Opinion

I volunteer as tribute! • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in EC Future of Work, EC Media, elon buys twitter, Elon Musk, Opinion, parody, Social, TwitterNo Comments

It’s not every day that an opportunity like this comes around. After working at Twitter for years, I’m finally being asked to do more with less. I’ve always wanted fewer co-workers, a manic boss, reduced communication, and non-stop chaos. And if I do well, I’ll help save the richest person alive both money and pride! Can you imagine a better offer? Let me explain. You see, there’s a man called Elon Musk. He’s very involved in a bunch of projects and doesn’t like to work in any single office. Heck, Elon doesn’t even work for just one company! He’s in charge of a bevy of concerns that keep him rather occupied. You can even track his jet as he flies about, busy as a bee. (It makes perfect sense that the leader should not have to work in an office while I am required to report to my cubicle daily — after all, the wealthy are our moral superiors!) But after he corralled a host of rich folks to invest and underwrite his hostile takeover of Twitter, things got sticky for poor Elon. He’s a big tweeter, you see, and before he owned the website, he could post whatever he wanted and get away with it. Remember that time he tweeted that he had the capital to take Tesla private? That was a tiny error, but Elon is still in charge of Tesla, collecting the lion’s share of the wealth on the backs of others. So it all came out fine!

Drones in cities are a bad idea • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in delivery drones, drones, Hardware, Opinion, Robotics & AI, TransportationNo Comments

It’s year five, or maybe ten, of “drones are going to revolutionize transport” and so far, we’ve got very little to show for it. Maybe it’s time to put these foolish ambitions to rest and focus on where this technology could actually do some good, rather than pad out a billionaire’s bottom line or let the rich skip traffic. The promise of drone deliveries, drone taxis, and personal drone attendants has never sat, or rather floated, right with me. There’s so little to be gained, while braving so much liability and danger, and necessitating so much invention and testing. Why is anyone even pursuing this? I suspect it is the Jetsons-esque technotopianism instilled in so many of us from birth: It’s only a matter of time and effort before we have the flying cars, subliminal learning pillows, and robot housekeepers we deserve, right? It feels like because we have things that fly, and things that can navigate autonomously, we should be able to put those things together and make delivery drones and air taxis. Just have to wait for the right genius kid building the future out of their garage, with the help of your friendly neighborhood VCs. Of course it’s not quite that easy. And although the Jetsons mentality explains our acceptance of the development of these technologies — unlike others that we disapprove of for their impracticability, cost, or ethics — it doesn’t really explain why a company like Amazon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue it. The answer there, fortunately, is as clear as why Amazon does anything. To paraphrase Dr Johnson: “Sir, no man but a blockhead ever [spent a decade trying to build an autonomous drone delivery network], except for money.” That’s certainly the case with drone delivery. Amazon has made no secret of its intention to take over the logistics and delivery industry bite by bite, partly through sideways subsidy from other parts of its lucrative, mutually buttressed businesses, and partly with a punishing franchise model that offloads risk and liability onto contractors. That said, the end goal is, as in its warehouses, to replace those flesh and blood workers with tireless automatons. The best evidence for this is that Amazon’s warehouses already treat workers as if they are components in a machine, so it’s just a matter of swapping out a worn out part with another, more reliable part that doesn’t try to unionize. Same with delivery. High hopes Image Credits: Amazon But in the last-mile world, drones are kind of a funny idea. Certainly it has its merits: many packages are small and light and a drone could skip traffic or travel in a straight line over residential blocks to cut hours off delivery times. But that’s before you reckon with any of the actual needs or restrictions of the logistics world. To begin with, drones wouldn’t even cover the last mile — more like the last few hundred meters. Part of the reason for this is regulatory; it’s extremely unlikely that Amazon could procure a permit to fly its drones over all the private property in a city. The liability is just too damn high. Sure, you can do some sweetheart test markets in a random suburb, but good luck convincing urban areas to let commercial drones infest their skies at all hours. So what are they going to do, fly along the streets? High enough that they don’t hit any wires or trees? Carrying a 1-pound package? Only at certain hours? It isn’t particularly efficient! And then, the first time one of those packages or drones drops out of the sky and cracks a windshield next to a grade school, those drones are done in that city, and probably every other city. Done! Even if they could guarantee no accidents, no one wants those things flying around their neighborhood. Best case scenario is: fucking annoying. Drones are pretty loud, and it’s not even the kind of loud you can get used to, like the dull roar of a freeway a few blocks off. No, drones make the most annoying sound in the world short of Jeff Bezos’s laugh. Small ones, big ones, they all sound horrible. There are advances to be brought to bear here, but really, when you have 4 to 8 little rotors spinning at however many thousand RPMs and moving the necessary air downwards to lift a couple dozen pounds of body and payload, you tend to create a certain amount of truly obnoxious noise. That’s just the physics of the thing. If we could make helicopters quiet we would have done so by now. Even if we allow these drones dominion over the air and let them fly with impunity, they’re laughably limited. Where do packages go normally? In a big clearing in your building’s courtyard? On the roof? No, they go to the lobby, which locks, or perhaps in a parcel box… which locks. As commerce has moved online, parcel delivery has skyrocketed, and so has parcel theft. Imagine if a package made a really loud whining noise wherever it went then was guaranteed to be left out in the open somewhere. It’s a really frictionless experience for the criminals, at least. Image Credits: Walmart A drone can’t ring a doorbell or buzz your apartment (unless you hook it into your smart home infrastructure — best of luck with that). It doesn’t have a key to the lobby. It can’t ask you for a signature. Cities are diverse and complex physical environments with a wide variety of obstacles, methods, and requirements for making a package go from here to there in a safe and satisfactory way. We haven’t figured out how any robot can successfully deliver something without the recipient coming out to get it immediately, and doing it from the sky is even harder. Air-dropping is one of the worst possible ways (outside of combat) to deliver anything, only slightly better than yeeting it over the fence — admittedly common,

Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera has a fatal, really dumb, totally avoidable flaw • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Camera phone, Google, Google Pixel, Google Pixel 7 Pro, Hardware, OpinionNo Comments

A lot has been written about how incredible Google Pixel 7 Pro’s camera is. The camera itself gets no beef from me. Last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt, Brian and I were gawking in amazement at how well the 5x optical zoom lens does, for example. We had plenty of opportunities to contrast and compare. During Disrupt, I was shooting with about $6,000 worth of camera equipment and as my files were downloading from my mirrorless camera’s SD cards, I snapped this photo: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt using the Google Pixel 7 Pro’s 5x optical zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia Granted, my dedicated Sony A7r3 with a 70-200 f/2.8 lens is still capable of taking better photos; a giant hunking piece of glass and a full-frame sensor is hard to beat: Photo taken at ZebethMedia Disrupt with a Sony A7r3 camera and a Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia But let’s be clear — for the purposes of shooting pictures for the web, in good light, the Pixel 7 Pro gives it a pretty serious run for its money, at a fraction of the cost. As soon as I saw the design of the Pixel 7 Pro (and, for that matter, the 7, which has the same stupid gaffe), however, I spotted a pretty fantastically stupid design flaw. That beautiful metal front surrounding the lenses does a great job for marketing purposes. If I point my Pixel 7 Pro at you, there’s no way you’ll mistake it for an iPhone, a Pixel 6 or any other camera on the market. Well done, Google’s industrial designers, for creating an eminently recognizable phone. No doubt, it’ll be a conversation starter for a lot of folks. The problem with adding any light or reflective surfaces, however, is that it becomes exponentially harder to take photos through reflective surfaces: windows, primarily. As a photographer, I wouldn’t generally recommend that you shoot through glass, but let’s be honest; sometimes we’re in a car, on a plane or in a building, and we might want to shoot a time-lapse or a photo or two. It’s a pretty common use case for most photography applications, which makes it all the harder to grok why Google went out of its way to make that experience worse. This really is a Camera Design 101 choice of epic stupidity. Image Credits: Haje Kamps / ZebethMedia I have a number of friends who have vinyl cutters, and the solution is simple: a small strip of matte black vinyl covering up the high-gloss reflective surface on the front of the phone. I might be the only person in the world who cares about this, so it feels silly even to complain, but damn it, Google Pixel is positioning itself as the best camera phone out there, and this is such a fantastically n00b mistake that I’m truly flabbergasted at how the hardware giant could make such a dumb misstep, after getting it right for so long. I imagine there will soon be an aftermarket niche for stickers covering up the chrome, and I hope Google doesn’t made a mistake this silly again in the future.

Starlink isn’t a charity, but the Ukraine war isn’t a business opportunity • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 15, 2022Posted in Government & Policy, Opinion, Space, SpaceX, starlink, Ukraine warNo Comments

What appeared earlier this year to be a selfless act of technotopianism, the widespread deployment of Starlink terminals in Ukraine, has soured as SpaceX and governments disagree on who ultimately should foot the bill of this unprecedented aid campaign. Some expect Elon Musk — one of the richest men in the world — to cough up, while others say the world’s richest military should as well. Both claims have merit, but this game of financial chicken will cost Ukrainian lives. The effort began in late February, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Musk said Starlink terminals were “on the way” but provided little detail. Many took this minimal, rather promotional approach to mean what it clearly implies: that SpaceX was providing the terminals itself, either gratis or with some understanding as to their purchase. The latter proved to be the case as it came out that the U.S. Agency for International Development had paid for some, the Polish and other European governments for more, and various militaries and NGOs contributing for the cost of transport, installation, and apparently the monthly fees for the service itself. USAID described “a range of stakeholders” providing a first wave of support totaling around $15 million at the time. But the costs weren’t a one-time thing. Musk recently tweeted that 25,000 terminals have been deployed in Ukraine, 5 times the original shipment — thousands have been destroyed in the fighting, and more are needed. The connectivity costs $4,500 per month, supposedly, for the highest tier of service. Going by estimates noted by CNN, that adds up to around $75 million per month in ongoing costs. Some understandably questioned the wisdom of relying on this new and unproven tech in a battlefield, but reports from the country’s military suggest it has been very helpful. The fact is the capability was accepted in the spirit it was offered, and used to the most of its capacity, but the length and scale of the war have caused the situation around Starlink to evolve beyond its original scope. It’s true that SpaceX can’t be held completely accountable for tens of millions of dollars in costs, free service, or lost income (however the money should be defined). But it’s no good playing the victim either: they went into this eyes open with the intention of providing an expensive and essential service in a war-torn country, apparently with no real plan to cover the cost. On the other hand, the governments walked into this too. They can’t possibly have expected SpaceX to cover the cost of the hardware and software on its own, or if they did, they should have gotten it in writing. But having funded part of it, does that mean they’re on the hook for all of it? Meanwhile Ukraine’s military has come to rely on the service, and are right in saying that whatever happens, whoever has to write whomever an I.O.U., the terminals must stay on — or soldiers defending their country will be put in direct and immediate danger. This 3-way standoff has no easy resolution, so let’s start with what we know needs to happen: Starlink connectivity must continue in Ukraine at nominal cost to them, not forever but indefinitely. Any other outcome is too disastrous for everyone involved. So the internet stays on. Who pays for it? If SpaceX wants anyone to take its request seriously, it needs to play ball, and that means transparency as to the actual costs and payments involved. It goes without saying that Musk must discontinue his vexatious, narcissistic antics — too much is at stake for him indulge in his usual egotism. Taxpayers in a dozen countries have already paid for it and will in all likelihood continue to for months, if not years. What are the actual costs involved? $4,500 per terminal for access seems excessive, for one thing — that’s retail rate for early adopters, not a bulk rate for government partners in a life-saving operation. The Pentagon may not be a paragon of thrift but to charge full price in this situation is unseemly. (Not to mention this is probably the best possible PR the company could get while it’s trying to drum up demand for its real consumer service. Money cannot buy this kind of exposure.) Governments also need to pick a number and be firm about what can and can’t be provided as part of the aid package. Ukrainian officials would no doubt love it if every available Starlink terminal was shipped next day to the country, but that’s not possible, the way other forms of aid that would be helpful are not possible, for instance certain military assets that are too costly or difficult to spare. The cost of supporting the Ukrainian defense is large, and the U.S. is dedicating billions to that cause. How much of that money will be earmarked for Starlink connectivity? Pick a number and start negotiating. Is it $10 million per month? $20 million? What do those costs depend on, how will they be tracked? SpaceX can take that sum and provide an agreed-upon level of service and hardware. As much as everyone appreciates the fast movement on this back in February, a few hasty phonecalls and “we can make that happen” conversations does not constitute a long-term plan for covering the cost of a deployment that has grown to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and numerous Ukrainian lives. Like any compromise, it will leave everyone a bit unhappy — but it won’t leave anyone disconnected, shafted, or dead. This complicated and awkward situation is the result of inadequate preparation and communication by a constantly shifting group of stakeholders. What is needed from SpaceX and its government partners is not finger-pointing but transparency and commitment.

OG App, what exactly was your end game here? • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 10, 2022Posted in Apps, business model, copyright infringement, Instagram, Opinion, Startups, The OG AppNo Comments

A couple of weeks ago, Apple removed the OG App from its app store, and today Google followed suit, booting the app from its platform as well. And I’m left scratching my head wondering what the end game was for the founders of the OG App. As far as I can tell, the company basically made a new version of Instagram that strips the advertising out, and brings back the non-algorithmic feed. Don’t get me wrong, I would love that, but there’s no universe in which it was going to be a good idea to essentially steal a bunch of content from Meta (née Facebook), repackage it and feed that content to users. You see, businesses have to make money, and in the case of Instagram, that means showing advertising to its users. “Everyone knows Instagram sucks. We made it better and got a lot of love from users. But Facebook hates its own users so much, it’s willing to crush an alternative that gives them a clean, ad-free Instagram. Apple is colluding with Facebook to bully two teenagers who made Instagram better,” the startup said in a statement to ZebethMedia for Ivan’s story. And that’s where I’m just left shaking my head — that isn’t hating your users, that is protecting the only way you have to make money. Literally any company in the world would fight to protect its bottom line, and stealing wholesale from a mega-corporation with a $360 billion market cap is not a great way to build a startup. The app — and its tens of thousands of downloads — does illustrate one thing though, which is that people are getting pretty bored of Instagram’s ad-heavy business, and according to Sarah’s recent reporting, things are going to get a lot worse. But if you don’t like it, your option is to stop using the offending platform and switch to another. The people behind the OG App will be extraordinarily lucky if it turns out that getting the app yanked from the app stores is the worst thing that happens to them, and as much as I want to encourage young entrepreneurs, I’m really confused why nobody around them stopped them for long enough to say “uhm, maybe this isn’t a great idea.”