Important Note

Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.

Each post below is tagged with
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  • Narratives
    • as appropriate.
    ★ Facebook Consolidates Hardware Efforts, Plans Speakers, Other Devices for 2018 (Aug 23, 2017)

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    ★ FTC and Whole Foods Shareholders Approve Amazon Acquisition (Aug 23, 2017)

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    ★ Uber’s Q2 2017 Partial Financials Show Strong Growth, Vague Progress on Losses (Aug 23, 2017)

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    Snapchat Content Head Says Scripted Shows Coming, Mobile Not a TV Killer (Aug 23, 2017)

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    Studies Find Pre-Autonomy Safety Systems in Cars Prevent Crashes, Save Lives (Aug 23, 2017)

    The article linked below discusses several recent studies conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and other bodies, which provide substantial evidence that advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like lane departure warnings and blind spot detection are preventing crashes and saving lives. This is notable because autonomous driving technology is widely expected to reduce crashes significantly, but is likely years away, while traditional car manufactures have been working for years on ADAS technology, and that’s already having a positive impact. That’s great validation for the strategy of most vehicle manufactures working in parallel on improving and broadening ADAS while simultaneously working on autonomy, because it suggests the former efforts are providing real benefit today, while autonomy is still years away. It’s also going to be very helpful for those trying to get regulatory approval for autonomous systems to be able to point to these results as evidence of the broader claims. Crucially, however, ADAS augments the driver’s own skills and awareness rather than replacing the driver, whereas intermediate autonomous technologies introduce scenarios in which drivers either can or may be tempted to pay less attention to the driving task, which can actually create new risks. The key in developing autonomous technology will be to implement methods to keep drivers attentive so that they act appropriately even as the tech in the car increasingly takes over.

    via TheDetroitBureau.com


    ★ Samsung Announces Pricey Note8 With Dual Cameras, Confirms Speaker in Works (Aug 23, 2017)

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    Apple Machine Learning Researchers Publish Three Papers in In-House Journal (Aug 23, 2017)

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    Google and Walmart partner for Voice Shopping through Google Home (Aug 23, 2017)

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    ★ Apple’s Car Project Suffered From Lack of Focus, Reports New York Times (Aug 23, 2017)

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    Daily Podcast Episode 41 – August 22, 2017 (Aug 22, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 22 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    AccuWeather iOS App Harvests Location Data Even When Told Not To (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Bloomberg Article Suggests Apple’s Strategy Rests on Perfecting Rivals’ Ideas (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Uber Reports $50m in Tips Paid, More Controls and Flexibility for Drivers (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Facebook Adds News Organization Logos to Article Links to Raise Brand Profiles (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Spotify Launches in Thailand, its Seventh Asian Market and 61st Market Overall (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Facebook Use Among US Teens Will Start to Fall, Says eMarketer (Aug 22, 2017)

    Analyst firm eMarketer has revised its usage forecasts for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat for the coming year, and although there’s lots of data there, the point the media has latched onto is that it’s predicting use of the core Facebook app among US teens will fall this year. Though I have to imagine eMarketer is basing all this on some kind of survey of teens (notoriously difficult to do), there’s no mention of any such survey in the article from eMarketer, so I’m curious to know precisely what the foundation is, especially given that falling Facebook use by teens has been talked about for years but never seems to have materialized in a discernible way in Facebook’s reporting. None of this, though, is all that surprising, given that Snapchat and Instagram between them seem to have a lock on teens’ social media use, both driven by the increasingly raw and personal sharing these platforms enable in contrast to the broadcast nature of most Facebook sharing. While Facebook has steadily embraced its identity as a time sink filled with content loosely connected to people you know, these other platforms continue to major on true social interactions and therefore are more appealing to those at a stage of life where that’s the most important aspect of social media. Without Instagram, Facebook would potentially be staring a massive liability in the face at this point given that all its organic efforts to compete with Snapchat have crashed and burned, but with it, the company has managed to participate in rather than merely suffer from this trend among teens. And it’s now seeing the upside at least as much as the downside, with several times the user base of Snapchat overall and nearly equally high engagement. As such, I’m not sure any of these needs to be a worry for Facebook even if it’s true, as long as the trend doesn’t spread to older age groups and lead to broader disengagement from Facebook, and as long as Instagram is able to continue to capture its share of teen social media use.

    via eMarketer


    Verizon Wireless Splits Unlimited Plans in Two, With Video Throttling on Both (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Samsung Rolls out Bixby to 200 Countries, But Only if You Speak US English or Korean (Aug 22, 2017)

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    Daily Podcast Episode 40 – August 21, 2017 (Aug 21, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 21 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    Google Seems to be Working on Headphones with Google Assistant (Aug 21, 2017)

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