The Future Of TV… Though Not Yet

Watching shows on the net today reminds me of watching UHF pre-cable. It was there, but a hassle. It’s more likely I’d watch on my PC where there’s a fuller multimedia presentation through your browser.

cbsn

When Amazon briefly marked its brand new Fire Stick down to $20, I bought one. It now joins my Roku and Chromecast as ancillary TV receivers. It’s TV over the Internet instead of over the air. Some ‘channels’ are linear others totally on demand.

Definitions are getting blurry. Are they channels? Is ComediansInCarsGettingCoffee a channel or show or both or neither? That’s still being decided.

cbsn-logoI downloaded an app to watch CBSN, the new all news offering from CBS.

It’s available only via the net.

It looked pro. They’ve gone for warmth with a tie-less anchor and brick walled studio. The production seemed a little thin. 24/7 is a lot of time with few additional bodies. TV can be done inexpensively. The product is almost as good.

It is well written and serious–CBS’ish.

Screenshot 2014-12-02 21.26.07They play an animated “We’ll be right back” bumper. Really? In 2014? These are early problems which will be solved.

I probably won’t watch CBSN much on the big TV in the loft. Too many steps. Using the big TV for shows on the net today reminds me of watching UHF pre-cable. It was there, but a hassle. It’s more likely I’d watch on my PC where there’s a fuller multimedia presentation through the browser.

What happens to the incumbents–newspapers and local TV news outfits as more and more services set out to the Internet? They adapt or perish.

Some adapt, still perish.

Have you read a newspaper with a hyphenated name? The Journal-Courier, Courier-Journal, Star-Ledger, Times-Picayune, Times-Herald-Record, Post-Gazette, Post-Dispatch? Consolidations and shakeouts happen.

When I was a kid, New York City had seven citywide English language newspapers with additional dailies in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens. Not anymore.

This market, Orange County, is greatly under-served. Maybe some clever video news provider will shake-in? Alas, the bigger trend is in the other direction.

Addendum: I am considering sending the Fire Stick back. It is unstable or unusable on the two sets I’d like to use it on. I believe the problem has to do with DHCP, a method of digital rights management and these individual sets. Will Amazon fix the problem? It’s stopping me from using their product.

Amazon Would Like To Listen To All Your Conversations

Everything you say is going back through the Internet to Amazon’s servers. Will it be eavesdropping on your life? I think that’s Amazon’s point. We are being farmed for our data.

Echo - KeyFeaturesDevice

Amazon’s newest product is Echo. Echo’s implications are simultaneously interesting and creepy. Echo is a standalone digital assistant that responds to voice commands. Think Siri, but without the phone.

Here comes the creepy part.

Tucked under Echo’s light ring is an array of seven microphones. These sensors use beam-forming technology to hear you from any direction. With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it’s playing music.

You know the scene in Casino where Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci turn on their car’s radio to keep from being heard? Not anymore!

It hears you when you’re sleeping. It knows when you’re awake. It knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

Amazon claims:

Echo begins working as soon as it hears you say the wake word, “Alexa.”

Echo-AudioExplodedDeviceThat’s not so. It has to be listening to EVERYTHING to know when “Alexa” is said.

This wouldn’t be as scary if your individual Echo kept your secrets. It does not.

Echo’s brain is in the cloud, running on Amazon Web Services so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time.

Everything you say is going back through the Internet to Amazon’s servers. Will it be eavesdropping on your life? I think that’s Amazon’s point. We are being farmed for our data.

I’m making the point with Amazon, but Siri and Google Now are already doing most of this via your cellphone or web browser (see the example at the bottom of this page).

There’s no doubt the Internet gives us powers and abilities far beyond anything I imagined as a kid–and I had a good imagination. But there is a downside. Even if voice recognition was flawless (and it’s anything but), bad interpretation will surely cause unforeseen grief.

Those pushing this part of the technology say errors will be limited. I have no doubt. But fixing errors is expensive. Google, Facebook and others have already shown, companies would rather you didn’t know how to contact them, much less help you fix problems of their doing.

The good news is they don’t look at us as individuals. The bad news is they don’t look at us as individuals.

The NSA’s On The Wrong Side Of Heartbleed

Since this entry was published the NSA had denied any part in knowing the Heartbleed flaw existed. Their adherence to the truth has been less than exemplary in the past. Let’s let this play out. – Geoff

heartbleedYou’ve probably heard about the Heartbleed bug by now. It’s a flaw introduced to to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer); a mistake as code was updated.

Simply put, Internet data transmissions we thought were secure were not. Things like passwords, financial information, anything private was easily cracked.

The bug languished mostly unknown for years. That’s called security by obscurity. Never a good idea. We’re seeing that now.

As far as I can tell Heartbleed’s never been exploited for nefarious commercial purposes. It has that potential. However, it has been exploited by our government’s spies!

The NSA knew Heartbleed existed. They had a choice, tell the maintainers of the code to fix it or exploit it themselves and leave us vulnerable. They chose the latter.

Now, because the NSA felt their ability to soak up data trumped our collective security, Heartbleed is a big deal! Leaving this security hole open for years is reprehensible.

More and more it seems America’s intelligence agencies, beginning with the NSA, are out-of-control. They have lost sight of their actually mission–protecting us. Instead we are more vulnerable and our international partners know we can’t be trusted with their precious secrets.

This story was broken by Michael Riley at Bloomberg News.

“It flies in the face of the agency’s comments that defense comes first,” said Jason Healey, director of the cyber statecraft initiative at the Atlantic Council and a former Air Force cyber officer. “They are going to be completely shredded by the computer security community for this.”

It’s time we have a come to Jesus meeting with our spies. Is everyone in Washington that scared of them?

Amazon And Us

amazon logoMy dad and I were on the phone yesterday. He told me he just ordered corn flakes via Amazon.

A click in the evening brought the flakes 36 hours later.

“How do they do it,” he asked?

My mom and dad, now living comfortably near my sister and her family in frigid Wisconsin, aren’t very mobile. Grocery shopping is tough.

We’re big Amazon users here too. I’m looking around my office at loads of items delivered to me. I’ve ordered on-line when I could have just gone to Home Depot, under five minutes away.

Is this a good thing? Over the short term it’s great. I get what I want with less hassle and for what’s usually the best price.

Amazon figured out how to get things to me fast using a variety of delivery services. It’s a data driven company. There’s a method to their madness, but no two packages come via the same route.

Over the long run I’m much less convinced all of this is a good thing! Staples announced they’re closing 300 stores in the US. Radio Shack is lopping off over a thousand. Retail’s in trouble. Malls are in trouble. Even Walmart is worried. Amazon is trying to hide in the corner, softly whistling.

At the same time, Amazon’s become adept at extracting favorable tax rates and incentives. A Google search for “tax incentive amazon” shows a half dozen states considering or already offering large sums of money to Amazon.

Everything I buy online I don’t buy in a store. Amazon fills the gap with fewer employees earning less money. I’m not paying today. I’m paying tomorrow. The jobless require assistance. It’s not the workers fault.

George Jetson at WorkIf the Jetsons had properly predicted the future, where George comes to work and immediately puts his feet up on his desk, we’d be fine. I grew up with that fantasy. But labor saving hasn’t meant making life easier for labor. The effect has been quite the opposite.

The convenience offered by buying online is huge. It’s only when you see the whole picture, it becomes suspect.

These are complex choices. I’m not rushing to a decision. It’s confusing.

A New Credit Card… Again

A New Card Is On The Way  GmailExcuse us while Helaine and I pull all our hair out by the roots one strand at a time!

Our Southwest Airlines credit card is being replaced, again. The new card gets a new number. EVERYONE we do business with on a regular basis must be told.

Maybe you remember the last time this happened? We were driving from Connecticut to California. We were in Lincoln, Nebraska when we got the call.

I’ve lost count how many times this has happened, but at least five. We expect Chase not to extend the expiration date, so this will have to be done again in about a year. Make it at least six times.

What we’ve learned through all this is EVERY website puts credit card number changes in a different place. Each requires different hoops be jumped through and that you understand their particular style of business English. Some changes will take seconds, others will follow long minutes of head scratching.

Part of the reason this stings so much is because each-and-every time this has happened it’s been because of how Chase (and other American banks) issue cards.

It’s my understanding the “Target Caper” couldn’t have happened in Europe or Asia. There, credit card issuers have spent a little money to improve security. Here in the states, their security ends up being part of my job!

Not happy.