* I\u2019m going to be in training pretty much all week, and on vacation after that, so this is the quickie dump of everything I might have been blogging about. \u00a0Hang on tight, here we go…<\/p>\n
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* So the Nexus 5 has dropped at long last, alongside an Android 4.4 that\u2019s meant to be lighter and easier to put on more limited hardware. \u00a0Between that and the Google Play layer, it\u2019s possible Google might have licked the fragmentation problem going forward, as evinced by Moto putting the updated camera software for the Moto X onto the Google Play store to circumvent Verizon\u2019s reluctance to push the update. \u00a0Notable too is the fact that the Nexus 5 doesn\u2019t work on Verizon, alone among national carriers.<\/p>\n
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* Unfortunately, if you have the Galaxy Nexus, you\u2019re out of luck; there will be no Android 4.4 support for it<\/a>. \u00a0This is tantamount to Apple declaring that iOS 7 won\u2019t run on the iPhone 4S at all; it may seem like an outrage but Google explicitly commits to no more than 18 months\u2019 update support for Nexus devices. Still, it\u2019s more than you\u2019ll get from most phone manufacturers or their carrier partners (see Verizon above) and goes a long way toward explaining why Google is moving more and more stuff into Google Play Services rather than Android proper. \u00a0Of course there are other reasons too.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * The Nexus 5 includes a chip to enable some of that voice-recognition a la<\/em> the Moto X, which is apparently part of the Android 4.4 code. That plus the tight integration of Google Now suggests that the forthcoming Google Watch will basically be a Google Now terminal that connects to your phone for its network connection and location info – and that, all by itself, is a far more intriguing and attractive package than the dog\u2019s breakfast Samsung slapped together for the sake of being first out of the gate.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * Samsung actually had a developer conference in San Francisco last week or so, pushing its own ecosystem that sits atop Google. \u00a0Amazon went this route, sort of, what with building on top of the Android Open Source Project and forking from there, but Samsung is basically just slapping their own stuff over top of full Android and then asking people to develop for that rather than Android proper because of their commanding market share among Android devices. Shameless<\/em> doesn\u2019t begin to cover it, but then, Samsung\u2019s entire approach to mobile phones has always, always<\/em> been \u201cbetter to seek forgiveness than permission, and better to just pay the court costs than either.”<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * Meanwhile, the wife has finally gotten her iPhone 5S, which means I will finally be able to risk replacing the battery in my old 4S without leaving her high and dry. \u00a0A 4S in very good condition (year and a half old with protective plastic on it most of the way) and a fresh battery, running iOS 7.0.3, ought to be a perfectly viable everyday phone for at least another year and maybe two\u2026and thus insurance against suddenly no longer having my work-provided device. \u00a0Also insurance against doing anything rash like splashing out on an unlocked Nexus 5. =)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * Speaking of electronics, the nerdosphere is going crazy today at the news that the FAA is revising rules on use of electronic devices during flight. \u00a0And yet, the main thing is merely the prospect of having them on during takeoff and landing – they must be held in the hand or placed in the seatback, they have to remain in airplane mode, and voice calling is still a no-no. \u00a0It\u2019s not the olly-olly-oxen-free that they seem to be crowing about on Gizmodo or the Verge, and it drives home one of the most annoying things about flying: the people for whom having to stop playing Candy Crush long enough for the plane to reach 10,000 feet is an insurmountable crime against their freedoms.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * And while we\u2019re on crimes against freedoms – it should be obvious right now that the main result of Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations has been to give the entire rest of the world a club to beat the United States with. \u00a0I thought the big bugaboo was that O NOEZ WE R SPYIN ON MERICANZ!!!!! and yet all we seem to hear these days are details about how foreign citizens were having their metadata harvested and how other countries\u2019 leaders were being spied on. \u00a0<\/p>\n Seriously. \u00a0Google \u201cECHELON\u201d. \u00a0Or \u201cONYX.\u201d This is not exclusive to the United States. \u00a0In fact, a lot of this isn\u2019t even news. \u00a0I present to you an excerpt from William Gibson\u2019s Zero History, published in 2010, between Hollis Henry and Hubertus Bigend:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cTwo,\u201d he said, \u201ccounting you.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t work that way,\u201d she told him. \u201cI won\u2019t.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt won\u2019t be that way. This is entirely less\u2026speculative.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWasn\u2019t the NSA or someone tapping your phone, reading your email?”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut now we know that they were doing that to everyone.\u201d He loosened his pale golden tie. \u201cWe didn\u2019t, then.”<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, three years ago, the ubiquity of NSA access to electronic communications was enough of a fait accompli<\/em> for a major author to include it as a throwaway plot reference. \u00a0This is not new, and it didn\u2019t remotely start with Obama, and the idea that it could – or should – be somehow made to go away altogether is to betray a profound ignorance of how the world works and how easy it is to put toothpaste back in the tube.<\/p>\n And now it appears that some left-wingers in Germany want Snowden to testify in person about US spying in Germany. And it appears he is amenable<\/a>. Basicaly, Edward Snowden\u2019s biggest accomplishment has been to completely compromise the discussion of how we as a society come to terms with the technological potential of mass surveillance, because he\u2019s managed to bury it under an avalanche of homeless-man\u2019s James Bond skullduggery and some very legitimate questions about his motives and conduct. \u00a0<\/p>\n If Fast Eddie Snowden is serious about the freedom of American citizens from ubiquitous surveillance, he needs to get on the next plane to JFK and face the guns from within the United States. \u00a0His profile is high enough that merely disappearing him is probably not an option, and it\u2019s a lot harder to ignore a potentially enormous legal kerfuffle when it\u2019s right under your nose than when it\u2019s packed away asking Russians if they\u2019ve tried turning it off and on again. \u00a0Basically, the biggest impact of the Snowden incident was to score a crap-ton of money for Glenn Greenwald to take his high horse private with eBay capital, \u00a0Left, right, glibertarian, whatever: freedom means the ability to cash the check.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * The thing is, we knew this was happening years ago. \u00a0Hell, we asked<\/em> for this years ago. \u00a0People assumed that the government could see and hear everything and wanted to know why they weren\u2019t able to magically see the evil Mandarin terrorists before they struck. \u00a0And then – because they were evil Mandarin terrorists unstoppable by any means, instead of a bunch of holy-rollers who hit the one-outer of a lifetime – the government naturally proceeded to do what everybody assumed they could. \u00a0And they got exposed. \u00a0And everybody shrugged. \u00a0And then, for whatever reason, this guy makes a big deal of it and clutches the pearls, and it\u2019s a story again – mainly because while the right will always<\/em> lay down for a Republican president, the American left seems to love nothing as much as slagging off Democrats. \u00a0Better perfection than half-measures\u2026with predictable results. \u201cWe should only spy on the bad guys\u201d makes as much sense as \u201cthe airport screeners should only search the terrorists,\u201d but nobody wants to draw the line – so much easier to just scream that we shouldn\u2019t be spying, period.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n * Ironically, Fast Eddie is now working for the Russian version of Facebook, which is ironic in the extreme. \u00a0Facebook and Google have built their entire business on data-mining your content to sell your info to advertisers, and the ever-deeper integration of Google Now is the biggest disincentive to take the Android route. Technically speaking, you don\u2019t have<\/em> to use Apple\u2019s services on your iPhone – you can get all your music from Amazon, you can rip your DVDs with Handbrake for movies, you don\u2019t have to use iPhoto Stream or iTunes Match or Find My iPhone if you don\u2019t want. \u00a0Apps themselves you still have to get through the App Store, but hell, the original iPhone didn\u2019t have<\/em> apps. \u00a0You certainly don\u2019t have to use Apple\u2019s mail. You don\u2019t even have to use a Mac – it\u2019s not that difficult to minimize your contact with Apple goods beyond the iPhone to only the iTunes you use for sync.<\/p>\n