Month: December 2020

Categories
Data Custody Real-World Crypto

Crypto: mainstreaming, one boring institution after another

Three recent instances of mainstream institutions getting involved in crypto:

~ A regulator: SEC Announces New Standalone Office Dedicated To Digital Assets And Blockchain
~ An insurance company: 169-Year-Old MassMutual Invests $100 Million in Bitcoin
~ A custodian: Lukka Closes Series C Led by State Street With Participation From S&P Global and CPA.com

These are not new-age valley-type or fintech companies. MassMutual, as the headline says, is a nineteenth century institution whose sales were over half a billion dollars by the time the USA Civil War ended. State Street is the world’s second largest custodian. And the SEC is, well, the SEC.

Nor are the crypto companies that are attracting attention from such institutions simplistic: Lukka makes data management software for institutions’ crypto asset holdings.

We have been seeing the mainstreaming of crypto happening before our eyes for months now. One boring institution after another. What they’re interested in is just as boring: cryptocurrency as an asset uncorrelated with other major assets. On the one hand it makes sense – it’s a time of potential prolonged uncertainty in markets across the globe. On the other it’s amazing: this is trust in an eleven-year-old creation that truly lives ‘on the internet’ and nowhere else.

Categories
Data Custody Privacy and Anonymity Products and Design The Next Computer

The tradeoff between security and liberty

The tradeoff between security and liberty often comes up in the USA. The context is usually infringement of civil rights vs the threat of terrorism. This tradeoff is seen in an entirely different context when Apple’s approach to data security on its newer Mac computers.

For the last four years or so, most Mac machines have had their disks encrypted in hardware:

Mac computers that have the Apple T2 Security Chip integrate security into both software and hardware to provide encrypted-storage capabilities. Data on the built-in, solid-state drive (SSD) is encrypted using a hardware-accelerated AES engine built into the T2 chip. This encryption is performed with 256-bit keys tied to a unique identifier within the T2 chip… The advanced encryption technology integrated into the T2 chip provides line-speed encryption

Another Apple document goes into more detail:

On Mac computers with the Apple T2 Security Chip, encrypted internal storage devices directly connected to the T2 chip leverage the hardware security capabilities of the chip. After a user turns on FileVault on a Mac, their credentials are required during the boot process… Without valid login credentials or a cryptographic recovery key, the internal APFS volume… remains encrypted and is protected from unauthorized access even if the physical storage device is removed and connected to another computer… all FileVault key handling occurs in the Secure Enclave; encryption keys are never directly exposed to the Intel CPU

But. To accomplish this, the hard drive must be soldered on to the same board that the T2 chip is. The same Apple doc clarifies:

Encryption of removable storage devices doesn’t utilize the security capabilities of the Apple T2 Security Chip, and its encryption is performed in the same manner as Mac computers without the T2 chip.

Which means that when you buy a computer with such a T2 chip, you get the benefit of high-grade default-on encryption at nearly zero overhead, but at the cost of never being able to upgrade your hard drive size for the lifetime of the device.

In addition, replacements to other components must be verified by running a tool whose distribution Apple closely controls:

… the T2 chip could render a computer inoperable if, say, the logic board is replaced, unless the chip recognizes a special piece of diagnostic software has been run. That means if you wanted to repair certain key parts of your MacBook, iMac, or Mac mini, you would need to go to an official Apple Store or a repair shop that’s part of the company’s Authorized Service Provider (ASP) network…

For Macs with the Apple T2 chip, the repair process is not complete for certain parts replacements until the AST 2 System Configuration suite has been run. Failure to perform this step will result in an inoperative system and an incomplete repair.

I see Apple’s gravitational pull make privacy more widely discussed than otherwise, causing other major tech companies to pay at least lip service to it. In the next few years, I think we will see new companies emerge that take a bold privacy-first stand because of Apple’s position on this. We’ve already seen Apple, Cloudflare and Fastly collaborate on a new privacy-oriented enhancement to an already privacy-oriented DNS lookup standard.

However, it increasingly seems that in its own ecosystem, Apple’s making it clearer than ever that the cost of this security is inherently going to be near-zero freedom to customise, repair or upgrade your hardware.

Categories
Decentralisation and Neutrality Personal Finance

Investing: tech sector breaks correlations

When I evaluate companies for my US portfolio – which consists only of tech companies that I think I understand – I am forced to think of how many companies I want in my portfolio. There are quite a few good bets. But adding too many of them dilutes individual holdings without adding much by way of diversification. As things stand now I’m pushing myself to think harder about my thesis – which we have written about before – so I can split it into two portfolios. Perhaps we will write about this as and when this pans out.

In this regard, at one point I was thinking about whether the portfolios would naturally align by size of company: one with older, more established companies like Apple or Microsoft. And the other with newer ones like Twilio and Square. Of course, this is lazy. In the economy at large age, size and stability are all mostly positively correlated, lending themselves to large-cap and small-cap fund strategies.

But they are anything but in tech. Network effects are much stronger and available to a lot more companies than in other sectors. Barriers to innovation by startups are much lower and switching costs for people are low, meaning disruption is vastly more common. Also, acquisitions of such companies by large companies for IP, talent and/or customers happen often, at very high valuations. And speaking of valuations, they can soar even for public companies, making them larger than much older competitors.

This may not always hold true in the future. Over time there are platforms emerging in many areas that are controlled by older, larger tech companies. Amazon’s AWS, Google’s Cloud Engine and Microsoft’s Azure for building internet applications are well known. Apple’s device-first strategy of building a platform around health and fitness (Fitness+) is less obvious. Platforms like these raise the barrier for newcomers. But we have also seen such platforms fail or die out – Facebook’s applications platform is one such. Its decline took along with it entire public companies like Zynga.

It’s exciting watching these platforms emerge and investing in companies that dominate them – for instance Cloudflare is building a new platform for the Internet that’s a lot more small-business-friendly and privacy-conscious. And Shopify is building a platform that gives merchants an independent presence online, unlike the Amazon model which subsumes their identity.

Categories
Life Design The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Sitting

In an article on attention, this bit about physical strength:

“The damage done by sitting 8+ hours a day is underrated. You need a way to offset this damage, especially if you plan to work in this field for decades.”

– Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer

There are enough studies about the ills of sitting for extended periods of time that are a quick search away. We have also seen earlier this year how I use the Fitbit wearable device’s hourly reminder to get 250 steps in as a guard against sitting for too long.

But in terms of exercise, I have seen the most payoff from simply strengthening my core. A strong core means better posture, which means less slouching, which means less strain on your back. It means less tension on your shoulders as you use your keyboard and trackpad. And because you’re sitting straighter, it means you breathe better – coming full circle to attention. Strengthening a single area has significantly improved how tired and unfocused I feel by the time I wind up work.

(Featured Image Photo Credit: Anthony Riera/Unsplash)

Categories
The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Lite services

In the Hapi app, you type in whatever subject matter you want to talk about, and then you’re connected with a vetted and trained active listener within a few minutes. The listeners are mainly former volunteers at crisis helplines or psychology students who study mental health, all of whom are screened about their interest in helping others.

Hapi, exists for the sole purpose of letting you vent your worries anonymously to an active listener… some people are intimidated to book a therapist appointment. Using Hapi works as a way to dip your toes into what it feels like speaking to someone else about your stresses… As genuine as their intensions are, your loved ones often can’t be objective listeners

– I Tried An App That Let Me Vent To Strangers For A Week

It reminds me so much of the Someone To Talk To lightweight chat service I’d considered building. A lightweight, affordable version of an otherwise high-commitment service, one that does not over-promise with technology.

Lite services thrive in areas where the choice is between nothing or full-fledged high-cost professional services. In a totally different domain, the recent explosion in stock-buying and stock-trading apps like Robinhood is an example of this.

Categories
Data Custody Decentralisation and Neutrality Privacy and Anonymity

Algorithms

In “fintech”, which is where my day job is, many companies create algorithms to calculate people’s ‘risk profiles’. That can mean different things in different contexts. For investment-tech companies, a person’s risk profile usually determines what set of investments to recommend the person. (those investments are then sometimes automated via another algorithm). For credit-tech or lend-tech companies, a risk profile is a measure of how likely the person is to default on their loan, and that determines yes/no decisions, documentation, collateral, lending rate among others.

And speaking of credit, this article by MIT Technology Review describes the creeping influence of black-box algorithms in people’s day to day lives:

“Consumer reporting agencies, including credit bureaus, tenant screening companies, or check verification services, amass this information from a wide range of sources: public records, social media, web browsing, banking activity, app usage, and more. The algorithms then assign people “worthiness” scores, which figure heavily into background checks performed by lenders, employers, landlords, even schools.”

“Their comprehensive influence means that if your score is ruined, it can be nearly impossible to recover. Worse, the algorithms are owned by private companies that don’t divulge how they come to their decisions. Victims can be sent in a downward spiral that sometimes ends in homelessness or a return to their abuser.”

Even if a private company were forced to describe their algorithm, dissecting code in a court case is remarkably different from dissecting facts. As one of the lawyers handling such cases put it, “Am I going to cross-examine an algorithm?”

The unfortunately prescient series Black Mirror aired an episode back in 2016 that described a world ruled by people’s social scores, scores that real estate firms used to screen potential customers. As it turns out, reality has managed to out-dystopia a dystopian fictional series.

(Featured image photo credit: Matt Hoffman/Unsplash)

Categories
Discovery and Curation Life Design Writing

Outlets for fun and creativity

The founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov:

We live in an era when the possibilities for human creativity are endless. One can invent robots, edit genes, design virtual worlds… There are so many exciting unknown areas to explore. I hope that more people will discover the enjoyment of building things for others. I hope that one day we, as a species, will turn away from the self-destructive path of never-ending consumption to a fulfilling journey of creating a better world for ourselves and those around us.

I think he is mixing two messages up. Most of his post is about the ills of the unsustainable, mindless consumption of food and goods typical of the Western world. Somewhere in the post is a mention of his realisation that “the most rewarding kind of occupation is creating things, not consuming them” which led him to create the Telegram project. He seems to have combined both of these messages to make a value judgement about consumption and creation in general.

I have a different, more positive take on this.

We have spoken often about consumption in the context of content, for instance the mindless scrolling through social media. While it’s important to be mindful of and reduce that sort of consumption, it’s also important to create outlets for self-expression other than like and retweet/share that are built into social media. Your own blog. Or newsletter. Or topic-specific Twitter account. Or a public Notion page to which you keep adding. Or a YouTube channel. The possibilities are endless today.

Then as you consume vigorously, indulging multiple interests and spanning different mediums – music, podcasts, writing, streaming video, chat groups – you express to the world the best of them, and your thinking about them.

I came to this realisation late, but I have taken this to heart.

Taken together, these projects don’t cover all of my interests, and don’t even begin to approach the Telegram founder Pavel’s references to building robots and editing genes. Instead they are a set of fun, lightweight outlets for me to express idle and structured thoughts and reactions as I read, watch and listen to things I discover and like.

Categories
Wellness when Always-On

Pause

Categories
Wellness when Always-On

Of wonderment and compulsion

Losing an hour down a Wikipedia rabbit-hole is very different from scrolling through Reddit or Twitter the same amount of time. No matter how frivolous the topics on Wikipedia, I’m learning something new – even if I’ll forget most of it later the same day. With social networks the joy diminishes rather quickly, but I’m kept scrolling by some inexorable pull.

Both leave me surprised at where time’s disappeared, but one leaves me energised, the other with brain fog. The answer probably lies in that I float – flit? – through Wikipedia out of a sense of wonderment, and I scroll though social feeds out of a sense of compulsion. There seems to be more free will in one than another.

(Featured image photo credit: Daniel Fazio/Unsplash)

Categories
The Next Computer

iPhone home screen, December 2020 – the post-home-screen world

(Previously:August, September, October, November home screens)

A couple of weeks ago, I hid all home screens on my iPhone. This is a feature new to iOS 14. It requires at least one home screen to be visible, so one remains.

Why’d I do this? Because there are now multiple ways to launch the apps I want, quickly.

The biggest among them is App Library, an index of every app on your iPhone – also new to iOS 14. Then there are Siri suggestions, long available as a quick down-swipe on the home screen. And there’s Back Tap – tapping the back of my iPhone twice or thrice launches different Shortcuts.

Between these I can get to any app I want. And so I’ve filled up the lone home screen with a few widgets.

I’m in the post-home-screen world:

The widgets haven’t changed much: local times at a few places around the world, weather for one of them, and my calendar and meetings.

You can see the App Library on the right. Tapping on the large icons launches the app. Tapping on the small ones opens the folder. A short swipe shows an alphabetical listing:

My app usage hasn’t changed. I still use Drafts for text. Safari for browsing. A bunch of chat apps. The stock Apple Mail app. Music. Photos. Camera. A range of photo editing apps including Pixelmator. Slack for the day job. And of course Twitter and Reddit apps.

Last month, I also began using my phone – and iPad – less: I had my mid 2012 15″ Retina Macbook Pro repaired and despite its size and weight it’s become my go-to portable machine at home.

It’s a fantastic machine: the design, the keyboard, the display, the oodles of real estate. Here’s the developer Marco Arment:

Apple has made many great laptops, but the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro (2012–2015) is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been (and may never be) surpassed. Introduced in 2012, less than a year after Steve Jobs died, I see it as the peak of Jobs’ vision for the Mac.

– The best laptop ever made

The iPad has some clear use cases: it’s where I read my books. Watch TV. Sketch. Edit photos. I’m probably not going to attempt to use the iPad as my full time machine soon, but it’s always going to get a good few hours of use every day. But the iPhone? Well December is going to be an interesting month.