Category Archives: Technology

Technology focused posts.

When Piracy is Easy, How Do You Compete?

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Popcorn Time is something that I’ve been hearing about for a while now but I’ve never really looked into. Effectively it’s a tool that gives you an easy to use User Interface to find Torrents for your favorite TV shows and movies. Torrents, by the way are a type of file and download methodology. Effectively you get tiny bits and pieces from a large number of different users across the internet. This makes it harder to track the individual files, prevents it from easily being removed from the web, and helps manage internet usage across the multiple users. In the days of Kazaa, you directly downloaded from a single peer, now you’re downloading from multiple users, so if one goes offline or reduces the bandwidth they are sending the file to you it has minimal impact.

Torrents are what’s called “piracy” and are on the pirate bay and any number of other sites that share those files. Since they do not have to follow strict contracting like Netflix, Comcast, Hulu, HBO, and other streaming services you have access to the movies you want whenever you want them. For instance, Netflix recently lost access to the Avengers, probably because of the cost of keeping in their library and Disney trying to create artificial scarcity of the legal product. You can find extremely high quality torrents out there to watch it if you can’t get it for free. In fact I’m sure it’s on Popcorn Time right now.

Because of these difference and the historic complexity and risks of downloading a torrent, Netflix had positioned itself as a way to prevent piracy. Now this might not be the case, as Netflix is beginning to see Popcorn Time as a legitimate threat to their business model. I’m not surprised that Netflix sees risk here and I think that this is a good thing for Netflix. It means they are expecting their business to be disrupted and that they can take proactive steps to address it.

What can they do to keep their business afloat and continue to fight piracy? Well, since they are essentially seen as a cash cow on two fronts – ISPs and Content producers (MPAA and TV companies), they need to clearly articulate the amount of piracy that was reduced once the content was put onto Netflix and then show the increase in piracy after the content was pulled from Netflix for contractual reason. If Netflix can’t afford to keep it on their network, then with an easy to use app like Popcorn Time, the content will be pirated, which means that any revenue artificial scarcity was hoping to drive or to be extracted from Netflix at an elevated price goes out the window and the content will still be consumed.

In some cases piracy will happen regardless, but if the trend continues were people are switching back and forth between cord cutting and going back to cable because of rising costs of apps, then apps like Popcorn Time will become more popular because they can completely replace Hulu, Amazon Prime Videos, HBO Go, Netflix, etc.. You could be a cord cutter with this and pay for one app to get your live sports and be good to go. Content producers will begin to lose out again, because they are trying to squeeze the companies that provide easy, relatively cheap access to their content. I’d rather not go back to that, but if my costs keep rising because the companies I choose to support can’t afford the content that I want, then I’d have no choice.

AMD, What Are You Doing?

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The past few months haven’t been kind to AMD. First Lisa Su, the first female CEO, ousted Rory Read. Now three leaders have left including the General Manager John Byrnes, CMO Colette LaForce and Chief Strategist Rajan Naik. Furthermore, it’s pretty clear that the remaining two leaders long term leaders, Mark Papermaster CTO and Devindar Kumar were sort of bribed to stay with restricted stock. This is on top of delays in their desktop, graphics, and mobile chipset and layoffs.

I think it’s pretty clear that AMD no longer has a clear strategy. AMD, while I was working there, was starting to put out some cool stuff that could really define the future of computing. Their APUs were best in class and could have been deployed in a lot of really cool applications. However, those never appeared to have materialized and now Intel is starting to attack the SoC market. While Intel’s Iris graphic chipset is way behind AMD in pure power, I think it’s going to play a serious role in the up coming years especially since Intel is leveraging a similar enough design that they are able to use the Open Compute Language that AMD championed.

Another area of concern for AMD fans is that John Byrne, shortly before his departure, announced at CES that AMD was steering clear of the IoT phenomenon. Which I found surprising considering that their strategy, only a year and a half ago, was to conquer the embedded computing space. Since they restructured again, that’s about 4 times in the past 4 years, they have clearly decided to forego that space. The IoT chipsets are likely going to be a disruptive technology to computing. For instance, this computer you can dock and upgrade every year for about $200, while Intel released a full Windows computer on an HDMI stick for $150. In the past I wrote that I thought that the dockable phone that would turn into a full computer would be the long term future, but these are the incremental steps to get us there.

AMD clearly doesn’t see these spaces the future. They are currently looking at where the market is now and not truly planning for the future. I was excited whenever AMD announced the partnership with Gizmosphere hoping it could compete head to head with the Raspberry Pi, but AMD is clearly failing to embrace that movement, since those devices would be powering the IoT and the maker movement. On the otherhand Intel is rushing to embrace these groups and sees these people as the way into attacking Qualcomm, Samsung, ARM, and Apple’s designs.

Low power is going to be vital for the future expecting a smaller and smaller niche of applications. In these applications, excepting graphics chips, AMD is getting crushed. Even in the graphics space AMD is starting to flounder with poor quality, as @NipnopsTV reported with his year old or so 7970 card.

All of these should be a concern for AMD fans. The company is not investing in the disruptive technology hitting their industry, their market cap is only $2.06B and their shares are at $2.66. They may be positioning themselves to get bought or could be at risk for a hostile take over for their IP or pushed into bankruptcy since their IP might be worth more than the company operating as it is. Look at Nortel to as an example where it’s IP was sold for $4.5B while everything else was just ditched.

Could we eventually see a Samsung R290 and a Samsung Kaveri processor? They gobbled up a ton of AMD’s engineers in 2013 definitely could happen.

Researchers Have “Solved” Poker and What it Could Mean

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Today, Chezz pointed me to a really interesting article. Apparently have figured out how to pretty much guarantee a win in “Heads Up Limit Hold ‘Em” Poker. This is the poker equivalent to beating chess masters head to head, like what Deep Blue did in the 90’s and what Watson did more recently on Jeopardy! The difference between these instances though is all players in the game have the same basic information. In chess all the information to inform any move and future moves are available with a glance at the board. In Jeopardy! it’s a little different because it’s knowledge based, but to create the question to the answer, it’s what you know, but the answer is there for everyone at the same time.

In poker, it’s different because you, initially, know only 2 cards out of the 52 in the deck, as the play continues you know more. So you’re dealing with imperfect information about what action to take. This is important, because that’s what you need to do as a player is address that uncertainty. In this program the researchers developed a great learning tool that was able to determine the best course of play and with the experience the researchers gave the program they effectively created an unbeatable computer.

However, the game is limited to a 1 vs. 1 situation with a limit to how much the players are able to bet in any given situation. Those limits are based on multiples of the opening bid. These limits, I’m sure, will eventually be generalized to handle any number of players and then any number of betting options, such as no limit.

Once this happens, I think that these learning systems will have or could have a dramatic impact on a great deal of things. First, trading is essentially poker and the companies that will likely leverage this first will be the companies that deal in high frequency trading. This will make the computers act very differently than they are now and with these new learning algorithms built into them, it could dramatically reshape our stock markets (more than they have been to this point). Second, these systems would be used to “help” with negotiations in any number of situations. I’m thinking initially diplomatic situations where there are a great deal of stakes on the table, which most of them are known, but the information is incomplete. In these cases a computer can greatly augment the capabilities of the diplomat that wouldn’t have been possible in the past, which could either increase the likelihood of a war or reduce it depending on what the goals of the computer are. What does “winning” mean in those cases. So setting those clear boundaries will be important, but that’s why having a person there to augment the machine is crucial as they would provide that feedback over the course of the negotiations.

Finally, this one is by far the largest stretch, but it might be more possible to plan or react to a great deal of the actions of economic entities. This means that governments could leverage these applications to help determine the best determine where to invest as well as where to buy to help truly manage the economy. The central bank could change dramatically.

None of these situations are going to happen overnight. Most likely we’re 2-3 years from multiplayer with no limit hold ’em and 5 years for more monetizable uses for this application. Rest assured these algorithms will be used in a business at some point. Watson and Deep Blue have been repurposed to make IBM money. Expect something similar and I think that these are all very realistic applications that these researcher could pursue. What do you think?

Privacy and Public Places

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Privacy is a tricky thing, there’s privacy of your home, expectations of privacy around mail, privacy related to digital devices, privacy in your car, and privacy in even more public places – each one of them we have different understood or assumed levels of privacy. These maybe different from person to person, but generally we assume in certain places that we’re pretty safe from being eavesdropped on. Furthermore, even though we often talk or talk on our phones in public we expect them to be relatively safe from being overheard, because most people simply don’t care about what we’re saying.

In the public there are some clear rules about what is free for police to inspect and what is not public. For example a police officer can listen to your conversations if they have the right equipment. It is possible for the police to photograph you as well whenever you’re walking around in public. Another place that is mostly a public place is actually your car. If anything is clearly visible on the seats through the windows it’s considered public. However, if something would be in your trunk or glove box the police officer cannot search it unless you give them permission, they have probable cause, or they have some sort of a warrant.

Recently the police and FBI have been using something called a “sting ray” which is effectively a middle man attack between your cell phone and the cell phone provider. The FBI believe, according to recent filings, that a stingray is something that they should be able to use in public without requiring a warrant. They argue that since the person on the cell phone is speaking in public they should have no expectation of privacy.

I think that this raises a lot of concerns. First, even if the sting ray is deployed in a “public” place there are definitely places that you can expect privacy. For instance if you live above a series of bars the bulk of the people that would be hit by the sting ray would likely be in a public place. Even areas that are mostly park still have areas that are private or might even be residential. For this to be even close to realistic the FBI would have to 100% certain that ever person possibly impacted this is in a public place.

Personally, I don’t think that this argument will fly. I believe that this is very similar in terms of technology used and methodology as GPS trackers on cars or more similarly is the GPS information from cell phones. Even if you are using a third party application or technology you still have the expectation of privacy. I believe that this should hold in this instance as well. You’re expecting your communication to be secure between your phone and the cell phone provider without anyone listening in.

I seriously hope that the FBI loses this, because I find the fact that using a technology like this to intercept my cell phone calls from going to the cell provider to be terrifying and if a similar technology was used by any one other than the authorities, they would be on charges for computer fraud and likely put in jail for a very very long time.

Uber might be crashing back to Earth

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Last Friday Uber decided to start operating in Portland. I know, it’s a little surprising that Uber or any of the other rideshare Taxi apps aren’t already in the city. Portland had told Uber they could not operate in the city, but Uber decided to thumb their nose at that similarly to what they have done in other cities. Even though Uber was recently valued at $40 Billion they have had some serious issues lately, like rape of a woman in Delhi while illegally operating in the city. Furthermore, as I mentioned in my last article, they have smeared women journalists with the data Uber collects.

Portland has decided to sue Uber over their illegal operation within the city. The city is following Nevada in suing the company rather than trying to fine their drivers. Uber has since ceased operations in the state due to an injunction against the company operating in the state. This appears to be the only route that will work effectively as Uber is still operating in Delhi despite the citywide ban of the service. Uber has also been banned in Spain, Thailand, and parts of the Netherlands. I think the biggest blow, however, is the fact that both San Francisco and LA are suing the company for false advertising related to their fees and background check.

These responses should not come as much of a surprise to anyone that has been watching the company over the past few years. The company is part of the Silicon Valley culture of going fast and trying to break things. The problem is that, incumbents are incumbents for a reason and they do have the ear of government. It’s not to say that they should be incumbents or that it makes them something worthy of respect, but you need to understand the cards are stacked against you. In cases where you want to go in and intentionally ruffle feathers, you must have strong safe guards in place to protect your customers and be public about how you protect them. Uber should welcome background check audits, privacy audits, and driver safety audits whenever they go into a new market. These should all be huge features that they brag about and let people under the hood to actually see.

I think it’s time that companies like Uber start treating our data as if it’s Personal Health Information, which is protected by Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (aka that HIPAA agreement you sign at the doctors’ office). The default is to not share personal information about a patient, that if someone is caught looking at the data without just cause, it typically results in a firing and a fine for the organization. Similar action must be taken at Uber to show they are a steward of our data. Now the government won’t be taking that money, but instead they should be donating the funds to a good cause at a similar rate to a HIPAA violation.

In some respect Uber is exhibiting the effects of a company that is growing too large too fast without designing processes to enable their business activities properly. For Uber to be a successful long term company they need to figure out how to both appease city governments through over protecting their users and breaking existing rules. If the company can be trusted then governments will be more willing to accept pushing boundaries.