Linked List: October 14, 2015

Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Historical Price Trends for Tech Products 

Matt Rosoff, writing for Business Insider:

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks prices for broad categories of goods over time. As this chart of prices for the last 18 years shows, prices have dropped dramatically in almost every tech sector. The drop in computer hardware is particularly steep.

The one exception? Cable, satellite TV, and radio service.

This is exactly the sort of thing the Justice Department should be investigating if they are actually concerned about lack of competition affecting consumers.

The Red Drum Getaway 

Fun Hitchcock-Kubrick mashup by Adrien Dezalay, Emmanuel Delabaere, and Simon Philippe. (Via Scott Immergut.)

Apple Loses Patent Lawsuit to University of Wisconsin 

Mike Segar, reporting for Reuters:

Apple Inc could be facing up to $862 million in damages after a U.S. jury on Tuesday found the iPhone maker used technology owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensing arm without permission in chips found in many of its most popular devices.

The jury in Madison, Wisconsin also said the patent, which improves processor efficiency, was valid. The trial will now move on to determine how much Apple owes in damages. […]

The jury was considering whether Apple’s A7, A8 and A8X processors, found in the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus, as well as several versions of the iPad, violate the patent.

Cupertino, California-based Apple denied any infringement and argued the patent is invalid, according to court papers. Apple previously tried to convince the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review the patent’s validity, but in April the agency rejected the bid.

AppleInsider has more on the patent in question:

The IP in question, U.S. Patent No. 5,781,752 for a “Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer,” was granted to a University of Wisconsin team led by Dr. Gurindar Sohi in 1998. According to WARF and original patent claims, the ‘752 patent focuses on improving power efficiency and overall performance in modern computer processor designs by utilizing “data speculation” circuit, also known as a branch predictor.

For what it’s worth, in 2012 Business Insider ranked the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation fifth on its list of most-feared patent trolls. Rockstar Consortium, which is partially owned by Apple, was third on that list, so don’t shed any tears for Apple. The whole system is rotten.

Update: The more I think about it, the more sure I am that it’s wrong to call WARF a patent “troll”. They are a non-practicing entity, but a university almost has to be. Universities don’t produce commercial products, they conduct research. And WARF uses its patent royalties to fund research. I have no idea whether this particular patent is a “good” one — I lack the expertise to make heads or tails out of it. But “patent troll” has a specific meaning beyond simply “entity that sues to enforce patent rights”, and WARF doesn’t fit.

Fixed, the App That Fixes Your Parking Tickets, Gets Blocked in San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles 

Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch:

Founder David Hegarty once noted that over half of tickets have an issue that would make them invalid, but the city didn’t tend to play by its own rules when arbitrating disputes. That made Fixed’s “win” rate only 20%-30% on tickets, as of earlier this year. (When the company won, it charged a success fee of 25% of the original fine — a reduction in what a customer would have otherwise paid.) […]

Of course, the cities haven’t been welcoming to an app that was aimed at helping locals not pay their tickets by automating the process of jumping through legal loopholes. When Fixed began faxing its submissions to SFMTA last year, the agency emailed the startup to stop using their fax machine. When Fixed pointed out that it was legal to do so, the agency simply shut off their fax.

Pretty telling that rather than close the loopholes or stop handing out erroneous tickets, they unplugged their fax machine and added captchas to block Fixed. Municipal parking is a cesspool of corruption.

Clicker 1.0 

New Apple Watch app from Craig Hockenberry and Iconfactory:

The app is just one big button. Every time you tap your watch face you get a little haptic feedback and the counter goes up. If you force press, you can decrement or reset the counter. There is also a watch complication that lets you see the current count on your watch face. Seriously, it’s that simple. […]

Clicker is free with no in-app purchases or other crap.

Sure it’s super simple — but that’s exactly what Watch apps should be. My only quibble with Clicker is that the complication for the Utility face has a color icon. Come on, people, make those Utility complications monochrome.

Twitter Names Omid Kordestani as Executive Chairman 

Fred Imbert, reporting for CNBC:

Twitter named Omid Kordestani, Google’s former chief business officer, as its new executive chairman on Wednesday. Kordestani had worked at Google since 1999.

Kordestani has tweeted 12 times, ever — and only 6 times prior to this week. He follows 27 accounts — most of them venture capitalists and senior executives from Silicon Valley companies.

Computer Show 

Sandwich Video has been making wonderful short films for clients for a few years. Now, they’ve made something for themselves. The first episode premiered at XOXO last month, and it brought the house down. I think you’re best off going in cold — just grab a beverage and watch.