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Why TV is Broken

Minimal Mac has an interesting piece on the UX of television. In short, a young girl who isn’t exposed to TV suddenly is, and is confused and upset by the service provided. She doesn’t understand commercials, doesn’t understand the changes in volume, and becomes resigned to cable TV’s deficiencies.

A cautionary note to advertisers and television moguls alike: if your next-generation audience is ‘resigned’ to your service, and has alternates to your content delivery options, you need to adapt or watch your audience base slowly erode.

Go read the piece. It’s well written and eye-opening.

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Humour

An image a friend sent my way a while back that makes me chuckle every time I see it.

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Here’s Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas:

Holder left several aspects of his argument unexplained. He did not define the terms “senior operational leader” of al-Qaida, nor what it means to be an “affiliate” of the amorphous group. The attorney general only referred to the drones through the euphemism “stealth or technologically advanced weapons.” Holder did not explain why U.S. forces could not have captured Awlaki instead of killing him, nor what its criteria are for determining on future missions that suspected U.S. citizen terrorists must be killed, rather than captured. Holder did not explain why Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, whom a missile strike killed two weeks after his father’s death, was a lawful target. Holder did not explain how a missile strike represents due process, or what the standards for due process the government must meet when killing a U.S. citizen abroad. Holder did not explain why the government can only target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism for death overseas and not domestically.

In which the United States government asserts, in all seriousness, that it’s perfectly okay (appropriate, even) for the President to order the killing of an American citizen without any due process of law whatever. The Constitution? Not a barrier anymore, apparently.

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Liberal Party of Canada Comes Out Against IMSI Catchers

I was surprised – and delighted – to see the Public Safety Critic for the Liberal Party of Canada recently come out against the use of IMSI catchers. Specifically, Francis Scarpaleggia said to Xtra!

The fact that the police do have technology that allows them to capture IMSIs, that means that they could theoretically, with that information, go to an ISP and get the identity of that person, even if the person’s just walking by innocently but they happen to be observing the crowd

This is a very, very good step in the right direction, and it’s terrific to see the technical concerns with forthcoming lawful access legislation actually rising to the attention of federal politicians. Hopefully we’ll see this kind of technical awareness rise all the way to statements in parliament and committee hearings on the legislation.

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Routes of Least Surveillance (Manhattan, USA, circa 2001)

From “An Atlas of Radical Cartography” edited by Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat.

This is a ridiculously cool idea. I’d love to see something similar that used Google fusion tables + a game to map  CCTV locations in order to give surveillance-minimized travel directions.

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SOURCE

Google’s new privacy policy is going to be sheer gold for 1984 enthusiasts. While I’m not a fan of such simplistic references, it will provide a new round of comics for speakers at privacy, security, and surveillance conferences to rip off. Hopefully those same speakers aren’t themselves too tied to the notions of 1984 or the panopticon being the defining means of framing Google’s behaviours.

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Aside

Infographic on the state of social media privacy

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Videos

RIM Proof of Concept

This is an interesting proof of concept being demoed by RIM. It’s certainly not practical at the moment – requiring an overhead camera means it only really works in mobile/fixed testbeds – but it is cool. The next step, beyond building buzz of course, is to figure out how to make this kind of technology useful to the consumer. Still, it’s good to see RIM demoing the ‘cool stuff’ they’ve been privately researching. Hopefully we see more of these kinds of demos in the future to build a rebuild the beleaguered company’s public image.

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Humour

Door Code

mnancy:

Oh really?

I’m really tempted to do something similar for the door in my office.

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Papers on Android Mobile Malware

Android often receives high levels of criticism when hostile programs are found in its respective app stores. While anger is high, how prevalent is malware in Android markets? A series of papers, curated by Security Research Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, examine just those questions. Go read them!