Tumbl*ng with Tim

Tumblelog of technology industry analyst Tim Hickernell. The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not reflect the opinions or recommendations of my employer.

[analyst]

America’s Electric Grid Has a Vulnerable Back Door—and Russia Walked Through It

A Wall Street Journal reconstruction of the worst known hack into the nation’s power system reveals attacks on hundreds of small contractors. The hackers then worked their way up the supply chain. Some experts believe two dozen or more utilities ultimately were breached.

Nothing really new in technique here. People have been hacking email accounts to gain access to your contacts, to send fake documents and forms to fill out and return and phish for UserIDs and passwords for over 20 years.

IMPORTANT LESSON here is, once again, DO NOT TRUST EMAIL (or unsolicited phone calls claiming to be from your providers, customers etc.). Never provide personal or business information in an email to anyone. Call them on the phone at the number you have on file (NOT any contact info inside the email or by returning a call from your cell phone call log) and manually verify authenticity of suspect emails. If they really did ask for personal information in an email, then search for another provider; they are an accident waiting to happen and they need to be taken to the security "wood shed."

[analyst]

How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

Washington DC has made GitHub the authoritative digital source for DC laws.

Another great use for Github that is other than what it was created for.

[analyst]

Meet the US Navy's new $13 billion aircraft carrier

The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) is the most technologically advanced warship ever built.

Not only does the Gerald R. Ford continue the tradition of the Virginia Class subs, by using 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD), they have the entire ship's systems ported to an augmented reality engine, so the crew can access it from small tablets. If you've ever worked in an industrial plant as I have, just think about pointing a tablet's camera at a system or component and instantly having access to current operational metrics/data as well as operating procedures, drawings and surveillance data and trends. I used to be an ASME Section XI trend analyst at a nuclear power plant, where we did the surveillance trending by hand, on paper charts, and there was no access to them in the field.

[analyst]

EU: Maybe It's Time Apple Ditched Lightning for USB

For the past decade, the European Commission has been using voluntary agreements to encourage the tech industry to get behind a universal charger. But Apple's Lightning connector solution isn't cutting it for some EU officials anymore.

This is a perfect example of why socialist Nanny State regulations on every aspect of your daily life can't keep up with innovation like free markets can. I assure you that Apple has ALREADY made the decision to dump the Lightning Connector, but hasn’t officially announced it. But not in favor of USB. They will be dumping all physical connectors in favor of wireless charging and using WiFi and Bluetooth for wirelessly connecting accessories. The driver is simple: smartphone security hacks continue through the physical connectors, Lightning or USB. (Apple Watch has used only wireless charging and wireless connections since it debuted five years ago.) The inclusion of wireless iPhone charging last year was a prelude to this in order to build a third-party market for wireless chargers. They haven't announced this yet, but I think we may see it as early as in 2019 iPhones and maybe iPads. They need a solid third-party charger market and they need to make a decision on including a wireless charger by default, and how that may impact price and profit margins, or just not including one and forcing people to buy one. (Microsoft does this for their surface keyboards, which are NOT included with the base configuration.) In any event, the Nanny State is once again way behind the times.

[analyst]

Everyone is Wrong About the i9 MacBook Pro (2018)

The super hot i9 Apple MacBook Pro 15 inch. Now with 200% more thermal throttling, right? Here's my i9 vs i7 MacBook Pro performance review! MacBook Pro 15 (...

“Thermal-Gate”? I don’t thinks so.

Thanks to Jonathan Morrison for bringing some testing sanity to this issue. I think he nailed the real issue. While the original tester didn't try and hide the fact that he was using raw Red footage and Adobe Premiere Pro, software known for not being optimized for these processor cores, that still constitutes a worst-case user testing scenario. I would also question if it's even a realistic scenario. Someone can afford Red camera equipment but they do all of their rendering on a laptop? Who does that? If you can afford Red cameras, you buy a tricked out desktop optimized for high-end video editing. Morrison’s tests were much more indicative of real world scenarios and he proved that the software is an important variable, i. e. Adobe Premier Pro v. Apple Final Cut. That doesn't excuse the fact that thermal cooling is an issue in laptops with i9s. But that's really an Intel problem, IMHO, for pushing these processors onto thin laptop manufacturers without advising them that the processors need some major cooling for high-end usage scenarios, usage scenarios generally not recommended for laptops to begin with. 

[analyst]

All Ears: Always-On Listening Devices Could Soon Be Everywhere

Tiny microphones are moving us toward a world in which all gadgets can respond to a voice command. For those worried about privacy: meet a $200 trash can.

Once again the focus is erroneously on technology rather than the real barrier to voice activated everything: a lack of voice UIs that understand natural language queries.

Twenty years ago search technology started focusing on natural language typed queries. But the early voice systems required the user to learn to speak in a metadata-like query language. Think Captain Picard, “Tea, earl grey, hot.” But linguists and technologists got it reversed. People speak natural language and prefer to type in brief keywords. (What do you think drove people to create an entirely new language for text messaging?) People still type keywords into search engines and other query UIs, despite any natural language capabilities they have. But trying to learn to speak in the exact manner that voice query engines demand has become the butt of late-night comedy. 

Voice activated UIs aren’t finally taking off just because of advancements in microphones, but rather because people can finally start to speak naturally to them.

[analyst]

Supreme Court Rules States Can Require Online Merchants to Collect Sales Tax

States have the authority to require online retailers to collect sales taxes, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, erasing a price advantage internet merchants have had in wooing consumers away from real-world stores.

A bad and unnecessary ruling, but not unexpected.

The ruling is based on some myths about sales taxes and online commerce, not any real economic evidence. 

First, online retailers that have operations in a particular state already do collect sales tax for the state from their customers. This covers the generic concern that if you do business in a state physically, you are using tax payer funded resources. For example, Amazon.com collects full sales tax on goods sold to Illinois residents. These companies also pay full property taxes on the property they own for their operations, unless they were given a temporary exemption by politicians in exchange for the jobs they bring in.

The biggest myth though is that even in states where an online retailer does not have operations, traditional retailers suffer and therefore online retailers should have to collect sales tax to “even the playing field.” This myth has already been proven false. It is based upon the false assumption that consumers buy from online retailers because of perceived lower costs due to no sales tax. If this were true, then for the almost two decades some states have been collecting sales taxes from online retailers with a local presence, the situation for brick and mortar retailers would have improved. The opposite has happened. Even in those states, like Illinois, people continue to buy more from online retailers. Sales tax has had no impact on consumer behavior. This is because the consumer’s perception of value from online retailers has little if anything to do with taxes. It has more to do with convenience of ordering at home, the ability of online retailers to supply “infinite shelf-space” improving variety and options, and finally the convenience of home delivery. That is why consumers in states like Illinois continue to choose online retailers even though they have to pay sales taxes.

What may be the saddest part of this decision is that once again our Supreme Court Justices are completely out of touch with the impact of technology on markets, especially competition. If we do have a Constitutional Convention, I hope the delegates consider placing term limits on judges as well as Congress.

[analyst]

What the Golden State Killer case means for your genetic privacy - CNN

[analyst]

Amazon Narrows Choices for ‘HQ2’ to 20

Amazon named 20 metropolitan areas as finalists for its second headquarters after reviewing 238 proposals from across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. New York, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, and Indianapolis are among the choices.

I think this pretty much illustrates that Asia is an important part of Amazon's future. Look at the cluster close to the most used polar air routes between Asia and NA, with Chicago and Toronto of course being the busiest existing markets with the most and shortest Arctic flights to/from major Asian business centers. This has already benefitted Chicago with Boeing and CAT relocating here, both to put in more face time with Asian buyers and suppliers.

[analyst]

How to Fix macOS Flaw That Allows Admin Access Without a Password

A huge flaw in macOS High Sierra was discovered that allows full root access without a password. Leo Laporte has a quick fix - Here's how: - Open Terminal - ...

UPDATE: Apple has released a patch for High Sierra. Download and run that from the MacOS App Store instead of following the instructions below. URGENT! If you are running High Sierra on MacOS, a a potentially serious security flaw has been discovered. Apparently the new Files App has root access to High Sierra without any password. No fix yet, but if you feel comfortable enough with using Terminal, follow these instructions from Leo LaPorte to set a password for super user mode.

[analyst]

Retailers’ Emails Are Misfires for Many Holiday Shoppers

Many retailers that were once data pioneers, with mailing lists and catalogs, now have fallen behind in the race to personalize digital messaging to consumers using purchase and browsing history.

This is one of many things that will happen if you stop designing around the customer. In most of these cases, enough customer data did exist to enable effective targeting, even if the volume of emails sent may have been lower than was sent over the recent US holiday weekend.

And we also see retailers repeating a classic mistake of failure to coordinate customer engagement across channels. In this case, generic online marketing and loyalty program marketing, to the same customers, were clearly not coordinated. This is a fundamental job of the Chief Marketing Officer. And when Sales and Service also generate significant interactions with customers, that data needs coordinated with marketing engagement as well, which is a function of a Chief Customer Officer, or at least a multi-disciplinary customer management team in smaller organizations.

[analyst]

New Uber CEO Knew of Hack for Months

While the massive data breach at Uber Technologies Inc. didn’t happen under the watch of the new chief executive, more than two months elapsed before he notified affected customers and drivers of the incident, people familiar with the matter said.

Why is that when a company becomes very successful by offering a much valued product by consumers, that the Status Quo cannot wait to tear it down? Of course it's because in this case the new market entrant's business model causes extreme disruption to the crony side of government, like the municipal transportation regulators who are used to bribes and kickbacks from cab and limo companies. The thought of the consumer transacting directly with suppliers without some level of government middleman is abhorrent to bureaucrats.

This article shines some much needed light on what the media and government cronies are calling a scandal. The hackers turn out to be typical gray area hackers that do what they do as a challenge and for recognition, not profit from fraud. This type of hacker is responsible for the majority of hacks and are critical to identifying and patching security vulnerabilities. They are like carrion fowl of information systems; ugly, but they provide a needed service.

They notified Uber and told them what they did and what they got. Malicious hackers do not do that; they try to cover their tracks as long as possible so they can profit from identity theft and credit card fraud as much as possible before the target company and consumers find out. They do not hold data for ransom because they can profit more from fraudulent transactions. Uber, like all major e-commerce companies, maintains a rewards program where they pay these gray area hackers for finding and reporting vulnerabilities. These programs also of course require destruction of any data obtained. The only questionable issue here is that these hackers where not in that program and Uber simply offered to allow them to join it, and paid them the reward as long as they obeyed the rest of the program rules. While that is ethically sketchy, as an Uber customer, I do believe it was in my best interests. They now have patched the vulnerabilities identified by the hackers and my data is not out there in the wild.

As far as legal obligations, they did what they were supposed to as a private company: they notified potential investors of the breach and the pending internal investigation. Nothing about this triggered homeland security requirements.

As a consumer, don't let the Status Quo be successful at inserting themselves between you and new service providers like Uber, just because regulators and politicians are not getting more wealthy and more powerful as a result of outdated 20th Century regulatory models. We're adults; we don't need nursemaiding.

[analyst]

Justice Department Files Lawsuit Challenging AT&T-Time Warner Deal

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner, alleging the combination of the two companies poses an unlawful threat to competition that could raise prices and slow innovation.

This is pretty weak. They admit it's not anti-competitive, since TW no longer is a cable or Internet provider. They instead focus on the continued convergence of content creation with content delivery. But they fully supported this convergence when Comcast bought NBC Universal. And they cite the previous acquisition of DirectTV by AT&T as a concern for this proposed deal. All that acquisition did was increase AT&T's distribution reach, not content, since DirectTV was a satellite cable and Internet provider that didn't own content creators, like an NBC/Universal or Time-Warner. And to make the Government's position even more bizarre, they (falsely) used Comcast/NBC as justification for "net neutrality" rules. If they really believe Comcast is a threat to net neutrality, then giving Comcast a large competitor, as a result of this proposed merger, is exactly what is needed. TW owns an enormous content business that competes with Comcast's content business. So their position is actually anti net neutrality by denying the market competition that Comcast needs.

And how is this happening when this is the very antithesis of what Donald Trump campaigned on? There is obviously no engineer running the train.

[analyst]

I gave up Hulu TV and went back to SlingTV

After about three months with HuluTV, I finally decided to go back to SlingTV. I did keep Hulu Basic though, for $7.99/mo due to their extensive library of SciFi TV series, compared to Amazon Prime Video lack thereof.

The main reason was Hulu’s UI. It has to be the worst UI I have ever dealt with. You just cannot figure out how to get to the content you want. And sometimes you’re 5 or more layers deep to get there. And then if you stop or accidentally hit Go Back, good luck finding the show again and having it give you the option of resuming where you left off, especially with live TV. They insist on having one UI that is supposedly optimized for streaming only and not for live broadcasts. Just one grid by channel and time is all I want, just like Sling gives you.

And the web version is unacceptable as is. The highest resolution I was ever able to achieve was 480p and it was often less. Buffering of the web version was also a constant problem. To be fair, the web version is technically in Beta, but it’s publicly available.

The only content I’ll miss is Fox Business, and their collection of libertarian anchors, as well as BTN. So good bye Illinois Football and Basketball.

And since leaving SlingTV for a bit, they have made some improvements. One is a great looking Chrome browser HTML5 streaming version that replaces the SlingTV app for Mac and Windows. They also enhanced the channel grid again and it’s pretty much like any set-top box channel grid now.

[analyst]

Where Could Amazon Build a Second Headquarters?

Cities compete to host Amazon's expanding footprint

Interesting assessment of top US cities in the running for a second US HQ for Amazon. On Chicago, I think they have the culture fit too low and the tax fit too high. Illinois and local property taxes here are horrible. They got the talent right, but don't attribute it correctly by just mentioning Northwestern and U of Chicago. The University of Illinois is 120 miles away, is in the top ten of engineering and computer science schools and Purdue and Wisconsin Madison are just as close. More U of I grads are from Chicago than any other area and relocate there after graduating. I also think they totally missed one of the key factors in global corporate HQ location in North America, that being easy access to Asia for business deals. Chicago, Minneapolis and even Toronto have the best corporate executive and sales access to Asian markets in NA, over the North Pole. That's why Boeing relocated here and Cat is following them.

[analyst]

Why Amazon May Want to Crush Walgreens and CVS By Selling Prescription Drugs

Amazon Pharmacy could radically disrupt the generic drug business. Here is the opportunity for the e-commerce giant.

Been waiting for this one. I wrote Jeff Bezos about four years ago, explaining why I thought he should enter this market. They've been gathering lots of focus group and survey data. I don't think they can be successful by lowering the price alone. They have to ensure the classic Amazon experience is part of ordering prescriptions. Easy ordering, multi-item discounts, subscriptions (replenishment) and fast delivery all have to be there. They now have multiple warehouses in most large US cities as well as their own private last-mile delivery service. Imagine submitting a refill in the morning and having your prescription delivered by afternoon. Almost like things used to be with local pharmacist Mr. Gower and little George Bailey to deliver. But the sticking point will be the insurers. Do they want to continue to be in the home delivery pharmacy business or not? If yes, they could declare Amazon "out of network" and raise those prices. If they don't want to be in the business, they could contract with Amazon and likely improve their own customers’ experiences. I'm betting that Jeff Bezos is betting on the latter.

[analyst]

Did Apple Just Make iMessage Into an Ad Hoc Collaboration Platform for Small Business and Project Teams?

Among Apples’ Fall 2016 announcements of improvements to iOS and to OS X was that its free iWork productivity apps now support real-time collaboration, as competitor Microsoft Office has for some time now. While this new feature is an important step forward in supporting real-time collaboration in the creation and maintenance of content among teams, perhaps the real clue to Apple’s long-term business collaboration strategy was the opening up of its proprietary secure messaging service to third party apps.

With the release of iOS 10, Apple has officially opened up a production version of iMessage to third party apps, with OS X soon to follow. Most of the attention given to this original announcement believed it to be just part of a Facebook Chat and SnapChat competitive strategy. But the first major third party app to integrate with iMessage is Evernote, the popular business and professional cloud-based note-taking platform. Since almost all teams keep chats open 24x7 to communicate with other team members, it’s convenient to be able to share project collateral directly within real-time collaboration apps. Evernote now allows users to search and share notes directly from within iMessage, without having to first be in their Evernote app. While this is certainly not enterprise-level collaboration software, most small businesses and small teams already rely on free, self-service ad hoc tools to collaborate and they exploit the robust API integration among cloud content and collaboration apps. 

As more project, content and task management services integrate with iMessage, Apple business users will gain powerful new tools to add to a real-time collaboration service already secured from end to end with strong encryption. And they don’t need MacBooks to do it, just iPhones and iPads and Apple Watches, which is important because most project collaboration is now done on mobile platforms. 

So what’s the end game here? I firmly believe this is part of a longer term Apple strategy to eventually unite the iMessage service with FaceTime video and audio service to enable Apple mobile devices, as well as the entire Apple ecosystem, to be the ad hoc business collaboration tools of choice. We’ll have to wait and see if that will be part of a 2017, 2018 or (most likely) a 2019 product plan. But in the mean time IT managers need to pay careful attention to how the iMessage app integration ecosystem develops over the next 12 months. Expect a lot more business and team apps to integrate, in addition to the “SnapChattery” genre of gaming and entertainment apps.