Rolandt

From Fox News, of all places:

Every $1,300 New York City invested in building bike lanes in 2015 provided benefits equivalent to one additional year of life at full health over the lifetime of all city residents, according to a new economic assessment.

That’s a better return on investment than some direct health treatments, like dialysis … Our greatest public health intervention, vaccines, take about $100 investment to yield one quality-adjusted life year …

The study did not distinguish between bike lanes, bikeways, shared-use paths and other bike facilities, said Anne Lusk, a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston who was not part of the new study. …

Painting unprotected bike lanes into roads may not reduce injury and death, she said.

“Once considered desirable because they were ‘low hanging fruit,’ we need to stop painting door zone bike lanes and start creating barrier protected cycle tracks,” Lusk said. Riding in the so-called door zone can be fatal if someone in a parked car opens their door at the wrong time, she said.

 

Shower thought here:

Imagine sequencing seed DNA and storing it in a digital seed bank. Useful genes could later be printed out and edited back into crops with CRISPR. A backup drive for life.

SciFi? Probably not:

• The cost of gene sequencing is falling faster than Moore’s Law.
• DNA printing is routine. There are even startups developing tabletop gene printers.
• CRISPR has made it fast and cheap to edit genes, and it’s improving rapidly.

An obvious question that comes to mind is storage. Genes contain a lot of information, and seeds themselves are highly efficient natural storage mechanisms… All that information packed into tiny living DNA pods that can survive drying.

But seeds have to be kept cold and dry. The rule of thumb is that reducing water content by 1% or temperature by 10 degrees Fahrenheit will double a seed’s life span.

Seed Banks are our current approach to “datacenters” for genetic diversity. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is embedded in permafrost… the ideal environment for keeping seeds around a long time.

…But keeping these seeds alive for hundreds of years is a challenge. Seed banks wisely take the position that Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe, using seed swaps to keep seeds alive and planting.

Backing It Up

Of course, having a digital backup wouldn’t hurt, and digitizing the genetic information could be useful for lots of other reasons. Gene data is a valuable resource for scientific analysis. Indeed, the Jodrell Laboratory maintains a digital DNA barcode bank (not full sequences).

So how much space would full genomes take? Time for some silly back-of-the-envelope math. Whole genome sequencing generates a lot of data – there are about six billion base pairs in each human diploid genome. Storing that can take anywhere between 200GB and 125MB (if you’re just storing mutations).

For scale, the 1000 genomes project is about 200TB of data representing 1700 participants. You can download it from Amazon AWS. You could say that it’s “webscale”.

Word on the street is that all of the video on YouTube comes out to about 100 petabytes.

1PB = 1,000,000 GB
100PB = 100,000,000 GB
Human genome = 200 GB
(100,000,000 GB / 200 GB) = 500,000

So we could store 500k individual human genomes for the cost of 1 YouTube. Not terribly efficient. For reference the Millennium Seed Bank physically stores 34,000 species and 1,980,405,036 individual seeds.

However, YMMV with seed genomes. The human genome is 6 billion base pairs, or 6000Mbp, by contrast a tomato is 900Mbp. Soybean is 1115Mbp.

Full human genome = 6,000Mbp and 200GB
Full soy genome = 1115Mbp
6,000 / 1,115 = 5.381
200GB / 5.381 = 37.167GB

Let’s say 40GB per full plant genome. You could store more than 5x tomatoes and soybeans than people for the same space.

And we could get creative. The difference between individuals in a species is the sum of their mutations, and we can store those mutation diffs for ~125MB.

What if we were to sequence 34,000 species, then store idividuals of those species as diffs against the “base genome”? Let’s say we store 34,000 full “base” genomes, the same number as the Millennium seed bank and that each genome takes about 40GB.

34,000 species * 40GB = 1,360,000GB
YouTube = 100,000,000GB
100,000,000GB - 1,360,000GB = 98,640,000GB
125MB = 0.125GB
98,640,000GB / 0.125GB = 789,120,000

34k species + 789,120,000 individuals for the space of a YouTube. Still not as efficient as traditional seed banks, but it seems within the realm of plausability to create a useful digital seed bank.

It makes me wonder if we couldn’t take a SETI@home approach to the storage problem… donate a bit of your hard drive space to a BitTorrent swarm that keeps those valuable seed genomes alive. Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe.

Disclaimer: this is me being curious. I’m no expert. Please chime in if you have corrections.

Fun reading:

• What might we do with the genomics of the entire planet?
• List of Sequenced Plant Genomes
• Sequencing the genome creates a lot of data
• Genome sequencing costs

The title is kind of obvious, and the speculation is interesting.

Personally, and given that I’m not sure I want to deal with an entirely new (first revision) MacBook Pro and have much more use for a desktop these days, I’m hoping the Mac mini finally gets a proper upgrade.

As much as I like retina displays, the iMac G5 made it abundantly obvious that all-in-ones are not the right kind of desktop for me, and I would rather not buy an iMac unless I absolutely had to.

When editing a text on iPhone 6S or 7, force touch the keyboard to get a track pad. #mindblown

The developer preview of Android Nougat 7.1 has been released for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P and Pixel C, bringing with it several features that can currently only be found on Google’s shiny new Pixel devices.

The updates include circular app icons, Daydream VR support and app shortcuts, which lets developers create shortcuts that will take users straight to a specific action within their app.

The beta also brings with it image keyboard support, which lets users input images and other content directly from the keyboard.

Those hoping for Google Assistant or the Pixel Launcher are out of luck, however. Those features, along with several others, will remain exclusive to the Pixel for the time being, and may never make their way to stock Android.

The preview is set to expand availability to enrolled Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 users before the public release of 7.1.x in December 2016.

For those who would like to test out the developing software, Android Beta Program enrollment is available here.

Patrick Snedden, EdSurge, Oct 23, 2016

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Rangatiratanga  is a Maori concept for taking personal and collective control over your own future. It formed the basis for the treaty creating New Zealand's unique society. According to this article, it's also the basis for a school district renewal project restoring Maori education. I wish the article had focused more on how Rangatiratanga was practiced by the district, but the author talks mostly about paying for their educational costs and passing tests.

[Link] [Comment]

Q: What is the best “dumb” TV? And can I save money by buying a TV without smart features if they aren’t important to me?

A: This is a question we get a lot, and the answer is that there isn’t a best “dumb” TV. A few years ago you could easily get a high-end TV that didn’t have any smart-TV features, but nowadays only low-end models come without these features, and they make huge sacrifices in picture quality, so though you can save money by getting a dumb TV, you can’t do that and get really great picture quality at the same time. Typically our advice has been to focus on the image quality, ignore the smart features, and use a media streamer like the Roku Streaming Stick instead. And if you want a dumb TV for privacy reasons, you can always just turn off the Wi-Fi so it can’t send your viewing data anywhere.

This year, however, our pick for best TV, the Vizio P65-C1, comes as close to being a dumb TV with great image quality as anything we have seen. It doesn’t have any internal smart apps, but it does have an integrated Google Chromecast Ultra, so you can stream content from your PC, smartphone, or tablet directly to it. Vizio’s setup is preferable because integrated streaming apps tend to be updated less frequently than the apps on your phone or a stand-alone streamer. Because of its unique streaming setup, the Vizio also offers a much larger selection of streaming services to choose from when compared with other smart TV systems out there.

The Wirecutter’s editors answer reader questions all the time (much more than once a week). Send an email to notes@thewirecutter.com, or talk to us on Twitter and Facebook. Published questions are edited for space and clarity.

Don’t call it taking a page from Apple’s playbook — or, for that matter, Samsung or Microsoft’s either — but Google just opened a number of ‘Google Shops’ at several Best Buy locations across Canada.

The two companies say the “innovative” partnership is the first of its kind in North America. Like similar retail spaces from Apple and Microsoft, Google Shops will offer Canadian consumers the chance to see and touch the search giant’s latest gadgets, including the just launched Pixel and Pixel XL, as well as Daydream View and Chromecast Ultra when they arrive in Canada later this year.

Each of the locations is a set to offer one-on-one appointments with trained product staff, as well as weekly workshops that cover a range of topics related to the devices on sale.

To start, 10 of the planned 14 locations open today. Four larger Google Shops will open later in the year at Best Buy stores in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Mississauga.

Based on the wording in Best Buy’s press release, it appears Google is taking over the Experience Stores Best Buy used to co-operate with Samsung, but it’s not exactly clear if that’s the case. We’ve reached out to Best Buy to ask for clarification. We’ll update this article when we hear back from the company.

Related: Google Pixel review: The high-end Android you’ve been waiting for

In a news that is not going to surprise customers who follow the Nexus lineup from Google closely, the Pixel and Pixel XL from Google are going to receive confirmed Android updates until October 2018. This means that the handset will receive guaranteed Android updates two years post their launch month similar to how Google has treated its Nexus devices so far. Continue reading →

Kevin Marks @kevinmarks
@sillygwailo my working title was "The Unbearable Lightness of Web Type"

Darius Kazemi @tinysubversions
One consequence of bad cell signal here is that Twitter has become effectively write-only (my feed is dead) which is in the spirit of Kanye.

The prolific Jerry Whitehead has another mural, this one along the Central Valley Greenway, at McLean and N. Grandview Hwy.

 

 

Lots of articles about what the best replacement is and I find them not very useful. Some thought in no particular order:

• The Note 7 was unique. It had everything Samsung had to offer. If you don't need the S-Pen, you can get the S7 edge. But you wanted the S-Pen, so there.
• Google has finally made an iPhone. And they got it right, right out the door. You can finally buy a premium "Nexus". It's pure Android, no funny bloatware, and it will remain at the cutting edge of Android.
• I'd recommend you get an iPhone. But I would have done that before the Note 7 fiasco and the Google Pixel.
• Forget all those pixel pushers contemplating who has the better camera. All of those cameras are better than you. And that's a good thing.

If an iPhone is not in your budget, neither is a Pixel. You will have to compromise. That's OK, but don't pretend you didn't. I have seen plenty of capable Android devices in the 300 to 400 range.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 has been recalled and officially banned from North American flights.

In an effort to have all the Note 7s out of the hands of Canadians travelling by air, Samsung is setting up booths at Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal airports. Samsung Canada says the booths are designed to help owners return their Note 7 onsite and set-up a loaner device as well as facilitating the credit process.

In a statement sent earlier this week, Transport Canada said, “air carriers should alert passengers to the prohibition against air transport of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 device, in particular, immediately prior to boarding and to deny boarding to a passenger in possession of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 device unless the passenger divests themselves and their baggage, including carry-on and checked, of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 device.”

In total, 39,000 Note 7 smartphones were sold or distributed in Canada with four reports of phone batteries overheating and one owner indicating a “minor burn injury” to their forearm. The latest stats released a few weeks ago prior to the second recall revealed that over 70 percent of Note 7s sold in Canada have been returned.

“Please note that the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act prohibits recalled products from being redistributed, sold or even given away in Canada. As a recalled product, it is mandatory that all Note 7 original and replacement devices be returned,” said Samsung Canada in a statement sent to MobileSyrup.

Travelers flying out of other Canadian airports who are asked to hand over their device to an airline representative should contact 1-855-747-6520, according to Samsung.

Stephanie Merritt, MJ Carter on historical fiction: ‘It was brilliant to make stuff up!’

What kind of characters are you drawn to? 

I wanted to create a character who was quite reticent and cool because I’m not, my instincts are always to blab and blurt. I like that in a character, to have all that subtext, I think that’s the most interesting to read. The hardboiled loner with the wound, I do very much like that, especially in a detective. They have to be an outsider and fallible but not too morally compromised.

I am looking forward to reading some MJ Carter – like The Strangler Vine – because – in part – I am ‘the hardboiled loner with the wound’ she alludes to.

A short note about something that occurred to me today, one that will only make sense to people who have been following my Wikity project.

When I first started to play around with Wikity as a PLE (Personal Learning Environment), I would usually follow this pattern:

• I’d set aside time for a writing session.
•  I’d find material to blockquote and blockquote it.
•  I’d give it a title.
•  I’d write a summary of it at the top.
•  I’d go down and think about what connections I could make to other Wikity cards.

I describe this process in a summer blog post.

I’ve just noticed that as I’ve gotten more comfortable with Wikity i do this less and less in a single sitting.

What I do more and more is this:

•  As the day goes by, I see interesting stuff, can’t bother to stop and process it, but I capture it with the Wikity bookmark and title it.
• In the morning before work, when I’m actually at my sharpest (See First Hours, Best Hours) I get a cup of coffee and find blockquotes in Wikity without abstracts, and write the abstracts, and find links.
• Ocassionally, when I want to share my previous work with someone else (as I did with Jim, when he said he was interested in Project Cybersyn), I’ll do a quick tidy and make sure that a cluster of articles is well connected to things discovered since the initial writing. Usually I’ll find a connection or two I missed, or some writing that needs to be cleaned up.

In other words, the foraging, summarizing, and linking parts of the process are often separated by weeks. The surprising thing is how right this flow feels, and how much better it works. By leaving a lot of the blockquoted observations unsummarized and unlinked, I always have interesting work to do in the morning which (most mornings) helps keep me off Twitter. Even more importantly, this spaced exposure helps me remember finds better — it’s a sort of naturally occurring spaced retrieval.

This isn’t earth-shattering, of course, but it was interesting to me. It’s the essence of the Garden approach to media, I think.

There are two kinds of social media users. Average users and, the reason for social media management platforms, power users.

It seems that the power users of the world have united around a common tool, as Hootsuite reaches 15 million global users. The Vancouver based company is now claiming to be the largest social media management platform in the world.

Of those 15 million users, Hootsuite also states that between 800 and 1000 of them are Fortune 500 companies, the platform is available in 16 languages and is used in 175 countries.

This comes just weeks after HootSuite hosted Connect via Hootsuite, the world’s largest online social media conference attracting 22 thousand registrants from 136 countries.

“What was once the focus of a small number of enthusiasts inside an organization, today social media is at the heart of the digital strategy of the largest and most successful businesses,” said Penny Wilson, chief marketing officer at Hootsuite.

“Hootsuite makes social media approachable for all businesses, including those in regulated industries, government or higher education. Every day, we see companies use our platform in unique, innovative ways to engage with their customers.”

Other platforms like Hootsuite include TweetDeck, Sprout Social, Buffer and Zoho Social.

Related: Social media is the fastest way for companies to ruin their public image

We usually think about leadership as the art of doing big, important stuff: creating a vision, making decisions, inspiring people. You know, leading.

But here’s a funny thing: many effective leaders spend a lot of time doing the opposite. Specifically, they spend time picking up stuff on the floor. Cleaning up. Playing janitor.

Exhibit A: LeBron James, who spent an evening last week picking up the team’s laundry from the locker-room floor after a game.

Exhibit B: Exhibit B: Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, was famous for picking up trash. “Every night you’d see him coming down the street, walking close to the gutter, picking up every McDonald’s wrapper and cup along the way,” former McDonald’s CEO Fred Turner told author Alan Deutschman. “He’d come into the store with both hands full of cups and wrappers. I saw Ray spend one Saturday morning with a toothbrush cleaning out holes in the mop wringer. No one else really paid attention to the damned mop wringer, because everyone knew it was just a mop bucket. But Kroc saw all the crud building up in the holes, and he wanted to clean them so the wringer would work better.”

Exhibit C: John Wooden. Back in the mid-sixties, when UCLA’s men’s basketball team was in the midst of one of the most successful eras in sports history – ten titles in 12 years — Franklin Adler, the team’s student manager, saw something odd: Coach Wooden picking up trash in the locker room. “Here was a man who had already won three national championships,” Adler said, “a man who was already enshrined in the Hall of Fame as a player, a man who had created and was in the middle of a dynasty – bending down and picking up scraps from the locker room floor.”

Exhibit D: The New Zealand All-Blacks, the best rugby team on the planet, who have formalized this into a habit they call “Sweeping the Sheds.” Basically, the team leaders are in charge of keeping the locker room clean.

This is a striking pattern. These are terrific, accomplished leaders of highly successful groups, and they are spending their valuable time on what would seem to be the most trivial, tedious, and mundane tasks imaginable — using a toothbrush to clean crud from mop buckets. Why?

The answer, I think, is that we tend to think about leadership in the wrong way. We tend to focus on the big, showy moves, when what really matters is the small, humble moments when the leader sends a relational signal of connection. These moments are vital because they contain several signals:

• I am not above you
• This place matters — we have standards
• You should do this kind of thing too
• We are about things that are bigger than ourselves

It adds up to a leadership mindset that I would call a muscular humility – an approach that constantly seeks simple ways to help and support the group. The reason these signals are powerful is not just because they are moral or generous, but also because they send a larger signal that every group needs to be sent over and over: we are all in this together. Because the point of leadership is not to do great things, but rather to create an environment where the whole group can do great things together.

If you have any similar stories about leadership, feel free to share below. I’d love to hear them.

Just recently, Tesla announced that the Model X and Model S would be equipped with fully autonomous driving technology.

However, hidden in the fine print, Tesla asks that its customers restrict their ride-sharing activities to non-revenue generating only. This means that ride-sharing with friends and family is permitted, while earning money for ride-sharing/ride-hailing on the platforms of Uber, Lyft, etc., is not.

Tesla users need not fear, however. The company has permitted customers to earn revenue for ride-sharing on its own platform, which has yet to be announced.

The company has stated in the past that it intends to develop its ride sharing network, the details of which will likely not be released until the new year.

On the company website, Tesla writes:

“Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note that using a self-driving Tesla for car-sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.” 

Elon Musk details the launch of a ride-sharing network in a post on the company website entitled “Master Plan Part Deux.” We know that the platform will be called the Tesla Network, though no other information has been revealed.

Related: Tesla announces all cars in production now have “full self-driving capabilities”

When this building was constructed Main Street had just changed its name from Westminster Avenue. Located close to one of the city’s breweries, while today we think of it as a pub when it was built it was a retail building. Braunton and Leibert designed it, completed in 1913 for Dr. Israel Powell, one of the province’s important pioneers. He was born in 1837 in Port Colborne in Simcoe, Ontario, and drawn by the Cariboo Gold Rush reached Victoria in 1862 via the Panama Canal and San Francisco. He never went to look for gold, but like his father, Dr. Powell became involved in politics. He was elected to the House of Assembly of Vancouver Island in 1863, but failed to be re-elected in 1866 and 1868. He supported the merger of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, and later Confederation. Sir John A Macdonald was a family friend, and offered him the position of lieutenant governor of B C, or as a Senator. He declined both, but agreed to become Superintendent of Indian Affairs for British Columbia, a position he held for 18 years from 1872. He was surgeon for the Victoria fire department and also served in the militia, while building his medical practice. He was also instrumental in establishing the first Scottish Rite Masonic Lodge in British Columbia. From 1871 to 1875 he was the first grand master of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia, which brought together the lodges under English and Scottish jurisdictions, although later, in 1877, he severed his connections with the masons.

Although he lived in Victoria, he owned property in Vancouver from its inception, and was on the initial voter’s list. He was part of an early consortium with David Oppenheimer and others who bought land in 1886, and was also a shareholder in the Vancouver Improvement Company (a larger group with many of the same owners) who eventually owned 330 acres of Downtown land and helped ensure their increased value with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway into the city. At his death in 1915 he had investments in farms in the Fraser Valley, on Vancouver Island including the Hotel Wilson of Victoria, as well as in buildings and lots in Vancouver and North Vancouver. The names of several places in British Columbia, commemorate Dr. Powell, including Powell Street in Vancouver and Powell River.

This building was completed only two years before his death when he was in his mid seventies, and cost $47,000 to build. As far as we can tell it represents Dr. Powell’s only investment in bricks and mortar in the area, but according to the Heritage Statement for the local plan, he had acquired and named the streets of most of the area we associate as Mount Pleasant (with Henry Edmonds). It states that it was Dr. Powell’s idea to name the streets after the Canadian Provinces, although Mount Pleasant was a name chosen by Edmonds.

Our 1940s image show the retail unit occupied by a Fur company, while in 1976 it was Royal City Antiques. Over the years the retail uses have changed many times – today it’s a bike store and a dounut shop.

Image sources CVA 1184-2758 and CVA 780-234

Samsung’s desire to avoid anything resembling another Note 7 debacle is so strong that the company may turn to its biggest domestic rival for help with its next device, the Galaxy S8.

According to a new report out of Korea, Samsung is exploring sourcing at least some of the batteries slated for it next flagship smartphones from LG subsidiary LG Chem. The two Korean megacorporations have rarely worked together in the past.

“We are looking at diverse suppliers,” said an unnamed Samsung executive in an interview with Korean publication Maeil Business Newspaper.

When the Note 7’s problems first started, Samsung identified batteries made by daughter company Samsung SDI as the culprit behind several phones catching on fire.

However, that conclusion was later muddied after several replacement units, fitted exclusively with batteries from Amperex Technology Limited, caught fire as well. According to a recent New York Times article, Samsung engineers have so far been unable to replicate whatever issue caused the overheating and meltdowns in the first place.

Related: Samsung sets up kiosks at Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal airports of Note 7 exchanges

Apple's video content strategy is coming into focus, and the company's plans look ambitious. Management's goal is to develop its own video service to distribute original content to more than a billion Apple devices. Apple will compete with Netflix and every other video content bundle. However, there will be a twist in Apple's strategy. 

Background

While Apple has long held a desire to rethink television, there has been one missing link: content. This lack of content played a part in Apple initially positioning Apple TV as a hobby. Unattractive TV industry dynamics, including a problematic go-to-market strategy, played a much larger role. 

Over the past seven years, Apple has been trying to create some kind of video content service. In 2009, Apple thought about becoming a cable distributor. The idea was met with little interest from content companies. Apple then turned to partnerships. Time Warner Cable had shown interest in working with Apple on a new type of paid TV service. Apple also approached Comcast with a similar idea of joining forces to launch a cable package with a revolutionary, new user interface. Apple met resistance. Unlike the music industry in the early 2000s, the cable industry was still doing too well financially to look at Apple as some kind of last resort. Apple's plan to partner with distributors was dead. 

Apple's next plan involved bypassing cable distributors and going straight to content companies to deliver content over the internet. The idea was to disrupt the large cable bundle by offering a slimmed down bundle of the most popular 20 to 30 cable channels for a lower monthly price. However, there were severe disagreements over money. Content companies wanted to include more of their channels in the bundle in order to bring in more revenue. Apple knew a low price was needed to insure customer adoption. Even Disney, a company thought to be a close Apple ally, couldn't reach a deal with Apple.  

This left Apple in an awkward situation when it came time to unveil its updated Apple TV box in September 2015. Apple is now positioning apps as the future of TV. The logic is that consumers will rely on a number of video apps from other companies for content. While this situation will suffice in the near-term, Apple has never stopped looking for ways to set itself apart from the competition in terms of delivering content to a global audience. 

Why Video?

For a company that is all about being focused and saying "no" to most product ideas, Apple's continued interest in video content may seem strange. However, Apple is increasingly dedicating resources and attention to video content for two reasons: 

1. Content (video and music) streaming has become a must-have feature for mobile ecosystems. 
2. Changing industry dynamics has led to a new breed of content distributors getting into original content creation. 

With technology companies battling each other for our time and attention, offering video content streaming has become a crucial requirement for a vibrant mobile ecosystem. While people may be spending less time consuming content via large cable bundles, an increasing amount of time is being given to smaller content bundles, including Netflix, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, HBO, Hulu, Amazon Video, and YouTube. 

This move to paid video streaming has altered industry dynamics. New distributors now have the customers to invest significantly in developing original video programming. Netflix is on track to deliver 600 hours of original content this year. The plan is for Netflix to increase that total to 1,000 hours in 2017. Netflix plans on spending $6 billion on content in 2017, which would be close to the $7.3 billion expected to be spent by ESPN this year. It is only a matter of time before Netflix spends more than ESPN on content. Meanwhile, Amazon is on pace to spend more than $3 billion on content this year. One consequence of this development has been a "brain drain" impacting traditional cable companies. Talent, both in front of and behind the camera, is moving to where the eyeballs (and money) are located, which is increasingly found at Netflix and Amazon.

Given these changing market dynamics, Apple in a precarious position as the company increasingly finds itself relying on competitors to provide high-quality content to Apple customers. We see how Apple has tried to avoid or diffuse this type of dependency when it comes to hardware components. The same is now happening with video content. 

Apple's Video Strategy

After years of trying to figure out TV and video content, Apple's latest video strategy marks its most ambitious plan yet. Apple will compete with Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Disney, and every other content company by moving into original video programming. The greater flexibility attached to original video programming will make it possible for Apple to distribute content around the world. Apple will produce its own shows with the goal of launching an Apple Video streaming service. However, Apple has no plans to compete with content companies along traditional terms. 

In 2014, Apple didn't buy Beats for $3 billion just as a music streaming play. Instead, Beats was Apple's content streaming play. The Beats acquisition and resulting Apple Music service will serve as the foundation for Apple's broader content strategy. We are already starting to see the early stages of this plan taking shape. 

Apple's video strategy:

1. Use Apple Music to mask original video programming ambitions. Check.
2. Expand to other types of original video programming. Check. 
3. Position Apple Music as a carrot for an "Apple Video" streaming service by offering a combined Apple content subscription including Apple Music and Apple Video. 

Notice how Apple began its original video programming strategy by creating content for Apple Music - everything from Taylor Swift's concert video to music artist interviews with Zane Lowe, head of Beats 1 radio. Apple then expanded its focus to fund Vital Signs, a six-episode scripted series about Dr. Dre. Since Apple doesn't have enough original content for its own video streaming service, the company's efforts in video are being used to push Apple Music subscriptions. Customers paying for Apple Music will also get access to Apple's original video programming (much of it related to music).

Instead of competing head-to-head with companies like Netflix and Amazon in terms of the offering a certain amount of original programming, Apple would look to bundle its original video programming into a larger Apple entertainment package that includes Apple Music. Over time, Apple could expand to include various types of licensed content including live sports, which Apple has reportedly shown some interest in from time to time.

There is a reason Apple has been so forthcoming with providing updates to the number of paying Apple Music subscribers. In addition, Apple Music executives have been doing quite a bit of press over the past year. Apple is trying to build credibility in Hollywood and boost Apple Music subscriptions. A stronger Apple Music service will give Apple a better chance of success with a streaming video service. 

Apple Studios

It will be difficult, if not impossible, for Apple to succeed with original video programming without having the right culture for such endeavors to flourish within Apple. My theory is that Eddy Cue will be given reign over a new Hollywood arm within Apple for producing content. This "Apple Studios" would produce content in house (applies to both video and music ambitions). There were many interesting things going on with Apple's exclusive with Frank Ocean a few months back. 

Apple Studios would sit uniquely within Apple's organizational structure. As seen in the following chart, Apple Studios would be an entity positioned in such a way as to contain a certain level of independency within Apple. However, Apple Studios wouldn't be completely cut out of Apple.

Apple's primary objective in creating a distinct Hollywood arm is to avoid culture clashes. For example, not long after Apple bought Beats, there were reportedly issues as the two companies did things very differently. Two years later, we still see some of these differences when it comes to how Jimmy Iovine wants to run Apple Music. This same type of situation will undoubtedly rise as Apple pushes deeper into original video programming. Decision making needs to be revised to better suit content development. Apple's strict level of secrecy will need to be rethought. Simply put, Apple's Hollywood Arm will need to approach problems differently than the rest of Apple. This would explain why Apple Studios would be given greater independency.

What About Acquiring Netflix?

Given Apple's growing video content ambitions and desire to build a video streaming service, a natural question to ask is, would it just be easier for Apple to acquire Netflix? With one swoop, Apple would own the most popular paid video streaming service in the world. 

The best way to analyze the rationale for Apple acquiring Netflix would be to take a step back and ask a few, key questions. 

• Would Apple strengthen its product line by owning Netflix?
• Would Netflix plug a hole in Apple resources and talent when it comes to video content streaming?
• Would acquiring Netflix help accelerate Apple's existing video strategy? 
• Are there unintended consequences associated with acquiring Netflix?

Turning to the first question, acquiring Netflix would not strengthen Apple's product line as Apple customers already have access to Netflix content. Given Netflix's business model of making its content available to as many people as possible, the odds of Netflix no longer being available on Apple devices is very low. In fact, Netflix has an incentive to continue making it extremely easy for Apple customers to access and consume its content. In a scenario where another company acquires Netflix, I'm skeptical the situation would change as the new buyer would likely want to continue to support iOS users. Apple wouldn't need to acquire Netflix in order to guarantee Apple customers will enjoy Netflix content. 

When it comes to Apple acquiring Netflix as a technology play, there are more effective and efficient ways of acquiring streaming capabilities than having to buy Netflix and its 3,500 employees.

There would be some positives associated with acquiring Netflix. In terms of talent, acquiring Netflix would give Apple key personnel with deep knowledge of the streaming industry. In addition, acquiring Netflix would instantly give Apple the lead in paid video streaming. However, there are unintended consequences associated with the deal that would likely offset these gains. One of the biggest is culture shock. Netflix and Apple are not alike. Netflix is increasingly being run by media talent fleeing traditional content companies (remember that brain drain?) while Apple is run by industrial designers. This is why Apple building its own Hollywood arm within Apple has a higher chance of success over time.  

Add it all up, and there just isn't much rationale for Apple to acquire Netflix. Notice how price hasn't even entered the discussion. There are many reasons other than a high price tag that make Netflix a poor acquisition target for Apple. A Netflix acquisition would inevitably boil down to two things: branding and revenue plays. Neither are strong reasons for Apple to pursue an acquisition.  

The Big Picture

Apple is not getting into video content to boost its services revenue. Instead, video and music streaming will be positioned as ways to increase the value found in using Apple hardware.

Apple sees itself as the company best able to bridge the gap between Hollywood and Silicon Valley - a technology company with a range of devices and a loyal base of more than 700 million premium users that values high quality content. In addition to scouting programming ideas on its own, Apple will take a few pages from its Apple Music playbook to embrace, and potentially partner with, existing content companies on original programming ideas if the right opportunities arise. Hollywood isn't Apple's enemy. 

When comparing Netflix and Apple Music paid subscribers, it becomes clear why using Apple Music as a type of incubator for Apple's video streaming service ends up being such an interesting twist. By using original video content to boost Apple Music, Apple already has nearly 20M paying viewers accessing that video content. This compares to Netflix's 83M user count - not bad for a 16-month-old paid streaming service. As the amount of additional video content increases, Apple hopes this will further increase Apple Music subscriptions, thereby improving its video chances. Apple's $3 billion Beats acquisition was a Trojan horse into Hollywood. 

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In the early 1900s, the physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered the emptiness at the heart of everything. In 2015, so did I. Ernest Rutherford, born in New Zealand, was an early experimenter in the field of radioactivity. Working at the University of Manchester, England, he investigated the mineral uranium and the stream of particles it emitted, which he … Continued

The post Discovering emptiness — why I feel for Ernest Rutherford appeared first on without bullshit.

I’ve been writing extensively about how the housing crisis is affecting my generation and am excited to be speaking on October 25th at Vancouver’s first international housing summit, Re:Address.

The event will bring together 500 thought leaders and experts from around the world to explore ideas and solutions to accelerate housing affordability in cities. Topics of discussion include Indigenous housing innovation, new global economic models, growth of the non-profit sector, and challenges facing Millennials trying to access affordable housing.

As part of Re:Address, the city is hosting Millennial Activate, an interactive session that encourages millennials to engage with their municipal governments to influence housing policy and ensure their voices are heard. The event takes place Tuesday, October 25th at 7:30pm - 9:30pm at the Vancouver Film Centre (1181 Seymour St) and tickets are free (you can get them here).

In addition to myself, the event will include presentations from Eric Swanson of Generation Squeeze and Danny Oleksiak of Abundant Housing Vancouver.

All of this is happening as part of the City of Vancouver’s initiative to reset its current Housing and Homelessness Strategy, which has involved a series of interactions with global leaders, local experts and engaged citizens to shape the direction of the next Housing & Homeless Strategy’s five to ten year priorities. 

I’ve been providing input on this initiative for the past few months, sitting on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee and on the Creative Advisory Committee that is looking at housing for young workers and families. There are a lot challenging discussions taking place and innovative ideas being put forward. 

The voices of Millennials are critical to influencing housing policy. Come and be part of the conversation next week!

Occasional PT author James Bligh has published a delightful series of quotes about Bing Thom — occasioned by our recent great loss.

 Sample quote:   Bing was 75 turning 55. He had another 15 years of great work in front of him and was at the peak of his career right now. We were working with Bing on four projects and now what we’re going to do is just double down and take the projects we were working on and make them as good as he ever could have imagined. That’s the best we could do to respect that legacy. Bing and I got close in the last few years and we often went out on his sail boat together. I would bring my youngest son and Bing would use the opportunity to pass down wisdom often using sailing as a metaphor for life. I will miss him terribly.” – Ian Gillespie, Westbank

Some observations from our research.

The first is around 75% of external communities today are based around customer support. These are the ones hosted on large platforms. These have the easiest links to a clear return on investment. Many now refer to these as customer portals. If you include health-related communities this number rises.

The second is that passion (or retention) based communities have moved almost entirely to Facebook pages, groups, or have closed. The communities which encourage people to talk about their passion for the project have largely closed or been shifted to the cheapest platforms supported by a social media manager. These are the furthest removed from ROI.

The third is internal communities based around knowledge sharing and collaboration are thriving and growing. Most organizations are creating internal communities on various platforms to improve how people collaborate.

Consider this in your next career move.

Interactive charts in R are still so-so, but if you don’t mind giving up some flexibility and just want something quick without having to learn a new language, there are a handful of options. RStudio highlights the highcharter package, which is a wrapper around the JavaScript-based Highcharts.

So the story goes that Torstein Hønsi, the founder and Chief Product Officer of Highcharts. was looking for a simple charting tool for updating his homepage with snow depth measurements from Vikjafjellet, the local mountain where his family keeps a cabin. Frustrated with the common flash plug-ins, and other proprietary solutions available at the time, he decided to build a standards-based solution of his own and then, of course, share it.

Write R. Get an interactive chart to export.

While we’re at it, you might also be interested in the R wrapper for Plotly, which is another JavaScript charting library, and htmlwidgets, which lets you work with JavaScript libraries within R (and highcharter makes use of).

Tags: interactive, R

With the Google Pixel and Pixel XL releasing earlier this week, it was only a matter of time before the first teardown of the handsets hit the web. Doing the deed, iFixit has posted the teardown of the HTC-made Google Pixel XL. Continue reading →

One of the most underappreciated features of Firefox’s URL bar and its bookmark system is its support for custom keyword searches. These let you create special bookmarks that type a keyword followed by other text, and have that text inserted into a URL identified uniquely by the keyword, then that URL gets loaded. This lets you type, for example, “quote aapl” to get a stock quote on Apple Inc.

You can check out the article I linked to previously (and here, as well, for good measure) for details on how to actually create and use keyword searches. I’m not going to go into details on that here. What I am going to do is share a few keyword searches I’ve configured that I find incredibly useful as a programmer and as a writer on MDN.

For web development

Here are the search keywords I use the most as a web developer.

Keyword	Description	URL
if	Opens an API reference page on MDN given an interface name.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/%s
elem	Opens an HTML element’s reference page on MDN.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/%s
css	Opens a CSS reference page on MDN.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/%s
fx	Opens the release notes for a given version of Firefox, given its version number.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/%s
mdn	Searches MDN for the given term(s) using the default filters, which generally limit the search to include only pages most useful to Web developers.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s
mdnall	Searches MDN for the given term(s) with no filters in place.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=%s&none=none

For documentation work

When I’m writing docs, I actually use the above keywords a lot, too. But I have a few more that I get a lot of use out of, too.

Keyword	Description	URL
bug	Opens the specified bug in Mozilla’s Bugzilla instance, given a bug number.	https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=%s
bs	Searches Bugzilla for the specified term(s).	https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=%s
dxr	Searches the Mozilla source code on DXR for the given term(s).	https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=%s
file	Looks for files whose name contains the specified text in the Mozilla source tree on DXR.	https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=path%3A%s
ident	Looks for definitions of the specified identifier (such as a method or class name) in the Mozilla code on DXR.	https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=id%3A%s
func	Searches for the definition of function(s)/method(s) with the specified name, using DXR.	https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/search?q=function%3A%s
t	Opens the specified MDN KumaScript macro page, given the template/macro name.	https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Template:%s
wikimo	Searches wiki.mozilla.org for the specified term(s).	https://wiki.mozilla.org/index.php?search=%s

Obviously, DXR is a font of fantastic information, and I suggest click the “Operators” button at the right end of the search bar there to see a list of the available filters; building search keywords for many of these filters can make your life vastly easier, depending on your specific needs and work habits!

Not content with 6GB of RAM on your phone? Well, this news is surely going to make your day then. Samsung today announced that it has started the mass production of 8GB LPDDR4 DRAM package for mobile devices.  Continue reading →