Rolandt

Previously in this series

• Understanding the beta distribution (using baseball statistics)
• Understanding empirical Bayes estimation (using baseball statistics)
• Understanding credible intervals (using baseball statistics)
• Understanding the Bayesian approach to false discovery rates (using baseball statistics)

Who is a better batter: Mike Piazza or Hank Aaron?

Well, Mike Piazza has a slightly higher career batting average (2127 hits / 6911 at-bats = 0.308) than Hank Aaron (3771 hits / 12364 at-bats = 0.305). But can we say with confidence that his skill is actually higher, or is it possible he just got lucky a bit more often?

In this series of posts about an empirical Bayesian approach to batting statistics, we’ve been estimating batting averages by modeling them as a binomial distribution with a beta prior. But we’ve been looking at a single batter at a time. What if we want to compare two batters, give a probability that one is better than the other, and estimate by how much?

This is a topic rather relevant to my own work and to the data science field, because understanding the difference between two proportions is important in A/B testing. One of the most common examples of A/B testing is comparing clickthrough rates (“out of X impressions, there have been Y clicks”)- which on the surface is similar to our batting average estimation problem (“out of X at-bats, there have been Y hits””).¹

Here, we’re going to look at an empirical Bayesian approach to comparing two batters.² We’ll define the problem in terms of the difference between each batter’s posterior distribution, and look at four mathematical and computational strategies we can use to resolve this question. While we’re focusing on baseball here, remember that similar strategies apply to A/B testing, and indeed to many Bayesian models.

Setup

I’ll start with some code you can use to catch up if you want to follow along in R. If you want to understand what the code does, check out the previous posts. (All the code in this post, including for the figures where code isn’t shown, can be found here).

library(dplyr)
library(tidyr)
library(Lahman)

# Grab career batting average of non-pitchers
# (allow players that have pitched <= 3 games, like Ty Cobb)
pitchers <- Pitching %>%
  group_by(playerID) %>%
  summarize(gamesPitched = sum(G)) %>%
  filter(gamesPitched > 3)

career <- Batting %>%
  filter(AB > 0) %>%
  anti_join(pitchers, by = "playerID") %>%
  group_by(playerID) %>%
  summarize(H = sum(H), AB = sum(AB)) %>%
  mutate(average = H / AB)

# Add player names
career <- Master %>%
  tbl_df() %>%
  select(playerID, nameFirst, nameLast) %>%
  unite(name, nameFirst, nameLast, sep = " ") %>%
  inner_join(career, by = "playerID")

# Estimate hyperparameters alpha0 and beta0 for empirical Bayes
career_filtered <- career %>% filter(AB >= 500)
m <- MASS::fitdistr(career_filtered$average, dbeta,
                    start = list(shape1 = 1, shape2 = 10))

alpha0 <- m$estimate[1]
beta0 <- m$estimate[2]

# For each player, update the beta prior based on the evidence
# to get posterior parameters alpha1 and beta1
career_eb <- career %>%
  mutate(eb_estimate = (H + alpha0) / (AB + alpha0 + beta0)) %>%
  mutate(alpha1 = H + alpha0,
         beta1 = AB - H + beta0) %>%
  arrange(desc(eb_estimate))

So let’s take a look at the two batters in question:

# while we're at it, save them as separate objects too for later:
aaron <- career_eb %>% filter(name == "Hank Aaron")
piazza <- career_eb %>% filter(name == "Mike Piazza")
two_players <- bind_rows(aaron, piazza)

two_players

## Source: local data frame [2 x 8]
## 
##    playerID        name     H    AB average eb_estimate alpha1 beta1
##       (chr)       (chr) (int) (int)   (dbl)       (dbl)  (dbl) (dbl)
## 1 aaronha01  Hank Aaron  3771 12364   0.305       0.304   3847  8812
## 2 piazzmi01 Mike Piazza  2127  6911   0.308       0.306   2203  5003

We see that Piazza has a slightly higher average (), and a higher shrunken empirical bayes estimate (, where and are our priors).

But is Piazza’s true probability of getting a hit higher? Or is the difference due to chance? To answer, let’s consider the actual posterior distributions- the range of plausible values for their “true” batting averages after we’ve taken the evidence (their batting record) into account. Recall that these posterior distributions are modeled as beta distributions with the parameters .

library(broom)
library(ggplot2)
theme_set(theme_bw())

two_players %>%
  inflate(x = seq(.28, .33, .00025)) %>%
  mutate(density = dbeta(x, alpha1, beta1)) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x, density, color = name)) +
  geom_line() +
  labs(x = "Batting average", color = "")

This posterior is a probabilistic representation of our uncertainty in each estimate. Thus, when asking the probability Piazza is better, we’re asking “if I drew a random draw from Piazza’s and a random draw from Aaron’s, what’s the probability Piazza is higher”?

Well, notice that those two distributions overlap a lot! There’s enough uncertainty in each of those estimates that Aaron could easily be better than Piazza.

Let’s throw another player in, retired Yankee Hideki Matsui:

Hideki Matsui is a fine batter (above average for major league baseball), but not up to the level of Aaron and Piazza: notice that his posterior distribution barely overlaps theirs. If we took a random draw from Matsui’s distribution and from Piazza’s, it’s very unlikely Matsui’s would be higher.

Posterior Probability

We may be interested in the probability that Piazza is better than Aaron within our model. We can already tell from the graph that it’s greater than 50%, but probably not much greater. How could we quantify it?

We’d need to know the probability one beta distribution is greater than another. This question is not trivial to answer, and I’m going to illustrate four routes that are common lines of attack in a Bayesian problem:

• Simulation of posterior draws
• Numerical integration
• Closed-form solution
• Closed-form approximation

Which of these approaches you choose depends on your particular problem, as well as your computational constraints. In many cases an exact closed-form solution may not be known or even exist. In some cases (such as running machine learning in production) you may be heavily constrained for time, while in others (such as drawing conclusions for a scientific paper) you care more about precision.

Simulation of posterior draws

If we don’t want to do any math today (I hear you), we could simply try simulation. We could use each player’s and parameters, draw a million items from each of them using rbeta, and compare the results:

piazza_simulation <- rbeta(1e6, piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1)
aaron_simulation <- rbeta(1e6, aaron$alpha1, aaron$beta1)

sim <- mean(piazza_simulation > aaron_simulation)
sim

## [1] 0.607

So about 60.7% probability Piazza is better than Aaron! An answer like this is often good enough, depending on your need for precision and the computational efficiency. You could turn up or down the number of draws depending on how much you value speed vs precision.

Notice we didn’t have to do any mathematical derivation or proofs. Even if we had a much more complicated model, the process for simulating from it would still have been pretty straightforward. This is one of the reasons Bayesian simulation approaches like MCMC have become popular: computational power has gotten very cheap, while doing math is as expensive as ever.

Integration

These two posteriors each have their own (independent) distribution, and together they form a joint distribution- that is, a density over particular pairs of and . That joint distribution could be imagined as a density cloud:

Here, we’re asking what fraction of the joint probability density lies below that black line, where Piazza’s average is greater than Aaron’s. Notice that more of it lies below than above: that’s confirming the posterior probability that Piazza is better is about 60%.

The way to calculate this quantitatively is numerical integration, which is how Chris Stucchio approaches the problem in this post and this Python script. A simple approach in R would be something like:

d <- .00002
limits <- seq(.29, .33, d)
sum(outer(limits, limits, function(x, y) {
  (x > y) *
    dbeta(x, piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1) *
    dbeta(y, aaron$alpha1, aaron$beta1) *
    d ^ 2
}))

## [1] 0.606

Like simulation, this is a bit on the “brute force” side. (And unlike simulation, the approach becomes intractable in problems that have many dimensions, as opposed to the two dimensions here).

Closed-form solution

You don’t need to be great at calculus to be a data scientist. But it’s useful to know how to find people that are great at calculus. When it comes to A/B testing, the person to find is often Evan Miller.

This post lays out a closed-form solution Miller derived for the probability a draw from one beta distribution is greater than a draw from another:

(Where is the beta function). If you’d like an intuition behind this formula… well, you’re on your own. But it’s pretty straightforward to implement in R (I’m borrowing notation from this post and calling it ):

h <- function(alpha_a, beta_a,
              alpha_b, beta_b) {
  j <- seq.int(0, round(alpha_b) - 1)
  log_vals <- (lbeta(alpha_a + j, beta_a + beta_b) - log(beta_b + j) -
               lbeta(1 + j, beta_b) - lbeta(alpha_a, beta_a))
  1 - sum(exp(log_vals))
}

h(piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1,
  aaron$alpha1, aaron$beta1)

## [1] 0.608

Having an exact solution is pretty handy!³ So why did we even look at simulation/integration approaches? Well, the downsides are:

• Not every problem has a solution like this. And even if it does, we may not know it. That’s why it’s worth knowing how to run a simulation. (If nothing else, they let us check our math!)
• This solution is slow for large , and not straightforward to vectorize: notice that term that iterates from 0 to . If we run A/B tests with thousands of clicks, this step is going to constrain us (though it’s still usually faster than simulation or integration).

Closed-form approximation

As this report points out, there’s a much faster approximation we can use. Notice that when and are both fairly large, the beta starts looking a lot like a normal distribution, so much so that it can be closely approximated. In fact, if you draw the normal approximation to the two players we’ve been considering (shown as dashed line), they are visually indistinguishable:

And the probability one normal is greater than another is very easy to calculate- much easier than the beta!

h_approx <- function(alpha_a, beta_a,
                     alpha_b, beta_b) {
  u1 <- alpha_a / (alpha_a + beta_a)
  u2 <- alpha_b / (alpha_b + beta_b)
  var1 <- alpha_a * beta_a / ((alpha_a + beta_a) ^ 2 * (alpha_a + beta_a + 1))
  var2 <- alpha_b * beta_b / ((alpha_b + beta_b) ^ 2 * (alpha_b + beta_b + 1))
  pnorm(0, u2 - u1, sqrt(var1 + var2))
}

h_approx(piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1, aaron$alpha1, aaron$beta1)

## [1] 0.607

This calculation is very fast, and (in R terms) it’s vectorizable.

The disadvantage is that for low or low , the normal approximation to the beta is going to fit rather poorly. While the simulation and integration approaches were inexact, this one will be systematically biased: in some cases it will always give too high an answer, and in some cases too low. But when we have priors and , as we do here, our parameters are never going to be low, so we’re safe using it.

Confidence and credible intervals

In classical (frequentist) statistics, you may have seen this kind of “compare two proportions” problem before, perhaps laid out as a “contingency table”:

One of the most common classical ways to approach these contingency table problems is with Pearson’s chi-squared test, implemented in R as prop.test:

prop.test(two_players$H, two_players$AB)

## 
## 	2-sample test for equality of proportions with continuity
## 	correction
## 
## data:  two_players$H out of two_players$AB
## X-squared = 0.1, df = 1, p-value = 0.7
## alternative hypothesis: two.sided
## 95 percent confidence interval:
##  -0.0165  0.0109
## sample estimates:
## prop 1 prop 2 
##  0.305  0.308

We see a non-significant p-value of .70. We won’t talk about p-values here (we talked a little about ways to translate between p-values and posterior probabilities in the last post). But we can agree it would have been strange if the p-value were significant, given that the posterior distributions overlapped so much.

Something else useful that prop.test gives you is a confidence interval for the difference between the two players. We learned in a previous post about credible intervals in terms of each player’s average. Now we’ll use empirical Bayes to compute the credible interval about the difference in these two players.

We could do this with simulation or integration, but let’s use our normal approximation approach (we’ll also compute our posterior probability while we’re at it):

credible_interval_approx <- function(a, b, c, d) {
  u1 <- a / (a + b)
  u2 <- c / (c + d)
  var1 <- a * b / ((a + b) ^ 2 * (a + b + 1))
  var2 <- c * d / ((c + d) ^ 2 * (c + d + 1))
  
  mu_diff <- u2 - u1
  sd_diff <- sqrt(var1 + var2)
  
  data_frame(posterior = pnorm(0, mu_diff, sd_diff),
             estimate = mu_diff,
             conf.low = qnorm(.025, mu_diff, sd_diff),
             conf.high = qnorm(.975, mu_diff, sd_diff))
}

credible_interval_approx(piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1, aaron$alpha1, aaron$beta1)

## Source: local data frame [1 x 4]
## 
##   posterior estimate conf.low conf.high
##       (dbl)    (dbl)    (dbl)     (dbl)
## 1     0.607 -0.00185  -0.0152    0.0115

It’s not particularly exciting for this Piazza/Aaron comparison (notice it’s very close to the confidence interval we calculated with prop.test). So let’s select 20 random players, and compare each of them to Mike Piazza. We’ll also calculate the confidence interval using prop.test, and compare them.

Notice the same pattern we saw in the credible intervals post. When we don’t have a lot of information about a player, their credible interval ends up smaller than their confidence interval, because we’re able to use the prior to adjust our expectations (Dad Lytle’s batting average may be lower than Mike Piazza’s, but we’re confident it’s not .25 lower). When we do have a lot of information, the credible intervals and confidence intervals converge almost perfectly.⁴

Thus, we can think of empirical Bayes A/B credible intervals as being a way to “shrink” frequentist confidence intervals, by sharing power across players.

Bayesian FDR control

Suppose we were a manager considering trading Piazza for another player (and suppose we could pick anyone from history). How many players in MLB history are we confident are better than Mike Piazza?

Well, we can compute the posterior probability and credible interval for each of them.

career_eb_vs_piazza <- bind_cols(
  career_eb,
  credible_interval_approx(piazza$alpha1, piazza$beta1,
                           career_eb$alpha1, career_eb$beta1)) %>%
  select(name, posterior, conf.low, conf.high)

career_eb_vs_piazza

## Source: local data frame [10,388 x 4]
## 
##                    name posterior conf.low conf.high
##                   (chr)     (dbl)    (dbl)     (dbl)
## 1               Ty Cobb  7.63e-17   0.0441    0.0716
## 2        Rogers Hornsby  2.81e-11   0.0345    0.0640
## 3  Shoeless Joe Jackson  8.42e-08   0.0279    0.0613
## 4           Ross Barnes  3.61e-05   0.0214    0.0633
## 5          Ed Delahanty  7.03e-07   0.0219    0.0518
## 6          Tris Speaker  1.57e-07   0.0225    0.0505
## 7          Ted Williams  1.45e-06   0.0206    0.0504
## 8        Billy Hamilton  6.91e-06   0.0190    0.0503
## 9          Levi Meyerle  4.01e-03   0.0087    0.0580
## 10       Harry Heilmann  7.15e-06   0.0180    0.0476
## ..                  ...       ...      ...       ...

While Piazza is an excellent batter, it looks like some do give him a run for his money. For instance, Ty Cobb has a batting average that’s about .04%-.07% better, with only a miniscule posterior probability that we’re wrong.

In order to get a set of players we’re confident are better (a set of candidates for trading), we can use the same approach to setting a false discovery rate (FDR) that we did in this post: taking the cumulative mean of the posterior error probability to compute the q-value.

career_eb_vs_piazza <- career_eb_vs_piazza %>%
  arrange(posterior) %>%
  mutate(qvalue = cummean(posterior))

Recall that the way we find a set of hypotheses with a given false discovery rate (FDR) is by filtering for a particular q-value:

better <- career_eb_vs_piazza %>%
  filter(qvalue < .05)

better

## Source: local data frame [65 x 5]
## 
##                    name posterior conf.low conf.high   qvalue
##                   (chr)     (dbl)    (dbl)     (dbl)    (dbl)
## 1               Ty Cobb  7.63e-17   0.0441    0.0716 7.63e-17
## 2        Rogers Hornsby  2.81e-11   0.0345    0.0640 1.41e-11
## 3  Shoeless Joe Jackson  8.42e-08   0.0279    0.0613 2.81e-08
## 4          Tris Speaker  1.57e-07   0.0225    0.0505 6.03e-08
## 5          Ed Delahanty  7.03e-07   0.0219    0.0518 1.89e-07
## 6          Ted Williams  1.45e-06   0.0206    0.0504 3.99e-07
## 7         Willie Keeler  4.62e-06   0.0183    0.0473 1.00e-06
## 8        Billy Hamilton  6.91e-06   0.0190    0.0503 1.74e-06
## 9        Harry Heilmann  7.15e-06   0.0180    0.0476 2.34e-06
## 10           Lou Gehrig  1.43e-05   0.0167    0.0461 3.54e-06
## ..                  ...       ...      ...       ...      ...

This gives us 65 players we can say are better than Piazza, with an FDR of 5%. (That is, we expect we’re wrong on about 5% of this list of players).

What’s Next: Hierarchical modeling

We’re treating all baseball players as making up one homogeneous pool, whether they played in 1916 or 2016, and whether they played for the New York Yankees or the Chicago Cubs. This is mathematically convenient, but it’s ignoring a lot of information about players. One especially important piece of information it’s ignoring is how long someone played. Someone who’s been up to bat 5 or 6 times is generally not as good as someone with a 10-year career. This leads to a substantial bias where empirical Bayes tends to overestimate players with very few at-bats.

In the next post, we’ll talk about Bayesian hierarchical modeling, where rather than every player having the same prior, we allow the prior to depend on other known information. This will get us more accurate and reliable batting average estimates, while also extracting useful insights about factors that influence batters.

Further Reading

Above I’ve linked to a few great posts about Bayesian A/B testing, but here they are rounded up:

• Agile A/B testing with Bayesian Statistics and Python, by Chris Stucchio (the Bayesian Witch site appears to be down, so this links to an Internet Archive version)
• A Formula for Bayesian A/B Testing, by Evan Miller
• Easy Evaluation of Decision Rules in Bayesian A/B testing, by Chris Stucchio

Footnotes

Best Deals: Our better sound pick for the best portable Bluetooth speaker, the Bose SoundLink Mini II, is down to $180 (from $200) [Amazon]

I don’t generally point to (or even read) comments on Hacker News — because in the past I’ve found that they’re like other comments on the web.

However, I think the Hacker News comments on Michael Tsai’s Dynamic Swift post are worth reading.

The authors of Our Lives, Encoded found that they had lost access to much of their own digital history to the proprietary data formats of long-dead applications:

Simple text files have proven to be the only format interoperable through the decades. As a result, they are the only artifacts that remain from my own digital history.

I myself have lost access to many WordPerfect files from the '80s in their original form, though I have been migrating their content to other formats over the years. I was fortunate, though, to do most of my early work in VMS and Unix, so a surprising number of my programs and papers from that era are still readable as they were then. (Occasionally, this requires me to dust off troff to see what I intended for them to look like then.)

However, the world continues to conspire against us. Even when we are doing something that is fundamentally plain text, the creators of networks and apps build artificial barriers between their services.

One cannot simply transfer a Twitter profile over to Facebook, or message a Snapchat user with Apple's iMessage. In the sense that they are all built to transmit text and images, these platforms aren't particularly novel, they're just designed to be incompatible.

This is one more reason that you will continue to find me consorting in the ancient technology of email. Open protocol, plain text. Plenty of goodness there, even with the spam.

I realized recently that it’s been almost a full year since I wrote anything on this website. I have tried at various times over the last year to sit down and write, but the words just wouldn’t come. But tonight I thought it was probably best to blow the layer of dust off and finally write an update.

And the main update is this: last year my heart broke.

As many people know I was in a pretty serious relationship; it unfortunately ended almost a year ago today. As an engineer, I’m trained to solve problems, often difficult ones. But despite my best efforts, I was unable to fix our relationship when things started to fall apart. I watched, mostly helplessly, as we grew further apart, and whatever magic there had once been slowly dissipated away. When it ended, it was less of a breakup and more the sad admission that it was over.

I won’t lie: it hurt, and I felt pretty lost when it ended. I spent several months being fairly depressed and trying to figure out how to go from a team to a solo player again. One day I forced myself to sit down and look back honestly at everything, hoping that I could start the process of moving forward again. And while nobody was to blame, there were certain things I said and did over the course of the relationship that made me sad when I looked back. I can’t change the past (although I often wish I could), but that day I acknowledged my own failures with the hope that going forward I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

While it’s taken me the better part of a year, I’m finally at the place again where I am feeling like my old self. I have started taking singing lessons with the hope of playing a coffee shop sometime this year, and have been spending a lot of time at the gym with the goal of someday seeing if I actually have any abs. I am also getting on a plane again soon and am looking forward to a few new adventures over the next year.

And while this last year was a bit turbulent for me, I’m thankful that I’ve finally put the past behind me and somehow managed to find myself again. Expect future posts in a more timely manner going forward.

In short, I’m back.

Today is the first day of the “coding period” for Google Summer of Code 2016 and I’m excited to be working on the “Event in a Tab” project for Mozilla Calendar. The past month of the “community bonding period” has flown by as I made various preparations for the summer ahead. This post covers what I’ve been up to and my experience so far.

After the exciting news of my acceptance for GSoC I knew it was time to retire my venerable 2008 Apple laptop which had gotten somewhat slow and “long in the tooth.” Soon, with a newly refurbished 2014 laptop via Ebay in hand, I made the switch to GNU/Linux, dual-booting the latest Ubuntu 16.04. Having contributed to LilyPond before it felt familiar to fire up a terminal, follow the instructions for setting up my development environment, and build Thunderbird/Lightning. (I was even able to make a few improvements to the documentation – removed some obsolete info, fixed a typo, etc.) One difference from what I’m used to is using mercurial instead of git, although the two seem fairly similar. When I was preparing my application for GSoC my build succeeded but I only got a blank white window when opening Thunderbird. This time, thanks to some guidance from my mentor Philipp about selecting the revision to build, everything worked without any problems.

One of the highlights of the bonding period was meeting my mentors Philipp Kewisch (primary mentor) and MakeMyDay (secondary mentor). We had a video chat meeting to discuss the project and get me up to speed. They have been really supportive and helpful and I feel confident about the months ahead knowing that they “have my back.” That same day I also listened in on the Thunderbird meeting with Simon Phipps answering questions about his report on potential future legal homes for Thunderbird, which was an interesting discussion.

At this point I am feeling pretty well integrated into the Mozilla infrastructure after setting up a number of accounts – for Bugzilla, MDN, the Mozilla wiki, an LDAP account for making blog posts and later for commit access, etc. I got my feet wet with IRC (nick: pmorris), introduced myself on the Calendar dev team’s mailing list, and created a tracker bug and a wiki page for the project.

Following the Mozilla way of working in the open, the wiki page provides a public place to document the high-level details related to design, implementation, and the overall project plan. If you want to learn more about this “Event in a Tab” project, check out the wiki page.  It contains the mockup design that I made when applying for GSoC and my notes on the thinking behind it. I shared these with Richard Marti who is the resident expert on UI/UX for Thunderbird/Calendar and he gave me some good feedback and suggestions. I made a number of additional mockups for another round of feedback as we iterate towards the final design. One thing I have learned is that this kind of UI/UX design work is harder than it looks!

Additionally, I have been getting oriented with the code base and figuring out the first steps for the coding period, reading through XUL documentation and learning about Web Components and React, which are two options for an HTML implementation. It turns out there is a student team working on a new version of Thunderbird’s address book and they are also interested in using React, so there will be a larger conversation with the Thunderbird and Calendar dev teams about this. (Apparently React is already being used by the Developer Tools team and the Firefox Hello team.)

I think that about covers it for now. I’m excited for the coding period to get underway and grateful for the opportunity to work on this project. I’ll be posting updates to this blog under the “gsoc” tag, so you can follow my progress here.

— Paul Morris

If you want a less inclusive debate, let the diehards dominate it.

Soon everyone with a moderate view is a ‘sympathiser/traitor/idiot’ and ‘doesn’t get it’.

Those with opposing views are bullied out of the discussion altogether.

The diehards win because others simply don’t care enough to keep going (hence why they’re not diehards).

Get a group of people with a moderate view together and the most popular members will be those who can express the most extreme form of that view.

Moderators are trained to remove posts and people which violate rules which can be written. They’re rarely trained to spot and tackle diehards who break unwritten rules.

They don’t remove members who violate codes of conduct which can’t be easily transcribed. They’re so rarely trained to stick up and encourage a minority view to have a more inclusive debate.

If you catch members making huge assertions (‘x’ is dead/ ‘x’ is the future) without referencing evidence, you have a diehard problem.

If you spot any variation of the phrase ‘s/he doesn’t get it’, you have a diehard problem.

If you see a discussion which began with opposing viewpoints and is now dwindling into a tiny minority of people discussing the small differences between extreme versions of that viewpoint, you’ve got a diehard problem.

If moderation is about moderation it needs to not just remove the rule breakers but prevent the extreme view drowning out the less engaged or interested moderate view through sheer force of self-assertion.

the-future-now:

This gun is designed to look like a phone

Minnesota gun manufacturer Ideal Conceal’s signature product is a double-barreled, .380-caliber, derringer-style handgun that looks like a smartphone — but with a few quick Transformers-like adjustments it morphs into a handgun. Ideal Conceal CEO Kirk Kjellberg said he came up with the idea after an awkward incident at a local restaurant.

Follow @the-future-now​

What a great idea. Transformer handguns!

wolfliving:

http://www.greglindsay.org/blog/not-sosmart_homes_and_the_internet_of_things/

“For more than a month now, my house has been haunted. There’s nothing supernatural about it; there are more than 15 million homes infected with the H@untedM@nsion worm, BuzzCNN reported yesterday. Every morning between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.—never the same time twice—my bedroom lights begin to strobe, and Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” kicks in again. I would replace the smart lightbulbs (which were the hackers’ initial entry point into my smart home) with dumb ones, but then I’d lose the tax credits.

“Fortunately, I sleep on the floor of my Amazon Prime kitchen, which hasn’t interacted with my Microsoft bedroom since the acquisition talks broke down in 2019. It’s annoying when I ask for the weather report and both Alexa and Cortana talk over each other trying to answer. Even with my circadian rhythms shattered by the cacophony upstairs, Alexa knows me well enough to have started the coffee ten minutes ago.

“I wish she had stocked the fridge with milk, however. I haven’t had dairy in months, after hackers took advantage of my flirtation with the paleo diet to tweak Amazon’s predictive ordering routine to have racks of lamb and other big-ticket meats delivered. They ship them to me through their referral code; this earns them pennies but costs me a lot more. If I give them away or throw them out, more arrive automatically. All I can do is let them rot in the fridge, pitting the algorithm’s learning function against its zombie programming.

“While the coffee brews, I take a shower. As part of the haunting, my security camera ritualistically snaps a photo while I’m au naturel. When the haunting started, the first picture was accompanied by an automated email threatening to post my less-than-paleo physique to my Facebook account daily, unless I paid up – 300 μBTC, or about $20 US, to their bitcoin wallet.

“There isn’t sufficient power for me to work from home today. A 2022 Supreme Court decision granted power utilities the right to requisition stored electricity in my Tesla Powerwall during “periods of emergency” (i.e., summer), so by around noon I won’t have enough power to both charge the car and run the smart lights. And I’ll have to get back before 7 p.m., when the power normally comes back on. AT&T Cisco’s Smart+ Connected Collection service has started refusing to unlock the door without a pro-rated daily payment to cover the utility bill. It’s a good thing I never upgraded the door to the garage, so I can still hack its Bluetooth lock and sneak into my smart home.”

new-aesthetic:

Children form human arrow to help police find burglary suspects | UK news | The Guardian

Police have released a video of a group of children who formed a human arrow to point a police helicopter in the direction of two suspected burglars on the run.

Highly educated Dems more likely that those w less education to have liberal political views https://t.co/BalTmb4YqB via @pewresearch

— Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) May 14, 2016

mapsontheweb:

Results of the nationalist parties of Europe in the most recent national elections.

Populist nationalism on the rise as Europe grapples with economic, climate, and war refugees. You haven’t seen anything yet. Many others sympathize with the anti-immigrant nationalism of these parties.

As a product manager, you can’t do your job if people don’t trust you. Since you’re not (usually) someone’s direct boss, you can’t “order” anyone to do anything. Instead, you need to get buy-in to your plans and ideas while satisfying the wants and needs of a variety of individuals within your organization, each bringing their own baggage, questions and concerns. This is an especially difficult...

Source

The last time a countdown timer appeared on Pebble’s website the company released the Pebble Time. Today, Pebble is back in similar fashion with a timer ticking down to May 24th at 10:00EST.

The company notes, “Wait for it…You’re in for a treat on May 24th at 10AM EDT. Enter your email to get all the juicy details first.” On Twitter, Pebble possibly gave a bit more insight into its plans, “Everything’s better with friends. Invite the crew to http://pebble.com.”

Everything's better with friends. Invite the crew to https://t.co/5fXTrNoYjS May 24 at 10AM ET. #TheClockIsTicking pic.twitter.com/YCrWHD4Bzg

— Pebble (@Pebble) May 23, 2016

There are no other details, perhaps it will be a massive fire sale on select smartwatches. Possibly something completely different, too.

A few years ago we discussed that there is interest amongst carriers to have a third platform besides Android and iOS. Both BlackBerry and Nokia believed they would be that third platform. The market has decided otherwise. BlackBerry 10 is a walking dead and Android is the future for BlackBerry handhelds, if there is one. Microsoft's marketshare just fell below one percent according to Gartner. Since Microsoft does not seem to have any plans to launch any new Lumias this year, it will fall even lower.

That leaves us with a complete victory for Google. They are the only company which supports devices from C&A (cheap and awful) to the high end and from rugged to sophisticated. Their only interest is to get you on to Google services. Companies which make Android devices don't necessarily make money, but they make Google IDs.

Android is the new Windows. And as there was with Windows, there is an island for people who can afford to live there: Apple.

Es begann alles im Mai 2006. Vor ziemlich genau zehn Jahren habe ich meinen ersten Blogpost zum Thema Mobile Business auf mobile zeitgeist geschrieben. Über ein Jahr vor dem Launch des iPhone in den USA und sehr weit vor dem Zeitpunkt, als für viele erkennbar wurde, wie sehr Mobile unsere Arbeits- und Lebenswelten verändern würde.

Wir haben Giganten wie Nokia stürzen sehen, Apple wurde zum wertvollsten Unternehmen der Welt, Blackberry taumelt bis heute und selbst ein Riese wie Microsoft schafft es nicht, im Mobile Markt eine relevante Rolle einzunehmen.

Wir surfen heute unterwegs mit einer Geschwindigkeit, die wir uns früher am PC gewünscht hätten und empfinden die ständige Verfügbarkeit von Informationen und Diensten als ganz normal.

Start-ups haben uns Services ermöglicht, an die wir vorher nie gedacht haben, heute aber nicht mehr missen möchten. Wir nutzen unsere Smartphones bis zu 214 Mal am Tag und „Smombie“ wurde zum Jugendwort des Jahres.

In diesen zehn Jahren ist wirklich viel passiert. Nicht nur in der Welt von Mobile, auch auf mobile zeitgeist. Vieles habe ich ausprobiert, manches hat funktioniert, anderes nicht.

Aller Anfang ist schwer

In den ersten Jahren war es schon häufig so, dass ich mich recht einsam gefühlt habe. Das Thema Mobile interessierte nur sehr wenige im Business und die Zukunftsszenarien, die wir Mobilisten in dieser Zeit entwickelten, führten eher zu müdem Lächeln oder Kopfschütteln. Das ist normal, wenn man mit einem Thema sehr früh dran ist, aber manchmal fragte ich mich schon, warum ich mir das antat. Mein großes Glück war es – und ist es bis heute – dass ich das Thema schlicht faszinierend finde und wenn ich mir heute anschaue, wie sich alles um uns herum verändert hat, seit wir leistungsfähige mobile Geräte in den Händen halten, bin ich ein klein wenig stolz, ein Teil davon zu sein.

Ich werde jetzt nicht in nostalgische Stimmung verfallen und die mobile Entwicklung der letzten zehn Jahre Revue passieren lassen. Das mache ich lieber im Rahmen eines meiner Standard-Vorträge. Wer sich für die Artikel unserer zehn Jahre interessiert, dem stehen die fast 5.700 Blogposts natürlich zur Verfügung. Wir haben nicht gelöscht.

Geld verdienen mit einem Fachblog?

Es hat sich gezeigt, dass kostenpflichtige Angebote wie zum Beispiel eine strukturierte Studiendatenbank oder eine Jobbörse für die Mobilbranche nicht funktionieren. Trotz sehr niedriger Preise besteht für solche Services keine Zahlbereitschaft und so können sie auch nicht dauerhaft realisiert werden. Das ist vielleicht schade, aber auch nicht schlimm. Ich versuche solche Dinge gern, schaue wie es läuft und entscheide dann, ob es bleibt oder abgeschaltet wird.

Was leider bis heute auch noch nicht klappt ist, von mobile zeitgeist direkt leben zu können, d.h. die Einnahmen decken weiterhin gerade einmal die Betriebskosten. Eine angemessene Vergütung für Autoren, Helfer und vielleicht auch mich wird aber vielleicht bald möglich sein. Ich arbeite gerade an einem neuen Sponsorenmodell. Wer sich dafür interessiert, als Sponsor die Reichweite von mobile zeitgeist für sich zu nutzen und/oder in diesem frühen Stadium an der Ausgestaltung des Modells mitwirken möchte, spreche mich gern an: *protected email*.

Natürlich hätte ich schon vor langer Zeit auf eine Klick optimierte Ausrichtung von mobile zeitgeist setzen und den klassischen Weg der Online-Vermarktung beschreiten können. Doch mich hat immer abgeschreckt, was es für unsere langjährigen LeserInnen und auch mich inhaltlich bedeutet hätte. Es wäre nicht mehr das gewesen, wofür ich einmal angetreten bin. Und zu sehen, dass auch weitaus größere Formate wie die MobileGeeks des geschätzten Sascha Pallenberg wieder zu den „Wurzeln des Bloggens“ zurück gekehrt sind, hat mich in meiner Entscheidung, es nicht zu tun, bestätigt. Eine Monetarisierung auf TKP-Basis und Klickoptimierung ist für eine solche Nischen-Publikation wie mobile zeitgeist einfach nicht sinnvoll.

One-Woman-Show? Nein!

Doch kommen wir zu den Menschen, die mobile zeitgeist zu dem gemacht haben, was es heute ist. In diesen zehn Jahren hatte ich so viele Weggefährten, AutorInnen, die mit Herzblut und Freude hier auf mobile zeitgeist Artikel verfasst haben. Viele sind schon wieder verschwunden, einige sind seit Jahren dabei und ich hoffe, dass dies noch lange so bleibt. Ihr seid die Größten! Und am Besten sollen natürlich noch weitere AutorInnen hinzu kommen, denn mobile zeitgeist braucht sie und steht ihnen immer offen.

Nun ist ein Blog nicht nur das, was man „vorn“ sieht, also Inhalte, Webseiten und Social Media Kanäle. Es passiert auch viel „unter der Haube“ und hier haben ebenfalls viele liebe Menschen geholfen, wenn ich als Zauberlehrling wieder einmal die (technischen) Geister gerufen hatte, die ich dann nicht mehr beherrschen konnte. Thomas, Du weißt, wie oft Du mich und mobile zeitgeist gerettet hast. Danke!

Es wäre eine einsame Veranstaltung, so ein Blog, ohne die LeserInnen und die Supporter dort draußen. Jeder Klick auf einen Artikel, jeder Kommentar, jedes Feedback, jeder Like, Retweet und jedes Teilen zeigt uns nicht nur, dass wir etwas richtig machen, sondern es hilft uns so sehr zu wachsen. Inhaltlich und auch ganz schnöde, was die Reichweite angeht. Allen unseren LeserInnen, die uns auf ihren bevorzugten Plattformen oder auch per Mail weiter empfehlen ein ganz herzliches Dankeschön!

Wir haben keine Gelder für Werbung ausgegeben, um unsere Reichweite zu erhöhen, so dass mobile zeitgeist in den Jahren immer organisch gewachsen ist. Keine großen Werbebudgets (klar, testet man mal Facebook-Anzeigen), kein Kauf von Followern sondern immer wieder möglichst gute Inhalte und tägliches Kümmern und am Ball bleiben.

Euch allen, den Weggefährten von gestern und von heute, den LeserInnen, AutorInnen und Unterstützern, möchte ich von ganzem Herzen danken. Ohne Euch wäre mobile zeitgeist nicht das, was es heute ist.

Was kommt als nächstes?

Wie wird es nun weiter gehen mit mobile zeitgeist? Trotz meiner weiteren Aktivitäten bei ZUKUNFT DES EINKAUFENS und THE DIGNIFIED SELF werde ich mobile zeitgeist weiter führen, es macht einfach zu viel Freude und ist nicht zuletzt für mich die perfekte Plattform, meinen Bekanntheitsgrad auch jenseits meiner eigenen Branche zu erhöhen und so an Beauftragungen für Keynotes, Vorträge, Workshops und Beratungsmandate zu gelangen.

Ich werde weiterhin kuratieren, also fast täglich aus meiner Sicht interessante Artikel anderer Seiten zusammen stellen. Über den Tag verteilt erscheinen diese Link-Tipps auf unserem Twitter und Google+ Account (nicht auf Facebook übrigens) und wer morgens um acht Uhr die gesammelten Leseempfehlungen in seiner Inbox haben möchte, kann dies hier kostenfrei abonnieren und sich den anderen 265 Mit-LeserInnen der Mobile World anschließen.

Auf mobile zeitgeist werde ich weiterhin mit Video experimentieren und die Mobile Snacks weiter führen. Wer Themenvorschläge hat, was ich in einem Zeitfenster von ein paar Minuten einmal erklären soll, immer her damit: *protected email*.

Auch wird unser Bereich „Webinare“ wachsen und so für Wissbegierige und Unternehmen eine gewinnbringende Einrichtung werden. Für Lernende, die nach fundiertem Input zu bestimmten mobilen Themen suchen und diesen sehr günstig und vor allem ganz bequem am Arbeitsplatz nutzen können und natürlich für Unternehmen, die im Rahmen eines Trainings oder Tutorials ihre Lösungen unseren LeserInnen nahe bringen möchten.

Ich freue mich, vielleicht sogar auf die nächsten zehn Jahre. Wir stehen erst am Anfang von umwälzenden technologischen Entwicklungen und Mobile wird dabei immer eine heraus ragende Rolle spielen. Wir befinden uns sozusagen mit diesem Thema im Auge des Hurricanes.

Euch allen alles Gute, bleibt uns treu und empfehlt uns weiter. Und danke, danke, danke für die tolle Zeit!

Heike

Ever since the launch of Apple Music, Spotify has promised to make its family plan more competitive.

Now, almost a year after the launch of Apple’s music streaming service, the Stockholm-based company has followed through on that promise. Starting today, up to six family members can each have their own account through a single $14.99 per month plan, making it more affordable than the company’s previous family offering.

Unfortunately, the new family plan is currently unavailable in Canada — despite the fact it’s rolling out everywhere else people can subscribe to Spotify.

We’ve sent an email to Spotify, asking the company to clarify when Canadians can expect the new family plan to arrive in the Great White North. Stay tuned.

It may not have made the front page headlines, but Apple just concluded a significant week-long tour of India and China. Tim Cook has made numerous trips to China in recent years, but this was the first time that Cook visited India on an official trip as CEO of Apple. The trip also comes at a crucial time for the company as it begins to make big strategic moves to attract more Indian consumers, and at a time when Apple’s growth in China last quarter screeched to a halt after a period of huge growth.

Context for the Trip

The significance of the trips is made clear by the context of recent developments in China and India. These developments set the context for why it was important for Apple to make the trip, and also make it public.

China

Poor Earnings Results in China
In late April, Apple reported its Q2 2016 earnings results. It was the first time that Apple’s revenue had declined year-over-year since 2003. The story was particularly grim in Greater China, Apple’s second largest market after the United States, where revenue declined year-over-year by 26%. The decline was made all the more stark after the massive growth Apple experienced in Greater China across late-2014 and 2015.

Since Apple began reporting its revenue in Greater China in 2011, its share of total Apple revenue has grown rapidly from 10% in 2011 to nearly 30% in 2015. In recent quarters it has settled to around 25%, and after last quarter investors are understandably nervous about Apple’s future performance in China. A continued lack of growth, or decline, in China would be devastating to Apple’s financial performance.

During the earnings call Cook attempted to downplay the decline in China, and whilst it does provide context (albeit long-winded), it is still undeniable that Apple’s revenues declined in China (transcript via iMore):

If you take Greater China, we include Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in the Greater China segment that you see reported on your data sheet. The vast majority of the weakness in the Greater China region was in Hong Kong. And our perspective on that is, it's a combination of the Hong Kong dollar being pegged at the U.S. Dollar, so it carries the burden of the strength of the U.S. Dollar, and that has driven tourism, international shopping, and trade down significantly compared to what it was in the year-ago. If you look at mainland China, which is one that I am personally very focused on, we're down 11 percent in mainland China on a reported basis. On a constant currency basis we're only down 7. And the way that we really look at sort of the health or underlying demand, is look at sell-through, and if you look at it there we were down 5. And keep in mind, that that's down 5 on a comp a year ago that was up 81. And so as I sort of back up from this and look at the larger picture, I think China is not weak, as has been talked about, I see China as, may not have the wind at our backs that we once did, but it's a lot more stable than what I think is the common view of it. And so we remain really optimistic on China.

China Shuts Down iTunes Movies and iBooks Store
In mid-April, seemingly out of the blue, China’s government forced Apple to shut down iTunes Movies and the iBooks Store in China. Incredibly, Apple had only opened the iTunes Movies and iBooks Store six months earlier in September 2015. At the time, Apple issued a press release announcing the expansion of the digital content stores into China, and Eddy Cue was quoted as saying:

“Customers in China love the App Store and have made it our largest market in the world for app downloads,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “One of the top requests has been more great content and we’re thrilled to bring music, movies and books to China, curated by a local team of experts.”

The FBI and San Bernardino Case
Earlier this year a topic of considerable discussion was Apple’s refusal to assist the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple refused on the basis that by developing a custom operating system which disabled security checks, it would compromise the privacy and safety of everyone who owned an iPhone.

It was never at the forefront of the debate, but an important ancillary issue was what would happen in China if Apple did cooperate with the FBI. Apple never explicitly mentioned China, but as pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, it alluded to it in one of their court filings:

Once developed for our government, it is only a matter of time before foreign governments demand the same tool.

Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, was directly asked about China when he fronted up to a US congressional committee in April. He noted that Chinese authorities have asked Apple for its source code, but went on to say “I want to be very clear on this, we have not provided source code to the Chinese government."

iPhone Trademark Dispute Loss
In early May, Apple lost a court case over the “iPhone” trademark in respect of leather goods which it has been pursuing since 2012. The Beijing Municipal High People’s Court held that Xintong Tiandi is free to continue to use the phrase “iPhone” on leather goods. The court held that Apple could not prove that the iPhone brand was well-known in China before it started selling the iPhone within China in 2009. Apple told Reuters at the time of the decision that it was disappointed and said that it plans to request a retrial with the Supreme People’s Court.

India

Apple’s Plan to Import & Sell Refurbished iPhones is Rejected

The Indian government, in early May, rejected Apple’s request to import and sell refurbished iPhones in India. Apple had proposed a similar plan in 2015, which was also rejected. There were concerns, stoked by rival firms in India, that Apple’s plan would flood India with used electronics and weaken the Indian government’s “Make-in-India” local manufacturing program.

Apple Retail Stores Likely to Get Key Exemption

Apple Retail Stores are not a done deal in India, but in late April an Indian government panel recommended that Apple be exempted from a key requirement that would prevent them from opening retail stores in India. There are mandatory local sourcing rules in India for single-brand retail stores, but exemptions can be given for products “having state of the art and cutting edge technology and where local sourcing is not possible”. Final approval for the exemption is still required from the Indian Finance Minister.

Update (25 May 2016): India's finance minister denied the exemption from local sourcing that Apple had requested, overturning the decision in late April described above.

Apple Growing Rapidly in India, with Huge Potential

In the earnings call for Q2 2016, Tim Cook specifically called out the strong growth in India where iPhone sales were up 56% year-over-year. The potential for Apple is enormous in India. It is the third largest market in the world for smartphones and yet within India Apple only has a 2% market share. Tim Cook said as much in the latest earnings call, emphasising the opportunity for Apple (transcript via iMore):

…we've been working in India for a couple of years, or more, but we've been working with great energy over the last 18 months or so, and I'm encouraged by the results that we're beginning to see there, and we believe there's a lot, lot more there. It is already the third-largest smartphone market in the world, but because the smartphones that are working there are low-end primarily because of the network and the economics, the market potential has not been as great there, but I sort of view India is where China was maybe 7-10 years ago, from that point of view. And I think there's a really great opportunity there.

Modi’s “Make in India” Push
Soon after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India in 2014 he launched the “Make in India” program, which even has its own fancy website. As the name suggests, the goal is to increase manufacturing in India, and the manufacture of electronics is a key aspect of that. Other key goals of the program include making India the country with the largest amount of foreign direct investment, and to achieve net zero imports of electronics by 2020.

The Visit

This is a concise (but not complete) summary of the events that Cook and other Apple executives participated in during their China and India trip.

Thursday, May 12

Apple Invests $1bn in Didi Chuxing
Just days before Cook made the trip to China, it was announced that Apple had invested $1 billion into Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-hailing service. In an interview with Reuters, Cook said:

"We are making the investment for a number of strategic reasons, including a chance to learn more about certain segments of the China market," he said. "Of course, we believe it will deliver a strong return for our invested capital over time as well." "(The deal) reflects our excitement about their growing business ... and also our continued confidence in the long term in China’s economy," Cook said.

Reuters also got a quote from Didi Chuxing’s president, Jean Liu:

"There's a lot of things we can work on together," she said when asked whether Didi Chuxing would help Apple's government relations in China.

The New York Times followed up a few days later with more details on how the deal came together.

Monday, May 16

Tim Cook Arrives, Meets Didi Chuxing President
Tim Cook arrived in China on Monday and met with Jean Liu, the president of Didi Chuxing. Reuters reported that the meeting took place in a Beijing Apple Store, and included executives from other companies “including Meituan-Dianping, a group buying and order-in service firm”.

NYT: China Conducting Security Reviews on Apple Products
On the same day The New York Times reported that the Chinese government was scrutinising products from Apple and other large foreign companies to determine whether they posed potential security threats to the country.

Apple and other companies in recent months have been subjected to reviews that target encryption and the data storage of tech products, said people briefed on the reviews who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the reviews, Chinese officials require executives or employees of the foreign tech companies to answer questions about the products in person, according to these people.

The reviews are run by a committee associated with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s Internet control bureau, they said. The bureau includes experts and engineers with ties to the country’s military and security agencies.

Tuesday, May 17

Cook meets with China’s Industry and Technology Regulator
Tim Cook met with Miao Wei, the head of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Reuters reported that Wei stressed the importance of security for Chinese users.

"I hope Apple can expand its business in China, deepen its cooperation in research and development and industrial supply chains, and provide a convenient and secure user experience for Chinese consumers," said Miao Wei

GarageBand Updated with Chinese Music
Coinciding with a meeting between Tim Cook and JJ Lin, Apple pushed out an update for GarageBand which added Chinese instruments and sounds.

Wednesday, May 18

Apple Announces Development Accelerator in India
After arriving in India late on Tuesday, Tim Cook and Jeff Williams met with Indian iOS developers. Apple also announced that it would open an iOS app design and development accelerator in Bangaluru India in early 2017. The unique program will see Apple experts “lead briefings and provide one-on-one app reviews for developers”.

“India is home to one of the most vibrant and entrepreneurial iOS development communities in the world,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, we’re giving developers access to tools which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world.”

Tim Cook Visits Hindu Temple
In the early hours of May 18, Cook visited the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai.

Tim Cook Attends Bollywood Party
In the evening of May 18, Cook and fellow executives attended a party hosted by Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. Quartz reports that the party was attended by other prominent celebrities including “actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Madhuri Dixit-Nene and Aishwarya Rai, Oscar-winning music director AR Rahman, and filmmakers Mahesh Bhatt and Farah Khan”.

Lisa Jackson Visits Rural Indian College
Lisa Jackson, Apple’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, was also in India and on Wednesday visited the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Ajmer.

Thursday, May 19

Apple Opens Development Office in Hyderabad
On Thursday Apple announced the opening of a new development office in Hyderabad which will focus on the development of Apple Maps. Apple said in a press release that the new office will create up to 4,000 jobs.

“Apple is focused on making the best products and services in the world and we are thrilled to open this new office in Hyderabad which will focus on Maps development,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The talent here in the local area is incredible and we are looking forward to expanding our relationships and introducing more universities and partners to our platforms as we scale our operations.”

Tim Cook Attends Cricket Match
In the words of Quartz, Tim Cook completed the “holy trinity of India” (the other two being Bollywood, and attending a Hindu temple) when he attended an Indian Premier League cricket match on Thursday night.

Friday, May 20

Indian Media Interviews with Tim Cook
On Friday, Tim Cook sat down for extended interviews with Indian Express and NDTV. Primarily focused on questions relating to Apple in India, they are still interesting interviews even if you live outside of India.

Read the Indian Express interview with Tim Cook

Watch the NDTV interview with Tim Cook

Cook Meets Industry Partners
It was also reported by Reuters that Cook met with industry partners on Friday. This included the founder of India’s largest mobile operator, Airtel, as well as executives from ICICI Bank.

Saturday, May 21

Tim Cook Meets Indian Prime Minister
Tim Cook wrapped up his tour of India by meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday. Reuters reported that the focus of the meeting was on the potential for Apple to manufacture in India, as well as Apple’s desire to open Apple retail stores in the country. Cook asked Modi to reconsider India’s refusal to allow Apple to import and sell refurbished iPhones in the country, whilst Modi emphasised his “Make in India” manufacturing plan. Also discussed during the meeting was security and data encryption.

Time Will Tell

India and China offer some of the biggest opportunities for Apple going forward, and Tim Cook’s whirlwind tour of the two countries last week was designed to make that clear to the world. But what remains to be seen, and time will tell, is whether Cook’s inaugural visit to India was just a glitzy media event for India and Apple’s investors, or whether it was a real and meaningful attempt by Cook and Apple to demonstrate that India has become a significant strategic opportunity for Apple. Watching the interview of Cook on NDTV, and the announcements Apple made during the trip, I would suggest it is the latter. In any case, it will be fascinating to see how succesful (or not) Apple is in China and India over the next few years.

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Howdy mozillians!

Last week on Friday (May 20th), we held another successfull event – Firefox 47 beta 7 Testday.

Thank you all – Ilse Macías, Stelian Ionce, Iryna Thompson, Nazir Ahmed Sabbir, Rezaul Huque Nayeem, Tanvir Rahman, Zayed News, Azmina Akter Papeya, Roman Syed, Raihan Ali, Sayed Ibn Masudn, Samad Talukdar, John Sujoy, Nafis Ahmed Muhit, Sajedul Islam, Asiful Kabir Heemel, Sunny, Maruf Rahman, Md. Tanvir Ahmed, Saddam Hossain, Wahiduzzaman Hridoy, Ishak Herock, Md.Tarikul Islam Oashi, Md Rakibul Islam, Niaz Bhuiyan Asif, MD. Nnazmus Shakib (Robin), Akash, Towkir Ahmed, Saheda Reza Antora, Md. Almas Hossain, Hasibul Hasan Shanto, Tazin Ahmed, Badiuzzaman Pranto, Md.Majedul islam, Aminul Islam Alvi, Toufiqul Haque Mamun, Fahim, Zubayer Alam, Forhad Hossain, Mahfuza Humayra Mohona – for the participation!

A big thank you goes out to all our active moderators too!

Results:

• there were no bugs verified nor triaged
• some failures were mentioned for APZ feature in the etherpads (link 1 and link 2); therefore, please add the requested details in the etherpads or, even better, join us on #qa IRC channel and let’s figure them out

I strongly advise everyone of you to reach out to us, the moderators, via #qa during the events when you encountered any kind of failures. Keep up the great work! \o/

And keep an eye on QMO for upcoming events!

TL;DR: Open Badges have hit a tipping point and no longer need my ‘evangelism’. This is to be celebrated. What’s needed now is the dynamic and differentiated use of the technology to effect real change. This is why I’m continuing my work with organisations as an Open Badges strategist and change-maker.

Almost exactly five years ago, I stumbled across a pilot being carried out as a collaboration between the nascent Mozilla Learning team and P2PU around Open Badges. It’s fair to say that this discovery, made while I was doing some research in my role for Jisc, altered the course of my professional life.

As an educator, I realised immediately the immense power that a web-native, decentralised, alternative accreditation system could have. I carried out more research, talking about Open Badges with anyone who would listen. This led to me being invited to judge the DML Competition that seed-funded the badges ecosystem and, ultimately, to being asked to work for Mozilla.

I’m not going to turn this post into a blow-by-blow account of the last few years. This is a time for looking forward. That’s why I’m happy to say that, as of today, I no longer consider myself merely an Open Badges evangelist, but an Open Badges strategist. I’m interested in working with people and organisations who are looking to implement Open Badges in new and interesting ways.

What do I mean by that? Well, here’s a few examples:

• Building badge-based ‘playlists’ for learning (with an emphasis on diversity and co-creation)
• Developing new extensions and ways of using the standard in informal learning contexts
• Scaffolding participation and activism through badges that ‘nudge’ positive behaviours in individuals and groups

One way of looking at this is to use Ruben Puentadura’s SAMR model, which I cite in my book The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies:

There’s some interesting preliminary work I do with clients around ‘Augmentation’ but, as quickly as I’m able, I try to get them to think about the top two tiers of the pyramid.

If you’re an organisation looking for mere ‘Substitution’, then Open Badges ecosystem is now developed enough for you to do this by yourself. It’s never been easier to use one of the many badge issuing platforms to simply digitise your existing credentials. There’s documentation around how to get started all over the web, including the Open Badges 101 course that Bryan Mathers and I have curated during our time working with City & Guilds.

I’d challenge organisations and, in particular, universities, to go beyond what they’ve been able to do for the last few hundred years, and think about how to do true 21st-century credentialing. This is a situation where forward-thinking businesses, charities, non-profits, and institutions are in a strong position to drive not only organisational change, but societal change. The nature of hiring and onboarding, for example, can be entirely changed and revolutionised through a fresh look at how we demonstrate knowledge, skills, and behaviours to others.

Over the next few months, I’m looking to build on my doctoral thesis and the work I’ve done over the last few years, to help clients identify, develop, and credential digital skills. If you think I may be able to help you, then please do get in touch: hello@nulldynamicskillset.com

Image CC BY Ian Carroll

Glenn Fleishman, writing for The Atlantic:

Hi.co, a website that allows its users to post “moments” with a photo and annotation, plans a similar trip to the distant future. The operators, Craig Mod (who has also previously written for _The Atlantic) _and Chris Palmieri, announced today that the site will freeze service in September 2016. However, all posts present in the site’s database at that time will be microprinted onto a two-by-two-inch nickel plate. The entire site—2,000,000 words and 14,000 photos—should fit on a single disk. Several copies will be made and distributed across the globe; the Library of Congress has already been secured as a repository. The plates have a lifespan as long as 10,000 years, and they may be viewed with a 1,000-power optical microscope.

That's certainly one way to go about digital preservation. This was a truly entertaining read – make sure to check out the links about time capsules and the Rosetta Disk.

→ Source: theatlantic.com