. Critic Anton Khitrov explains how the photographer gave himself a worthy artistic task — and how he brought it to fruition.

“You show the truth.” “Cowardly Russia.” “Your photos make my heart ache.” One only has to read the comments on Dmitry Markov’s Instagram to be convinced. The documentary photographer, who captured provincial Russia, had a large — over 800,00 Instagram followers — and grateful audience. People commented on his interview with Yury Dud three years ago with the same appreciation.

youtube

Markov was loved as both a brilliant storyteller and an outstanding person. Having overcome drug addiction, he took up volunteer work and converted his professional success into helping people. Markov began working with community organizations in the mid-2000s. Born in Pushkino near Moscow, he moved to Pskov and worked for Rostok, a charity organization that helps children with disabilities integrate into society.

Since 2012, Markov has participated in street protests, and in 2021, after being detained at a rally in support of Alexey Navalny, he took what was probably his most viral photo: a riot policeman in a balaclava sitting under a portrait of Vladimir Putin. Markov then organized an auction on Facebook to sell the photo. He received two million rubles ($21.6k) from an anonymous buyer and transferred it all to OVD-Info and Apologia Protesta: human rights organizations that help people who are arrested at political demonstrations.

Markov continued the tradition of unofficial Soviet photography, in which life in the USSR was shown without regard for ideological objectives. His tutor was Alexander Lapin, a photographer, theorist, and pedagogue, who taught Gennady Bodrov, Igor Mukhin, Emil Gataullin and other stars of the profession, and also wrote two famous textbooks: Photography as… and Plane and Space, or Life as a Square. Markov may also have been influenced by Boris Mikhailov, the famous Soviet-Ukrainian documentary photographer who, among other things, took pictures of homeless people.

If we look further, Markov belongs to the tradition of Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Gilyarovsky, of Ilya Repin and Nikolay Yaroshenko — to the artistic tradition in which art claims to be a truthful reflection of society and seeks to make invisible people visible.

Markov's main platform was Instagram, and his main tool was his smartphone. In 2013, he took part in a project by American David Alan Harvey called Burn Diary. For one week, Markov ran an Instagram account with the same name. According to the rules of the project, only photos taken on a phone could be published — and only on the day they were taken. Markov adopted the same principles for his own account. In an interview with Afisha Daily, he said that a photographer with professional equipment is less trustworthy than a photographer with a smartphone. It’s hard not to see the decision as a conceptual gesture: smartphones and social networks are tools of demonstrative consumption, but Markov uses them to show a life that’s as far from glossy as possible.

How are Markov’s images organized? First of all, they refer to the viewers’ cultural experience. The color palette is like that of an old Russian painting: for example, the frescoes of Dionisy in the Ferapontov Monastery. The composition often resembles a theatrical mise-en-scène: in the background — plain decoration, in the foreground — “actors” who move along the screen, as if from one stage entrance to the other, appearing and disappearing again. His characters often appear in a frame that resembles the frame of a painting or a stage entrance. Individual scenes call to mind Pieter Bruegel the Elder's “Hunters in the Snow,” a Renaissance portrait, or Alexander Deyneka's “Future Pilots.” Thus, Markov defends the place of his subjects in culture: provincial schoolchildren, laborers, commuters, and regulars at the city bathhouse — insisting that any person is worthy of our attention along with the subjects of globally recognized masterpieces.

Markov’s focus was often was the contrast between the official and the private, the artificial and the natural, the planned and the accidental. Komsomol teenagers walking near a monument to the first builders. Children relaxing under a statue of Lenin’s head in Ulan-Ude. A cat in a window squinting at a Russian flag. In the composition of the frame, state-approved symbols and living beings always balance each other out: in the world that Markov shows, at least the narratives of power are not omnipotent.

Markov’s creative strategy, which could be called alternative or protest patriotism, was in high demand. It unites the photographer with other cult heroes of Russian art, such as the artist Nikolay Polissky or director Kirill Serebrennikov, who has collaborated with Markov. The essence of this strategy is the search for a Russian identity that is different from the one offered to society by the authorities.

These artists are trying to strengthen the emotional bond between Russians and their country, even though propaganda has done everything possible to destroy it. The Nikola-Lenivets art park founded by Polissky redefines the image of the Russian village: not as a sanctuary of traditional morality, but as a space of play, irony and creativity. Serebrennikov’s Gogol Center, which was closed in 2022, fought for a progressive image of domestic classics, which propaganda treats as another instrument of Russian superiority. Markov spoke about the people hidden behind the “the people” of ideology — and gave the audience a chance to feel solidarity with a vendor at a clothing market, a pensioner from a district center, a rural chauffeur. He had a concrete and convincing answer to the question of why art is needed in Russia today: to rebuild the bridges destroyed by the authorities.

Markov’s solidarity with his subjects was always natural for him: he grew up in small-town courtyards in Pskov, a town of 190,000, washed in a local bathhouse, and never felt out of place in the environment of his work. Despite his international profile — projects with Apple, solo exhibitions in Moscow, Paris, and New York — he felt at ease with his subjects. For Markov, it was unthinkable not to feel this solidarity.

In the last days of his life, Markov faced criticism on social media: users were upset by his sympathy for a soldier on leave who intended to return to the front. The next day, he revealed that he was helping the conscripts he knew with money. “I can’t stop loving people close to me and start hating them,” he wrote. “And I realize that I’m a legitimate target for hatred on the part of Ukrainians. I don’t know how to do the right thing in this situation.” In 2024, no one has the right answer. One thing is certain: if Markov had lived through the war, he would certainly want to work on national reconciliation.

#Youtube

0 notes

fahrni · 9 months

Text

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

We’re expecting a snow and sleet event this morning. As I was composing this post it started raining around 6:30AM and it’s below freezing. Here’s hoping we don’t lose power and have frozen roads later. 🥶

I hope you enjoy the links.

Colleen Long • The Associated Press

President Joe Biden will stress democracy is still a ‘sacred cause’ in a speech near Valley Forge

If TFG wins we may become an authoritarian nation. Kiss freedoms we’ve come to expect — like the horrible reversal of Roe v. Wade — to become the norm. I’d expect to see jailed political rivals and journalists. The Justice Department and Military will become law enforcement. With the law being his Orangeness.

No thank you.

Brynn Tannehill • The New Republic

The Polls Prove It: Many Republicans Love Fascism

So, yeah, fascism is the new GOP policy and Republicans across the nation love it.

That’s sickening.

Slashdot

Niklaus Wirth, Inventor of Pascal, Dies At 89

I never learned Pascal but know plenty of developers who made their career using it. 🪦

Casey Newton • Platformer

On Tuesday, I told subscribers that we are considering leaving the platform based on the company’s recent statement that it would not demonetize or remove openly Nazi accounts.

Bravo Casey! I wasn’t planning on linking to any Substack content but I had to break that rule for this piece. Casey is planning on doing something about Substack’s horrible position by, potentially, taking his publication and subscribers elsewhere. That’s very brave given it’s how he makes his living! ❤️

Now, if we can get other writers to follow that would be amazing.

BBC

Japan earthquake: Nearly 250 missing as hope for survivors fades

Our world has become such a mess the tragedy unfolding in Japan doesn’t even register as big news, at least that’s how it feels to me.

Kyle Orland • Ars Technica

34 years later, a 13-year-old hits the NES Tetris “kill screen”

Great explainer video of how the true Tetris Kill Screen was finally reached.

Also, I had no idea Tetris was still such a big deal. Silly me, of course it is! 🧱

Ashur Cabrera

I thought I’d be sharing photos of pintxos and more Basque lettering from Donostia-San Sebastián, and diving into our early experiences of living abroad.

My friend Ashur had planned a big adventure that didn’t quite work out as planned. It’s a worthwhile read and proves things don’t always go as planned.

David McCabe and Tripp Mickle • The New York Times

The Justice Department is in the late stages of an investigation into Apple and could file a sweeping antitrust case taking aim at the company’s strategies to protect the dominance of the iPhone as soon as the first half of this year, said three people with knowledge of the matter.

Some of the things the Justice Department are interested in seen really strange to me. Like allowing access to the Messages Service. Why should Google, or whoever else, be given the keys to access Messages backend services? Apple created and runs that service. It’s not built on a free to use, government backed, open-to-the-public utility. It’s paid for and maintained by Apple.

Now, if by access the government means Apple has to open it up as a paid service, I could see that. Perhaps Google agrees to take on some of the cost burden, based on usage, or pay Apple some huge fee so Android users have full access to Messages with a native messaging app built by Google. That wouldn’t be so bad. Another alternative is for Apple to build a Messages app for Android and sell access to the service as a monthly subscription. Hey, Apple, that means more service revenue! 😁

The whole App Store payment kerfuffle is something a lot of developers would like to see changed. I think most developers don’t want to pay Apple 15-30% of their potential revenue. That can be a lot of cheese for many Indie developers. There are some things Apple could change to help the situation, like allowing developers to actually tell users to visit their website to sign up or subscribe to their service. E.G. Amazon and Netflix cannot tell new users, through their app UI, to visit their website to get started. For a company who prides themselves on simplicity and great user experience sure do make it difficult for third-party apps to be easy to use.

Anywho, I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for the Justice Department taking action against Apple and fallout from it.

Dave Winer • Scripting News

So at the beginning of a new year, I’m going to remind myself that I’m too old and not paid well enough (I’m not paid at all, heh) to do another year of this kind of work. I should be making writing and reading tools work better on the web. That’s my mission.

Dave has been an innovator all his adult life. Whether it was scripting on the Mac and Windows or creating widely used technology like RSS and podcasting. Since he sold weblogs.com and left UserLand he’s continued to build writing tools of various kinds. His latest venture is FeedLand. It’s a feed reader and more. I can personally see it as a mechanism to follow and find excellent podcasts for a podcast player. Yes, it has an API that could be used for such things and it has full search capability. Bet you didn’t see that use case coming!

Anywho, I hope you get some rest, Dave, and have a wonderful 2024 making the web a better place for writers.

Keep digging!

Tim Kellogg

Back in the ’00s you would download a feed reader and subscribe to feeds. This felt a lot like an early version of social media. Google Reader was killed in 2013, which was largely seen as the death of RSS. I think social media generally replaced RSS because it took far fewer technical skills to setup a Facebook account versus an RSS-enabled blog.

This is interesting because it uses Mastodon as a feed reader. That’s not a bad idea, really. It’s such a good idea to have a timeline based reader I made one! 😁

All the stuff Tim says about Facebook and other social media platforms is 100% accurate. Those platforms stood in for blogs because of their low barrier to entry. Quite honestly I’m surprised Facebook never embraced blogging as a true feature of its platform, complete with all the expected bells and whistles, and that includes RSS and posts that don’t require a Facebook login to read them.

Anil Dash

Well, things changed a little bit in tech of late. Often, the power shifts in the tech world because of a dramatic new invention that solves an old problem a whole lot better. But in the current era, when most of what’s getting funded and hyped up are just various attempts to undermine workers and control consumers, we’re instead seeing lots of major players lose power because their signature offerings have gotten so much worse.

There was a time, not that long ago, folks said things like “RSS is dead” or asked “Is RSS dead?” First off, it’s just a technology, so it can’t actually die. Second, its web fabric and has been since its inception. It’s boring stuff — this is not a dig or insult, it’s a compliment. It’s as boring as HTML or CSS. I’d imagine it’s been used for all sorts of stuff beyond blogs over its history and it’ll probably be around for as long as we have a web to browse.

Sure social media, or microblogging, took center stage for a while. My own blogging slowed for a long period of time because I started posting little blurbs of text to Twitter instead of my blog.

Now I do that with a combination of Mastodon and Micro.blog. Short posts go to Mastodon and Micro.blog and long posts, like this one, go to my blog with a link on many services including Mastodon, Micro.blog, Blue Sky, and Tumblr.

My blog is at the center. It’s my content, I own it.

Matt Birchler

Here’s an uncomfortable question: when do I stop blogging?

I always find this question odd. I figure I’ll stop when, or if, I just stop one day. I suppose folks who do it professionally have to think about stuff like this, especially if they have subscribers and/or advertisers.

Maybe when the day comes that you’d like to stop doing it for a living you just let folks know you’re going to blog about whatever you’d like and do it for fun?

I’ve been blogging since February 2001 and still love it.

Rain Noe • Core77

A Handsome Aluminum and Ultem Smartphone Case

I want one of these. Guess I need to buy an iPhone 14 or 15 Pro? Having an updated iPhone would also open the door to a whole lot of cases I love at Cotton Bureau. 😃

Chance Miller, Benjamin Mayo, Ben Lovejoy, and Ben Schoon • 9to5Mac

The iPhone is the device that pushed the mobile industry away from physical keyboards, but nothing can truly replace that tactile experience. Launching next month, “Clicks” aims to add a physical keyboard to your iPhone with support for keyboard shortcuts and backlighting too.

In 2013 Ryan Seacrest was part of an effort to bring a physical keyboard to the iPhone. It was called Typo and I never heard much about it beyond the initial announcement. I could’ve sworn it was earlier than 2013, but my memory sometimes fails me.

Anyway, I hope these folks are wildly successful. Good luck y’all!

Richard Devine • Windows Central

The best holiday gift was Mac losing out to Windows, at least according to these stats

It’s obvious some Windows users and pundits still have an inferiority complex when it comes to the Mac. It’s surprising.

I’m an old, long time, Windows developer and I owe a lot to the platform. I spent around 20 years writing code for Windows and I still believe it to be an amazing platform for users and developers. But I switched to the Mac full time in 2006 and have grown to enjoy it every bit as much as Windows.

It’s perfectly fine to love using a different operating system or prefer coding for one over the other. Let people have fun and enjoy what they love doing. ❤️

Here’s hoping 2024 isn’t a complete shit show. 🤣

0 notes

blast0rama · 9 months

Text

The DoJ decides to go after Apple because why not

The New York Times (that should be a gift link)

OK, so I wrote a random one off line on BlueSky/Mastodon about this, but I think there’s more to get into.

Let’s start: “The dominance of the iPhone”. Per random data that I could quickly look up online — Apple has roughly 17 percent of the market. That’s behind Samsung.

We clearly have a different understanding of the word “dominant”.

The agency is focused on how Apple has used its control over its hardware and software to make it more difficult for consumers to ditch the company’s devices, as well as for rivals to compete, said the people, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was active.

OK, what do they mean here? Let’s continue on.

Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system for the iPhone, which blocks other financial firms from offering similar services, these people said.

OK, cool. So let’s next go after Nintendo for not making games for the Xbox and PlayStation. Or Sony for not allowing third party controllers to work better than the first party DualSense. Or McDonald’s, not letting other places sell the Big Mac or the McNugget.

The Apple suit would likely be even more expansive than previous challenges to the company, attacking its powerful business model that draws together the iPhone with devices like the Apple Watch and services like Apple Pay to attract and keep consumers loyal to its products. Rivals have said that they have been denied access to key Apple features, like the Siri virtual assistant, prompting them to argue the practices are anticompetitive.

Just because someone develops something a certain way, and your stuff doesn’t work with it, isn’t anticompetitive. It’s an ecosystem. Google has it. Samsung has it. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have it in gaming.

They have also looked at how the Apple Watch works better alongside the iPhone than other competing smartwatches. Users of Garmin devices have complained in Apple’s support forums about being unable to use their watches to reply to certain text messages from their iPhones or tweak the notifications they receive from the iPhone that they have connected to their watch.

This maybe has a point. But, god, what a fraction of a fraction of an argument.

Apple’s new privacy tool, App Tracking Transparency, which allows iPhone users to explicitly choose whether an app can track them, drew scrutiny because of its curtailing of user data collection by advertisers. Advertising companies have said that the tool is anticompetitive.

Changing how a piece of technology works is not anticompetitive. Especially when Apple does not compete in advertising. If they start running their own ad networks against Google and Meta, and those get around ATT, sure. Anticompetitive. But you can��t be anticompetitive if you aren’t competing. It’s in the goddamned word.

Apple isn’t totally innocent here. I think their stance towards third party applications or app stores on the iPhone and iPad is silly, especially given that you can do the same thing on a Mac right now today. But this is inane.

John Gruber did a much more eloquent version of this post strictly on the whole Beeper thing last month, and I’m sure he’ll have something on Daring Fireball about this soon, but my thoughts can be summed up pretty easily…

We really fucking need younger people who understand technology in key positions of government.

I can’t wait for another big public hearing where Senator Oldasfuck starts asking Tim Cook why it’s so goddamned hard for him to print his photos from his phone, why is everything he writes in all caps, and what the HELL is a PDF anyway?

0 notes

compellingselling · 11 months

Text

youtube

Four ways to handle the “the bitter pill” of your product message

“Commercials are like getting my dog to take his medicine,” a creative director of mine used to say. “You take the bitter pill and wrap it in something he loves, like baloney. That’s what we’re doing with humor in these spots.”

One format is to share something funny and connect it to your product at the very end.

Berlitz “Mayday”

Hamlet “Photo booth”

Little Caesar’s “Good news”

iPhone “Detective”

Another format is the donut. You have some fun, sometime past the halfway point you give the message/medicine, and then a “button” – an extra little joke at the end. Bud Light and Snickers used this format for many years.

Bud Light “Paper or Plastic”

Bud Light “Ladies’ Night”

Snickers “Chefs”

Snickers “Team Prayer”

BBDO New York sometimes puts the sell at the front of the spot. That’s what their new ad for SAP with the cake gag does.

FedEx “Half pipe”

FedEx “Mr. Turkey Neck”

In a world where people can be forced to watch your ad for 6 seconds and then click away, it may not be a bad way to go. But in mediums where you have to earn every second of viewing, it might chase some people away early on. There’s also a danger of your schtick erasing any memory of the sales message.

These three approaches are all valid ways to go. I think the best way to use humor is to make the product key to the story.

Tabasco “Mosquito”

Snickers “Betty White”

John Smith’s “New dog”

AT&T “Attic watch party"

Any formats for 30s that I’m missing that hide the medicine in a different place?

#ads #advertising #adverts #creative advertising #advertising education #commercials #ad #tv commercials #SAP #Youtube

1 note · View note

yaso711 · 1 year

Text

The biggest IPO of the year is here! Arm surged nearly 25% on its first day of listing, with a market value exceeding US$65 billion

Tickmill Group

The world’s largest IPO this year is here!

On September 14, local time, Arm Holdings Co., Ltd. ("Arm") was officially listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Arm's stock code is "ARM" and the issue price is set at US$51.00 per share; it opened up 10% to US$56.10; it rose by about 30% during the session, reaching US$66.28. As of the close of the first day, Arm's share price rose 24.69% to US$63.59. If calculated based on the closing price, Arm's market value on the first day of listing was US$65.248 billion. If including restricted stock units, Arm's fully diluted valuation is close to US$68 billion.

“Today, in New York, USA, and at Arm offices around the world, we are celebrating Arm going public and entering a new chapter in building the future of computing.” said Arm CEO Rene Haas. “Over the past 33 years of the company’s history, Arm’s employees have , partners and the entire ecosystem have worked together to promote the development of the Arm computing platform, and I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to you all."

Public information shows that Arm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp., the world's leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) provider and one of the most important companies in the global technology field. Official website data shows that 95% of the world’s smartphones, including Apple iPhones and Android phones, use the Arm architecture.

Despite the downturn in the U.S. stock issuance market, Arm’s IPO was sought after by investors. Due to strong demand, Arm's previous roadshow was oversubscribed by 10 times. The investment bank responsible for underwriting the IPO ended the subscription one day in advance, that is, on the afternoon of September 12, local time. In addition, Arm's underwriters have an over-allotment option to purchase up to 7 million additional American depositary shares within 30 days from the date of the final prospectus.

Tickmill

Arm has also reserved up to $735 million in ADSs for cornerstone investors. The Paper noted that most of Arm’s cornerstone investors are major customers, including Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Google, Intel, MediaTek, TSMC, Synopsys and Cadence Electronics. During Arm’s roadshow, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also appeared and said that Nvidia’s new Grace Hopper AI “super chip” would not be possible without Arm’s architecture, the incredible performance and business model of Arm CPU.

Arm's $51 pricing is at the top end of the range, with its initial pricing range set at $47 to $51 per share. In the end, Arm issued 95.5 million American depositary shares at a price of US$51, raising US$4.87 billion, and its valuation reached US$54.5 billion. If calculated based on the latest fiscal year's net profit of US$524 million, Arm's price-to-earnings ratio for this issuance is as high as 104 times, which is already close to Nvidia's static price-to-earnings ratio of 108 times.

Industry insiders hope that Arm, as this year's largest IPO, can reignite the U.S. IPO market that has been sluggish for two years. "Arm's successful IPO will definitely help boost confidence," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Financial.

In 2016, SoftBank Group acquired Arm for US$32 billion, kicking off the Vision Fund’s investment. But within just a few years, the Vision Fund's portfolio fell into losses.

In 2020, SoftBank Group had planned to sell Arm to Nvidia for US$40 billion. However, because Arm is the world's largest smartphone chip IP design supplier, the ownership issue involved the global semiconductor industry structure, and the final sale plan was blocked due to regulatory restrictions. Opposition resulted in "abortion".

In 2022, as global technology stocks plummeted and the yen depreciated, the Vision Fund's investment income further deteriorated. After SoftBank Group recorded its largest single-quarter loss since the company was founded, its liquidity requirements increased and it began to sell its various assets on a large scale. After selling 9% of Alibaba shares last year to cash out $34.5 billion, SoftBank Group's current largest equity investment asset is Arm, which accounts for 16%.Tickmill Group

In other words, if Arm can be successfully listed, it will greatly improve the financial status of SoftBank Group and the Vision Fund. As a result, SoftBank Group and founder Masayoshi Son began to focus on promoting Arm’s listing plan, and submitted an IPO application to the U.S. regulatory authorities in April this year.

The successful listing of Arm will become the world’s largest IPO this year. By then, Arm will also become the third largest IPO in technology history, second only to Alibaba’s US$25 billion IPO in 2014 and Meta Platforms Inc. (the parent company of Facebook)’s US$16 billion IPO in 2012.Tickmill Group

#ipo #initial public offering

0 notes