#when's the Mind Bluetooth earbuds march

[sneeb-canons]

Bluetooth picks up Mind as an audio accessory.

Headcanon #150

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 149

August 7

I've been too busy or distracted for the last few days to properly inundate you all with kitten pictures, but that ends now! You have been warned! Today I had lights and a fully charged phone and the will to use them, so you are going to feel the wrath of this fully armed and operational cat lady. I am also posting this during first dinnertime, so my background music is tiny Katara making improbably loud smacking noises while she eats babycat food mixed with warm water. 

Clockwise from top left: Zuko, Sokka, Katara, Aang

Now that the kittens are debugged and down to about 30% of their original hissiness levels, they are ready for cuddle times. Zuko won the best cuddler award today by actually purring when I picked him up, so he is my current favorite. Sokka needs his nails trimmed very badly, Katara is picking up the hissing slack for her unacceptably trusting brothers, and Aang has finally started using the litterbox but cries when he poops. (This is not uncommon for kittens who are first learning to go unstimulated, but I'm going to keep an eye on him to make sure he's not constipated.)  Four weeks is a very fun age, so this should be a good kitten week, knock on wood. They are all eating well and don't need a bottle, which makes my life way easier. 

Zuko and Aang

Katara still thinks I might be planning on eating her. She is the size of my hand but will go down hissing all the same.

It is just as well that these guys are weaned because the MPRE snuck right up on me. I started studying a couple weeks ago, but there's always so much to do. BARBRI's MPRE study program is funny because it's basically a taste test of their bar review program for the 2L students who typically sit for the MPRE. It's set up exactly like the bar review course, but where the typical bar review lecture is 2-3 hours, these lectures are about 15-20 minutes and each one covers a discrete subtopic of professional responsibility. Altogether, they are maybe just a little bit longer than the professional responsibility lecture I listened to for the bar review back in February. (Many states do not include PR on their bar exam at all because of the MPRE, but Virginia has more testable subjects than any other state and throws that one in as well, so I got a module on it.) In any case, I have been listening to these little bite sized lectures and doing the learning questions, then looking at the outline, then moving on. I plan to have all the modules done by tomorrow, then spend the weekend doing the three practice tests, sixty questions each. All three practice tests together are not as long as the bar exam practice test! I keep reminding myself that even though the subject matter is limited and I've covered the material many times before, I have to take it seriously. It would be both inconvenient and extremely embarrassing to pass the bar exam and fail the fucking MPRE at this late date. I'm also going to have to take at least one of those practice tests with a mask on, bleah. 

Ha, I have successfully tricked the kittens out of sleeping in their yucky litterbox (they are too young for nice clumping litter because they might eat it) by offering them a decoy litterbox with a towel in it. Cats do love boxes! 

(Sokka is behind the box, he is so fuzzy I cannot get him in focus for a solo picture.)

The kiddo and I went to the library today for the first time since March! It only opened on Wednesday and there were very few people there, but they'd arranged it so there's lots of open space and a counter right by the front where a friendly guy offered us hand sanitizer and reminded us about social distance. We were finally able to turn in March's library books, which had fine amnesty thank God, and snagged some new stuff. I wasn't feeling creative so I took advantage of the lack of patrons to snag a couple of newer Nora Roberts books, the kind that are usually hard to get hold of. I read a funny meme the other day of "2020 As Described by Nora Roberts Books" that showed Happily Ever After for January, Storm Warning for February, and then seven copies of Shelter In Place for March through August. The kiddo got a couple of graphic novels and also picked out two books with no pictures at all after I promised I'd get him a magnifying glass if he wanted it. Kiddo is farsighted and has glasses to read, but he may need a new prescription. I should get on that. 

Okay, knowing myself as I do, I took a brief break there to order some cheap little sheet magnifiers off Amazon because I try to keep my promises. It is hard when you are very forgetful, but I try! Not too much else to report today, oh, except I went into my primary doctor's office for the first time in many months. It was for a heat rash, of all things, but I just couldn't get it to go away! I could probably have done it online, but when it's a rash it's kind of easier to just go in there than to try and find the right light and the phone with the best camera, and this way I don't have a lot of weird pictures of my armpit for posterity. She gave me a steroid cream prescription and it is starting to feel better already. 

While I was getting the prescription filled, I got way, way too excited about the electronics clearance at Rite Aid and bought fifty dollars worth of stuff. (By Rite Aid's calculation it was 200 dollars worth of stuff because I spent 50 and saved 150, but you know how their prices are.) In any case, I got two wall chargers and a car charger, two sets of earbuds, a stereo headset with microphone  for virtual school, and the piece de resistance, a waterproof Bluetooth speaker that also has a multicolored light display. The kiddo is in love already and I hope it encourages him to more frequent showering. My 50 also bought me some melatonin gummies, some multivitamin gummies, a bag of chocolate snacky stuff, and two packs of Magic: the Gathering decks that the kiddo was distinctly underwhelmed by. He likes Pokemon cards so much despite not having the first idea how to play, I thought these might be good too. I'll set them aside in case he gets interested later. I am pretty sure that four dollars apiece is not bad for 60 card decks, even if they are planeswalker themed. Anyway it was a nice haul and now I can stop bitching at everyone and no-one every time I can't find a wall charger to plug into. A small price to pay for peace of mind! (And the cream itself cost $2.19, so at least I can feel a little good about our truly exorbitant health insurance this week.) 

Who wouldn’t believe this guy can save the world? 

[youngandhungryent]

Luxury Brand Montblanc Unveils Wireless Over-Ear Smart Headphones

Source: Montblanc / Montblanc

Make room, another player is entering the headphone market. Luxury brand Montblanc is throwing its name in the extremely crowded field by launching wireless over-ear smart headphones.

The German brand, which is well-known for its watches, handbags, suitcases, backpacks, and belts, is now for the first time supplying smart headphones to match your Montblanc swag. Designed with luxury travel in mind, the sleek headphones are compact and foldable and completes Montblanc’s tech travel offering.

Source: Montblanc / Montblanc

Speaking on his company’s latest offering to luxury business travel, Montblanc CEO, Nicolas Baretzki stated:

��We set out to create headphones that would strike the ideal balance between advanced technology, sophisticated design, and comfort, because that’s what really matters to Montblanc travelers, whether they are aboard a long-haul flight, on a conference call at the airport or simply trying to recharge while on the road.”

Montblanc’s Creative Director, Zaim Kamal added:

“When developing these travel essentials, our focus was not just on creating headphones that would deliver performance and reliability, but also a design that was very distinctive with larger headphones to comfortably cover the ear, as well as sleek metal and leather finishes that give it that unmistakable Montblanc flair. When they are on the road, whether business or leisure, intrepid travelers want stylish accessories that help them stand out wherever they go,”

Montblanc states it brought together an “experienced team of award-winning engineers and designers” to make the headphones that will meet the demand of those who live on the road or in the air. The Montblanc promises the headphones will achieve excellent sound quality, comfort while remaining stylish and capturing the signature style the brand is known for.

Source: Montblanc / Montblanc

To help ensure that the headphones are up to snuff in the sound department, Montblanc enlisted the help of sound expert Alex Rosson who provided his expertise in acoustic mastery and audio engineering. With Rosson’s input, the headphones will deliver a signature Montblanc sound.

So what do Montblanc’s luxury smart headphones offer, here are the tech specs:

Active noise-canceling technology

Advanced technology for impressive sound quality

Ergonomic design for greater comfort

Fine materials and quality craftsmanship for durability

Google Assistant for a more personalized on-the-go experience featuring voice-activated device control and commands

Functions across a broad range of Bluetooth devices, including iOS & Android

Now time for the million-dollar question? How much do the headphones cost? Well, the headphones are from Montblanc, so it should be expected to spend some coins on them. When they arrive in three very lovely designs, as pictured above on March 22, each pair will cost a whopping $595.00. We won’t be shocked if you see your favorite Hip-Hop act, movie star, or athlete sporting a pair.

Now Montblanc isn’t the first company to offer a pair of ridiculously expensive headphones. Master & Dynamic collaborated with high fashion brand, Louis Vuitton, to drop a $995 pair of its MW07 earbuds emblazoned the famous LV logo.

Well, if you got it, go for it, you can order a pair of Montblanc over-ear smart headphones by going here.

—

Photo: Montblanc

source https://hiphopwired.com/844283/montblanc-wireless-over-ear-headphones/

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/mojo-visions-ar-contact-lenses-are-very-cool-but-many-questions-remain/

Mojo Vision’s AR contact lenses are very cool, but many questions remain

Companies keep trying to make glassholes happen. Understandably. After the smartphone and the wrist, the face is the next local battlefield for computational space, if decades of science fiction movies have taught us anything. But we’ve seen the Google Glass, the Snapchat Spectacles, The Magic Leap, the whatever that thing that Samsung just semi-announced was.

Contact lenses have been mentioned in that same conversation for some time, as well, but technical limitations have placed the bar much higher than a heads-up display standard pair of spectacles. California-based Mojo Vision has been working on the breakthrough for a number of years now, and has a lofty sum to show for it, with $108 million in funding, including a $58 million Series B closed back in March.

The technology is compelling, certainly. I met with the team in a hotel suite at CES last week and got a walkthrough of some of the things they’ve been working on. While executives say they’ve been dogfooding the technology for some time now, the demos were still pretty far removed from an eventual in-eye augmented reality contact lens.

Rather, two separate demos essentially involved holding a lens or device close to my eye in order to get a feel for what an eventual product would look like. The reason was two-fold. First, most of the work is still being done off-device at the moment, while Mojo works to perfect a system that can exist within the confines of a contact while only needing to be charged once in a 25-hour cycle. Second, the issue of trying on a pair of contacts during a brief CES meeting.

I will say that I was impressed by the heads-up display capabilities. In the most basic demo, monochrome text resembling a digital clock is overlaid on images. Here, miles per hour are shown over videos of people running. The illusion has some depth to it, with the numbers appearing as though they’re a foot or so out.

In another demo, I donned an HTC Vive. Here I’m shown live video of the room around me (XR, if you will), with notifications. The system tracks eye movements, so you can focus on a tab to expand it for more information. It’s a far more graphical interface than the other example, with full calendars, weather forecasts and the like. You can easily envision how the addition of a broader color palette could give rise to some fairly complex AR imagery.

Mojo is using CES to announce its intentions to start life as a medical device. In fact, the FDA awarded the startup a Breakthrough Device Designation, meaning the technology will get special review priority from the government body. That’s coupled with a partnership with Bay Area-based Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

That ought to give a good idea of Mojo’s go to market plans. Before selling itself as an AR-for-everyone device, the company is smartly going after visual impairments. It should occupy similar space as many of the “hearable” companies that have applied for medical device status to offer hearing-enhancing Bluetooth earbuds. Working with the FDA should go a ways toward helping fast-track the technology into optometrist offices.

The idea is to have them prescribed in a similar fashion as contact lenses, while added features like night vision will both aid people with visual impairments and potentially make those with better vision essentially bionic. You’ll go to a doctor, get prescribed, the contact lenses will be mailed to you and should last about the length of a normal pair. Obviously they’ll be pricier, of course, and questions about how much insurance companies will shell out still remain.

In their final state, the devices should last a full day, recharging in a cleaning case in a manner not dissimilar from AirPods (though those, sadly, don’t also clean the product). The lenses will have a small radio on-board to communicate with a device that hangs around the neck and relays information to and from a smartphone. I asked whether the plan was to eventually phase out the neck device, to which the company answered that, no, the plan was to phase out the smartphone. Fair play.

I also asked whether the company was working with a neurologist in addition to its existing medical staff. After 10 years of smartphone ubiquity, it seems we’re only starting to get clear data on how those devices impact things like sleep and mental well-being. I have to imagine that’s only going to be exacerbated by the feeling of having those notifications more or less beaming directly into your brain.

Did I mention that you can still see the display when your eyes are closed. Talk about a (pardon my French) mind fuck. There will surely be ways to silence or disable these things, but as someone who regularly falls asleep with his smartphone in-hand, I admit that I’m pretty weak when it comes to the issue of digital dependence. This feels like injecting that stuff directly into my veins, and I’m here for it, until I’m not.

We still have time. Mojo’s still working on the final product. And then it will need medical approval. Hopefully that’s enough time to more concretely answer some of these burning questions, but given how things like screen time have played out, I have some doubts on that front.

Stay tuned on all of the above. We’ll be following this one closely.

[computer-basics]

Companies keep trying to make glassholes happen. Understandably. After the smartphone and the wrist, the face is the next local battlefield for computational space, if decades of science fiction movies have taught us anything. But we’ve seen the Google Glass, the Snapchat Spectacles, The Magic Leap, the whatever that thing that Samsung just semi-announced was.

Contact lenses have been mentioned in that same conversation for some time, as well, but technical limitations have placed the bar much higher than a heads-up display standard pair of spectacles. California-based Mojo Vision has been working on the breakthrough for a number of years now, and has a lofty sum to show for it, with $108 million in funding, including a $58 million Series B closed back in March.

The technology is compelling, certainly. I met with the team in a hotel suite at CES last week and got a walkthrough of some of the things they’ve been working on. While executives say they’ve been dogfooding the technology for some time now, the demos were still pretty far removed from an eventual in-eye augmented reality contact lens.

Rather, two separate demos essentially involved holding a lens or device close to my eye in order to get a feel for what an eventual product would look like. The reason was two-fold. First, most of the work is still being done off-device at the moment, while Mojo works to perfect a system that can exist within the confines of a contact while only needing to be charged once in a 25-hour cycle. Second, the issue of trying on a pair of contacts during a brief CES meeting.

I will say that I was impressed by the heads-up display capabilities. In the most basic demo, monochrome text resembling a digital clock is overlaid on images. Here, miles per hour are shown over videos of people running. The illusion has some depth to it, with the numbers appearing as though they’re a foot or so out.

In another demo, I donned an HTC Vive. Here I’m shown live video of the room around me (XR, if you will), with notifications. The system tracks eye movements, so you can focus on a tab to expand it for more information. It’s a far more graphical interface than the other example, with full calendars, weather forecasts and the like. You can easily envision how the addition of a broader color palette could give rise to some fairly complex AR imagery.

Mojo is using CES to announce its intentions to start life as a medical device. In fact, the FDA awarded the startup a Breakthrough Device Designation, meaning the technology will get special review priority from the government body. That’s coupled with a partnership with Bay Area-based Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

That ought to give a good idea of Mojo’s go to market plans. Before selling itself as an AR-for-everyone device, the company is smartly going after visual impairments. It should occupy similar space as many of the “hearable” companies that have applied for medical device status to offer hearing-enhancing Bluetooth earbuds. Working with the FDA should go a ways toward helping fast-track the technology into optometrist offices.

The idea is to have them prescribed in a similar fashion as contact lenses, while added features like night vision will both aid people with visual impairments and potentially make those with better vision essentially bionic. You’ll go to a doctor, get prescribed, the contact lenses will be mailed to you and should last about the length of a normal pair. Obviously they’ll be pricier, of course, and questions about how much insurance companies will shell out still remain.

In their final state, the devices should last a full day, recharging in a cleaning case in a manner not dissimilar from AirPods (though those, sadly, don’t also clean the product). The lenses will have a small radio on-board to communicate with a device that hangs around the neck and relays information to and from a smartphone. I asked whether the plan was to eventually phase out the neck device, to which the company answered that, no, the plan was to phase out the smartphone. Fair play.

I also asked whether the company was working with a neurologist in addition to its existing medical staff. After 10 years of smartphone ubiquity, it seems we’re only starting to get clear data on how those devices impact things like sleep and mental well-being. I have to imagine that’s only going to be exacerbated by the feeling of having those notifications more or less beaming directly into your brain.

Did I mention that you can still see the display when your eyes are closed. Talk about a (pardon my French) mind fuck. There will surely be ways to silence or disable these things, but as someone who regularly falls asleep with his smartphone in-hand, I admit that I’m pretty weak when it comes to the issue of digital dependence. This feels like injecting that stuff directly into my veins, and I’m here for it, until I’m not.

We still have time. Mojo’s still working on the final product. And then it will need medical approval. Hopefully that’s enough time to more concretely answer some of these burning questions, but given how things like screen time have played out, I have some doubts on that front.

Stay tuned on all of the above. We’ll be following this one closely.

from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2RnE2YA via IFTTT

[toomanysinks]

The damage of defaults

Apple popped out a new pair of AirPods this week. The design looks exactly like the old pair of AirPods. Which means I’m never going to use them because Apple’s bulbous earbuds don’t fit my ears. Think square peg, round hole.

The only way I could rock AirPods would be to walk around with hands clamped to the sides of my head to stop them from falling out. Which might make a nice cut in a glossy Apple ad for the gizmo — suggesting a feeling of closeness to the music, such that you can’t help but cup; a suggestive visual metaphor for the aural intimacy Apple surely wants its technology to communicate.

But the reality of trying to use earbuds that don’t fit is not that at all. It’s just shit. They fall out at the slightest movement so you either sit and never turn your head or, yes, hold them in with your hands. Oh hai, hands-not-so-free-pods!

The obvious point here is that one size does not fit all — howsoever much Apple’s Jony Ive and his softly spoken design team believe they have devised a universal earbud that pops snugly in every ear and just works. Sorry, nope!

Hi @tim_cook, I fixed that sketch for you. Introducing #InPods — because one size doesn’t fit all pic.twitter.com/jubagMnwjt

— Natasha (@riptari) March 20, 2019

A proportion of iOS users — perhaps other petite women like me, or indeed men with less capacious ear holes — are simply being removed from Apple’s sales equation where earbuds are concerned. Apple is pretending we don’t exist.

Sure we can just buy another brand of more appropriately sized earbuds. The in-ear, noise-canceling kind are my preference. Apple does not make ‘InPods’. But that’s not a huge deal. Well, not yet.

It’s true, the consumer tech giant did also delete the headphone jack from iPhones. Thereby depreciating my existing pair of wired in-ear headphones (if I ever upgrade to a 3.5mm-jack-less iPhone). But I could just shell out for Bluetooth wireless in-ear buds that fit my shell-like ears and carry on as normal.

Universal in-ear headphones have existed for years, of course. A delightful design concept. You get a selection of different sized rubber caps shipped with the product and choose the size that best fits.

Unfortunately Apple isn’t in the ‘InPods’ business though. Possibly for aesthetic reasons. Most likely because — and there’s more than a little irony here — an in-ear design wouldn’t be naturally roomy enough to fit all the stuff Siri needs to, y’know, fake intelligence.

Which means people like me with small ears are being passed over in favor of Apple’s voice assistant. So that’s AI: 1, non-‘standard’-sized human: 0. Which also, unsurprisingly, feels like shit.

I say ‘yet’ because if voice computing does become the next major computing interaction paradigm, as some believe — given how Internet connectivity is set to get baked into everything (and sticking screens everywhere would be a visual and usability nightmare; albeit microphones everywhere is a privacy nightmare… ) — then the minority of humans with petite earholes will be at a disadvantage vs those who can just pop in their smart, sensor-packed earbud and get on with telling their Internet-enabled surroundings to do their bidding.

Will parents of future generations of designer babies select for adequately capacious earholes so their child can pop an AI in? Let’s hope not.

We’re also not at the voice computing singularity yet. Outside the usual tech bubbles it remains a bit of a novel gimmick. Amazon has drummed up some interest with in-home smart speakers housing its own voice AI Alexa (a brand choice that has, incidentally, caused a verbal headache for actual humans called Alexa). Though its Echo smart speakers appear to mostly get used as expensive weather checkers and egg timers. Or else for playing music — a function that a standard speaker or smartphone will happily perform.

Certainly a voice AI is not something you need with you 24/7 yet. Prodding at a touchscreen remains the standard way of tapping into the power and convenience of mobile computing for the majority of consumers in developed markets.

The thing is, though, it still grates to be ignored. To be told — even indirectly — by one of the world’s wealthiest consumer technology companies that it doesn’t believe your ears exist.

Or, well, that it’s weighed up the sales calculations and decided it’s okay to drop a petite-holed minority on the cutting room floor. So that’s ‘ear meet AirPod’. Not ‘AirPod meet ear’ then.

But the underlying issue is much bigger than Apple’s (in my case) oversized earbuds. Its latest shiny set of AirPods are just an ill-fitting reminder of how many technology defaults simply don’t ‘fit’ the world as claimed.

Because if cash-rich Apple’s okay with promoting a universal default (that isn’t), think of all the less well resourced technology firms chasing scale for other single-sized, ill-fitting solutions. And all the problems flowing from attempts to mash ill-mapped technology onto society at large.

When it comes to wrong-sized physical kit I’ve had similar issues with standard office computing equipment and furniture. Products that seems — surprise, surprise! — to have been default designed with a 6ft strapping guy in mind. Keyboards so long they end up gifting the smaller user RSI. Office chairs that deliver chronic back-pain as a service. Chunky mice that quickly wrack the hand with pain. (Apple is a historical offender there too I’m afraid.)

The fixes for such ergonomic design failures is simply not to use the kit. To find a better-sized (often DIY) alternative that does ‘fit’.

But a DIY fix may not be an option when discrepancy is embedded at the software level — and where a system is being applied to you, rather than you the human wanting to augment yourself with a bit of tech, such as a pair of smart earbuds.

With software, embedded flaws and system design failures may also be harder to spot because it’s not necessarily immediately obvious there’s a problem. Oftentimes algorithmic bias isn’t visible until damage has been done.

And there’s no shortage of stories already about how software defaults configured for a biased median have ended up causing real-world harm. (See for example: ProPublica’s analysis of the COMPAS recidividism tool — software it found incorrectly judging black defendants more likely to offend than white. So software amplifying existing racial prejudice.)

Of course AI makes this problem so much worse.

Which is why the emphasis must be on catching bias in the datasets — before there is a chance for prejudice or bias to be ‘systematized’ and get baked into algorithms that can do damage at scale.

The algorithms must also be explainable. And outcomes auditable. Transparency as disinfectant; not secret blackboxes stuffed with unknowable code.

Doing all this requires huge up-front thought and effort on system design, and an even bigger change of attitude. It also needs massive, massive attention to diversity. An industry-wide championing of humanity’s multifaceted and multi-sized reality — and to making sure that’s reflected in both data and design choices (and therefore the teams doing the design and dev work).

You could say what’s needed is a recognition there’s never, ever a one-sized-fits all plug.

Indeed, that all algorithmic ‘solutions’ are abstractions that make compromises on accuracy and utility. And that those trade-offs can become viciously cutting knives that exclude, deny, disadvantage, delete and damage people at scale.

Expensive earbuds that won’t stay put is just a handy visual metaphor.

And while discussion about the risks and challenges of algorithmic bias has stepped up in recent years, as AI technologies have proliferated — with mainstream tech conferences actively debating how to “democratize AI” and bake diversity and ethics into system design via a development focus on principles like transparency, explainability, accountability and fairness — the industry has not even begun to fix its diversity problem.

It’s barely moved the needle on diversity. And its products continue to reflect that fundamental flaw.

Stanford just launched their Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (@StanfordHAI) with great fanfare. The mission: "The creators and designers of AI must be broadly representative of humanity."

121 faculty members listed.

Not a single faculty member is Black. pic.twitter.com/znCU6zAxui

— Chad Loder ❁ (@chadloder) March 21, 2019

Many — if not most — of the tech industry’s problems can be traced back to the fact that inadequately diverse teams are chasing scale while lacking the perspective to realize their system design is repurposing human harm as a de facto performance measure. (Although ‘lack of perspective’ is the charitable interpretation in certain cases; moral vacuum may be closer to the mark.)

As WWW creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has pointed out, system design is now society design. That means engineers, coders, AI technologists are all working at the frontline of ethics. The design choices they make have the potential to impact, influence and shape the lives of millions and even billions of people.

And when you’re designing society a median mindset and limited perspective cannot ever be an acceptable foundation. It’s also a recipe for product failure down the line.

The current backlash against big tech shows that the stakes and the damage are very real when poorly designed technologies get dumped thoughtlessly on people.

Life is messy and complex. People won’t fit a platform that oversimplifies and overlooks. And if your excuse for scaling harm is ‘we just didn’t think of that’ you’ve failed at your job and should really be headed out the door.

Because the consequences for being excluded by flawed system design are also scaling and stepping up as platforms proliferate and more life-impacting decisions get automated. Harm is being squared. Even as the underlying industry drum hasn’t skipped a beat in its prediction that everything will be digitized.

Which means that horribly biased parole systems are just the tip of the ethical iceberg. Think of healthcare, social welfare, law enforcement, education, recruitment, transportation, construction, urban environments, farming, the military, the list of what will be digitized — and of manual or human overseen processes that will get systematized and automated — goes on.

Software — runs the industry mantra — is eating the world. That means badly designed technology products will harm more and more people.

But responsibility for sociotechnical misfit can’t just be scaled away as so much ‘collateral damage’.

So while an ‘elite’ design team led by a famous white guy might be able to craft a pleasingly curved earbud, such an approach cannot and does not automagically translate into AirPods with perfect, universal fit.

It’s someone’s standard. It’s certainly not mine.

We can posit that a more diverse Apple design team might have been able to rethink the AirPod design so as not to exclude those with smaller ears. Or make a case to convince the powers that be in Cupertino to add another size choice. We can but speculate.

What’s clear is the future of technology design can’t be so stubborn.

It must be radically inclusive and incredibly sensitive. Human-centric. Not locked to damaging defaults in its haste to impose a limited set of ideas.

Above all, it needs a listening ear on the world.

Indifference to difference and a blindspot for diversity will find no future here.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/23/the-damage-of-defaults/

[fmservers]

The damage of defaults

Apple popped out a new pair of AirPods this week. The design looks exactly like the old pair of AirPods. Which means I’m never going to use them because Apple’s bulbous earbuds don’t fit my ears. Think square peg, round hole.

The only way I could rock AirPods would be to walk around with hands clamped to the sides of my head to stop them from falling out. Which might make a nice cut in a glossy Apple ad for the gizmo — suggesting a feeling of closeness to the music, such that you can’t help but cup; a suggestive visual metaphor for the aural intimacy Apple surely wants its technology to communicate.

But the reality of trying to use earbuds that don’t fit is not that at all. It’s just shit. They fall out at the slightest movement so you either sit and never turn your head or, yes, hold them in with your hands. Oh hai, hands-not-so-free-pods!

The obvious point here is that one size does not fit all — howsoever much Apple’s Jony Ive and his softly spoken design team believe they have devised a universal earbud that pops snugly in every ear and just works. Sorry, nope!

Hi @tim_cook, I fixed that sketch for you. Introducing #InPods — because one size doesn’t fit all pic.twitter.com/jubagMnwjt

— Natasha (@riptari) March 20, 2019

A proportion of iOS users — perhaps other petite women like me, or indeed men with less capacious ear holes — are simply being removed from Apple’s sales equation where earbuds are concerned. Apple is pretending we don’t exist.

Sure we can just buy another brand of more appropriately sized earbuds. The in-ear, noise-canceling kind are my preference. Apple does not make ‘InPods’. But that’s not a huge deal. Well, not yet.

It’s true, the consumer tech giant did also delete the headphone jack from iPhones. Thereby depreciating my existing pair of wired in-ear headphones (if I ever upgrade to a 3.5mm-jack-less iPhone). But I could just shell out for Bluetooth wireless in-ear buds that fit my shell-like ears and carry on as normal.

Universal in-ear headphones have existed for years, of course. A delightful design concept. You get a selection of different sized rubber caps shipped with the product and choose the size that best fits.

Unfortunately Apple isn’t in the ‘InPods’ business though. Possibly for aesthetic reasons. Most likely because — and there’s more than a little irony here — an in-ear design wouldn’t be naturally roomy enough to fit all the stuff Siri needs to, y’know, fake intelligence.

Which means people like me with small ears are being passed over in favor of Apple’s voice assistant. So that’s AI: 1, non-‘standard’-sized human: 0. Which also, unsurprisingly, feels like shit.

I say ‘yet’ because if voice computing does become the next major computing interaction paradigm, as some believe — given how Internet connectivity is set to get baked into everything (and sticking screens everywhere would be a visual and usability nightmare; albeit microphones everywhere is a privacy nightmare… ) — then the minority of humans with petite earholes will be at a disadvantage vs those who can just pop in their smart, sensor-packed earbud and get on with telling their Internet-enabled surroundings to do their bidding.

Will parents of future generations of designer babies select for adequately capacious earholes so their child can pop an AI in? Let’s hope not.

We’re also not at the voice computing singularity yet. Outside the usual tech bubbles it remains a bit of a novel gimmick. Amazon has drummed up some interest with in-home smart speakers housing its own voice AI Alexa (a brand choice that has, incidentally, caused a verbal headache for actual humans called Alexa). Though its Echo smart speakers appear to mostly get used as expensive weather checkers and egg timers. Or else for playing music — a function that a standard speaker or smartphone will happily perform.

Certainly a voice AI is not something you need with you 24/7 yet. Prodding at a touchscreen remains the standard way of tapping into the power and convenience of mobile computing for the majority of consumers in developed markets.

The thing is, though, it still grates to be ignored. To be told — even indirectly — by one of the world’s wealthiest consumer technology companies that it doesn’t believe your ears exist.

Or, well, that it’s weighed up the sales calculations and decided it’s okay to drop a petite-holed minority on the cutting room floor. So that’s ‘ear meet AirPod’. Not ‘AirPod meet ear’ then.

But the underlying issue is much bigger than Apple’s (in my case) oversized earbuds. Its latest shiny set of AirPods are just an ill-fitting reminder of how many technology defaults simply don’t ‘fit’ the world as claimed.

Because if cash-rich Apple’s okay with promoting a universal default (that isn’t), think of all the less well resourced technology firms chasing scale for other single-sized, ill-fitting solutions. And all the problems flowing from attempts to mash ill-mapped technology onto society at large.

When it comes to wrong-sized physical kit I’ve had similar issues with standard office computing equipment and furniture. Products that seems — surprise, surprise! — to have been default designed with a 6ft strapping guy in mind. Keyboards so long they end up gifting the smaller user RSI. Office chairs that deliver chronic back-pain as a service. Chunky mice that quickly wrack the hand with pain. (Apple is a historical offender there too I’m afraid.)

The fixes for such ergonomic design failures is simply not to use the kit. To find a better-sized (often DIY) alternative that does ‘fit’.

But a DIY fix may not be an option when discrepancy is embedded at the software level — and where a system is being applied to you, rather than you the human wanting to augment yourself with a bit of tech, such as a pair of smart earbuds.

With software, embedded flaws and system design failures may also be harder to spot because it’s not necessarily immediately obvious there’s a problem. Oftentimes algorithmic bias isn’t visible until damage has been done.

And there’s no shortage of stories already about how software defaults configured for a biased median have ended up causing real-world harm. (See for example: ProPublica’s analysis of the COMPAS recidividism tool — software it found incorrectly judging black defendants more likely to offend than white. So software amplifying existing racial prejudice.)

Of course AI makes this problem so much worse.

Which is why the emphasis must be on catching bias in the datasets — before there is a chance for prejudice or bias to be ‘systematized’ and get baked into algorithms that can do damage at scale.

The algorithms must also be explainable. And outcomes auditable. Transparency as disinfectant; not secret blackboxes stuffed with unknowable code.

Doing all this requires huge up-front thought and effort on system design, and an even bigger change of attitude. It also needs massive, massive attention to diversity. An industry-wide championing of humanity’s multifaceted and multi-sized reality — and to making sure that’s reflected in both data and design choices (and therefore the teams doing the design and dev work).

You could say what’s needed is a recognition there’s never, ever a one-sized-fits all plug.

Indeed, that all algorithmic ‘solutions’ are abstractions that make compromises on accuracy and utility. And that those trade-offs can become viciously cutting knives that exclude, deny, disadvantage, delete and damage people at scale.

Expensive earbuds that won’t stay put is just a handy visual metaphor.

And while discussion about the risks and challenges of algorithmic bias has stepped up in recent years, as AI technologies have proliferated — with mainstream tech conferences actively debating how to “democratize AI” and bake diversity and ethics into system design via a development focus on principles like transparency, explainability, accountability and fairness — the industry has not even begun to fix its diversity problem.

It’s barely moved the needle on diversity. And its products continue to reflect that fundamental flaw.

Stanford just launched their Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (@StanfordHAI) with great fanfare. The mission: "The creators and designers of AI must be broadly representative of humanity."

121 faculty members listed.

Not a single faculty member is Black. pic.twitter.com/znCU6zAxui

— Chad Loder ❁ (@chadloder) March 21, 2019

Many — if not most — of the tech industry’s problems can be traced back to the fact that inadequately diverse teams are chasing scale while lacking the perspective to realize their system design is repurposing human harm as a de facto performance measure. (Although ‘lack of perspective’ is the charitable interpretation in certain cases; moral vacuum may be closer to the mark.)

As WWW creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has pointed out, system design is now society design. That means engineers, coders, AI technologists are all working at the frontline of ethics. The design choices they make have the potential to impact, influence and shape the lives of millions and even billions of people.

And when you’re designing society a median mindset and limited perspective cannot ever be an acceptable foundation. It’s also a recipe for product failure down the line.

The current backlash against big tech shows that the stakes and the damage are very real when poorly designed technologies get dumped thoughtlessly on people.

Life is messy and complex. People won’t fit a platform that oversimplifies and overlooks. And if your excuse for scaling harm is ‘we just didn’t think of that’ you’ve failed at your job and should really be headed out the door.

Because the consequences for being excluded by flawed system design are also scaling and stepping up as platforms proliferate and more life-impacting decisions get automated. Harm is being squared. Even as the underlying industry drum hasn’t skipped a beat in its prediction that everything will be digitized.

Which means that horribly biased parole systems are just the tip of the ethical iceberg. Think of healthcare, social welfare, law enforcement, education, recruitment, transportation, construction, urban environments, farming, the military, the list of what will be digitized — and of manual or human overseen processes that will get systematized and automated — goes on.

Software — runs the industry mantra — is eating the world. That means badly designed technology products will harm more and more people.

But responsibility for sociotechnical misfit can’t just be scaled away as so much ‘collateral damage’.

So while an ‘elite’ design team led by a famous white guy might be able to craft a pleasingly curved earbud, such an approach cannot and does not automagically translate into AirPods with perfect, universal fit.

It’s someone’s standard. It’s certainly not mine.

We can posit that a more diverse Apple design team might have been able to rethink the AirPod design so as not to exclude those with smaller ears. Or make a case to convince the powers that be in Cupertino to add another size choice. We can but speculate.

What’s clear is the future of technology design can’t be so stubborn.

It must be radically inclusive and incredibly sensitive. Human-centric. Not locked to damaging defaults in its haste to impose a limited set of ideas.

Above all, it needs a listening ear on the world.

Indifference to difference and a blindspot for diversity will find no future here.

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com

[arenatechgq-blog]

What's in store from Apple's September seventh occasion All that we know to expect, and a couple of things we know not to expect.

Apple's enormous September item introduction is going on Wednesday—WWDC in June is the point at which we get some answers concerning programming, however with regards to the equipment that the organization profits from, September is Apple's greatest occasion of the year.

A year ago's occasion was particularly colossal and far reaching. Macintosh propelled its new tvOS stage, changed the equipment and programming of the still-new Apple Watch, presented the iPad Pro and the iPhone 6S arrangement, and gave programming updates to everything over the majority of its product offerings. Wednesday will in any case be a bustling day, however moderately it should be calmer.

The iPhone

Most bits of gossip still call the following iPhone the "iPhone 7," however dissimilar to past years it doesn't seem like the most recent model will get a major outer upgrade. Anticipate that this will look a considerable measure like the present 6 and 6S outline, yet with changed or evacuated radio wire set patterns to give the back of the telephone a cleaner look. The new telephone will in any case come in two sizes, one 4.7-inch variant and one 5.5-inch form.

Else we can expect changes keeping pace with what we more often than not find in "S" display, which for the most part means a more up to date, speedier processor, a superior camera, and a modest bunch of other equipment driven upgrades. Reports from not long ago additionally proposed that the 16GB base model could leave, something we've been asking for some time now.

The camera could be especially fascinating. The bigger of the two telephones (we should call it the "iPhone 7 Plus" for quickness' purpose) is said to incorporate two back camera focal points, which are said to be set to various central lengths to reenact genuine optical zoom and are likewise said to brag enhanced low-light execution. The Plus telephones have dependably had somewhat preferable cameras over their littler non-Plus partners, however beforehand the distinction was quite recently that the Pluses included optical picture adjustment (OIS) equipment. A moment camera focal point would be a more critical approach to separate the two (and, potentially, to drive more offers of the more costly Plus models).

Likewise reputed is another weight touchy Home catch, which like the Force Touch trackpads on more up to date MacBooks recreates clicks utilizing vibrations rather than really clicking. This could eliminate repairs since there would be less moving parts, and it could likewise get Apple a couple of valuable millimeters inside the body of the iPhone that could be utilized for more battery, different segments, or just to make the telephone more slender (an endless aspiration of Apple's).

And afterward there's the glaring issue at hand: the earphone jack. Or, on the other hand, rather, the potential absence of one. Apple is said to desert the port for a moment speaker or amplifier at the base of the telephone. The obligations of the standard 3.5mm earphone jack will be dealt with by either the Lightning port, Bluetooth, or both. None of the gossipy tidbits can concur on what Apple will deliver with the iPhone rather than those 3.5mm earbuds, yet it will be one of those two alternatives.

Apple devotees have preemptively pronounced that disposing of the earphone jack is the same as disposing of the floppy drive or optical drive—an immediately excruciating move that will work out for the best over the long haul. I speculate it will be more muddled than that, and keeping in mind that I'm willing to withhold last judgment until I've really attempted whatever Apple's answer is, it's on Apple to convey why the evacuation of the earphone jack is advance and not simply change-for change.

Another Apple Watch

The most solid gossipy tidbits say that Apple will present a moment era Apple Watch at this occasion, its first genuine invigorate since the first was presented the previous spring.

What we think about the new form can be summed up in a modest bunch of words: quicker with a GPS. We're at the point in the Apple Watch's life where speed enhancements are reason enough to overhaul without anyone else's input, however an inherent GPS will be valuable for the individuals who utilize their looks as running or biking mates and would prefer not to bring their iPhones alongside them each time they need to work out. The present model uses the GPS in your iPhone when it can, yet changes to less exact readings in light of its interior sensors when untethered.

Despite the fact that Apple is said to arrange a future variant of the watch with LTE bolster, battery concerns are as yet keeping it out of the cutting edge rendition of the watch. For web availability, anticipate keeping your telephone around. And keeping in mind that I haven't perused anything particularly about band similarity, I believe it's a certain wagered that current Apple Watch groups (and any new groups Apple presents with the following model) will stay perfect with the most recent one.

Macintoshes? Conceivable, not likely

The uplifting news is that we've been seeing a lot of gossipy tidbits about new Macs for some time now, including an upgraded MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen bar over the highest point of the console rather than customary capacity keys. The CPUs, GPUs, SSDs, and different segments that Apple would need to refresh about each and every Mac in the lineup are all accessible, including new Kaby Lake processors for the MacBook that was refreshed back in April.

Beside the MacBook Pro, the equipment in the most desperate need of a refresh is the MacBook Air, the Mac Mini, and the Mac Pro. I've suspected that the MacBook Air, which was last overhauled in 2010, would be resigned, supplanted by the Retina MacBook at the low-end and a more slender, lighter 13-inch MacBook Pro at the top of the line. However, the Air supposedly has no less than one more invigorate left in it, and Bloomberg says that said revive could incorporate USB Type-C.

Be that as it may, bits of gossip say not to expect Macs next Wednesday, since Apple will concentrate for the most part on its other, more up to date items. We may get a speedy Sierra recap if there's chance, yet equipment is normal in October at the most punctual.

Assuming genuine, it would imply that Apple has gone an entire eighteen months without refreshing Mac equipment in front of an audience at an item occasion. The major invigorates that have occurred since the first MacBook was reported in March of 2015 (new iMacs In October of that year, the previously mentioned MacBook revive in April 2016) have happened unobtrusively with public statements and audit embargoes. That conduct would appear to be odd for a full upgrade as opposed to a direct inner invigorate, however it's the in all likelihood result on the off chance that we don't see new equipment this week.

iPads? Conceivable, yet more improbable for the Pros

The iPad Pro is the eventual fate of the lineup, and it's in an ungainly spot at this moment. The 12.9-inch model is a year old and hence ready for new equipment, however the comparable 9.7-inch model is just around six months old. No bits of gossip indicate an unavoidable invigorate for the iPad Pro line. A Bloomberg report that says Apple is chipping away at an iPad-centered refresh for iOS one year from now (regardless of whether as a refresh to iOS 10 or a piece of iOS 11 isn't clarified) additionally refers to an investigator note that claims another 10.5-inch iPad Pro will be presented one year from now.

That doesn't mean we won't see anything new, however. The iPad Mini 4 is additionally about a year old and the iPad Air 2 is nearing its second birthday, and load of the last tablet is going away at real retailers. We could even now get some value changes or minor revives at the low end to shore up the tablet's deals while we sit tight for Apple to roll out greater improvements on the Pro side of the lineup.

Programming refreshes

This much is sure: We will get discharge dates for iOS 10, macOS Sierra, watchOS 3, and tvOS 10 at this occasion, and a portion of the updates may really be discharged on September 7.

Of those four discharges, tvOS 10 is the minimum important. It presents a Night Mode form of the UI, makes marking into different applications considerably simpler, and includes a couple of new toys for engineers, yet it's not radically unique in relation to what you're utilizing now.

WatchOS 3 is more great. It changes a few things about how the fundamental UI communications function, makes informing quicker and more adaptable, and consequently stacks up to 10 applications you pick into memory to make them all speedier to get to. New equipment will be awesome in the event that it comes, yet this refresh ought to likewise treat current-era equipment pretty well.Sierra, now called macOS rather than OS X, is a generally little refresh for Apple's most develop stage. Siri is its greatest expansion, yet it likewise highlights some iCloud increases to help spare you some circle space, security upgrades, and Apple Watch opening for those of you with more up to date (read: post-2013) equipment. Simply ensure you have sufficiently another Mac to run it, since Sierra drops some more seasoned equipment without precedent for quite a while.

Lastly, iOS 10 is a far reaching refresh with a ton of new changes. Warnings have been patched up, as has the bolt screen and the Today View. New APIs like SiriKit and CallKit will give application designers guides into the working framework that they've never had. What's more, applications everywhere throughout the OS have been changed with changes extensive and little. It doesn't have as much for iPad clients as iOS 9 did, however it's as yet turning out to be a strong refresh.

We'll be inspecting each of these working frameworks independently as they are discharged. A year ago, they were full scale before the finish of September, and I'd anticipate that that will happen again this year also.