Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

When you turn on the radio, you might think music all sounds the same these days, then wonder if you’re just getting old. But you’re right, it does all sound the same. Every element of the recording process, from the first takes to the final tweaks, has been evolved with one simple aim: control. And that control often lies in the hands of a record company desperate to get their song on the radio. So they’ll encourage a controlled recording environment (slow, high-tech and using malleable digital effects).

Every finished track is then coated in a thick layer of audio polish before being market-tested and dispatched to a radio station, where further layers of polish are applied until the original recording is barely visible. That’s how you make a mainstream radio hit, and that’s what record labels want. (...)

When people talk about a shortage of ‘warm’ or ‘natural’ recording, they often blame digital technology. It’s a red herring, because copying a great recording onto CD or into an iPod doesn’t stop it sounding good. Even self-consciously old fashioned recordings like Arif Mardin’s work with Norah Jones was recorded on two inch tape, then copied into a computer for editing, then mixed through an analogue console back into the computer for mastering. It’s now rare to hear recently-produced audio which has never been through any analogue-digital conversion—although a vinyl White Stripes album might qualify.

Until surprisingly recently—maybe 2002—the majority of records were made the same way they’d been made since the early 70s: through vast, multi-channel recording consoles onto 24 or 48-track tape. At huge expense, you’d rent purpose-built rooms containing perhaps a million pounds’ worth of equipment, employing a producer, engineer and tape operator. Digital recording into a computer had been possible since the mid 90s, but major producers were often sceptical.

By 2000, Pro Tools, the industry-standard studio software, was mature and stable and sounded good. With a laptop and a small rack of gear costing maybe £25,000 you could record most of a major label album. So the business shifted from the console—the huge knob-covered desk in front of a pair of wardrobe-sized monitor speakers—to the computer screen. You weren’t looking at the band or listening to the music, you were staring at 128 channels of wiggling coloured lines.

“There’s no big equipment any more,” says John Leckie. “No racks of gear with flashing lights and big knobs. The reason I got into studio engineering was that it was the closest thing I could find to getting into a space ship. Now, it isn’t. It’s like going to an accountant. It changes the creative dynamic in the room when it’s just one guy sitting staring at a computer screen.”

“Before, you had a knob that said ‘Bass.’ You turned it up, said ‘Ah, that’s better’ and moved on. Now, you have to choose what frequency, and the slope, and how many dBs, and it all makes a difference. There’s a constant temptation to tamper.”

What makes working with Pro Tools really different from tape is that editing is absurdly easy. Most bands record to a click track, so the tempo is locked. If a guitarist plays a riff fifty times, it’s a trivial job to pick the best one and loop it for the duration of the verse.

“Musicians are inherently lazy,” says John. “If there’s an easier way of doing something than actually playing, they’ll do that.” A band might jam together for a bit, then spend hours or days choosing the best bits and pasting a track together. All music is adopting the methods of dance music, of arranging repetitive loops on a grid. With the structure of the song mapped out in coloured boxes on screen, there’s a huge temptation to fill in the gaps, add bits and generally clutter up the sound.(...)

Once the band and producer are finished, their multitrack—usually a hard disk containing Pro Tools files for maybe 128 channels of audio—is passed onto a mix engineer. L.A.-based JJ Puig has mixed records for Black Eyed Peas, U2, Snow Patrol, Green Day and Mary J Blige. His work is taken so seriously that he’s often paid royalties rather than a fixed fee. He works from Studio A at Ocean Way Studios on the Sunset Strip. The control room looks like a dimly-lit library. Instead of books, the floor-to-ceiling racks are filled with vintage audio gear. This is the room where Frank Sinatra recorded “It Was A Very Good Year” and Michael Jackson recorded “Beat It.”

And now, it belongs to JJ Puig. Record companies pay him to essentially re-produce the track, but without the artist and producer breathing down his neck. He told Sound On Sound magazine: “When I mixed The Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang album, I reckoned that one of the songs needed a tambourine and a shaker, so I put it on. If Glyn Johns [who produced Sticky Fingers] had done that many years ago, he’d have been shot in the head. Mick Jagger was kind of blown away by what I’d done, no-one had ever done it before on a Stones record, but he couldn’t deny that it was great and fixed the record.”

When a multitrack arrives, JJs assistant tidies it up, re-naming the tracks, putting them in the order he’s used to and colouring the vocal tracks pink. Then JJ goes through tweaking and polishing and trimming every sound that will appear on the record. Numerous companies produce plugins for Pro Tools which are digital emulations of the vintage rack gear that still fills Studio One. If he wants to run Fergie’s vocal through a 1973 Roland Space Echo and a 1968 Marshall stack, it takes a couple of clicks.

Some of these plugins have become notorious. Auto Tune, developed by former seismologist Andy Hildebrand, was released as a Pro Tools plugin in 1997. It automatically corrects out of tune vocals by locking them to the nearest note in a given key. The L1 Ultramaximizer, released in 1994 by the Israeli company Waves, launched the latest round of the loudness war. It’s a very simple looking plugin which neatly and relentlessly makes music sound a lot louder (a subject we’ll return to in a little while).

When JJ has tweaked and polished and trimmed and edited, his stereo mix is passed on to a mastering engineer, who prepares it for release. What happens to that stereo mix is an extraordinary marriage of art, science and commerce. The tools available are superficially simple—you can really only change the EQ or the volume. But the difference between a mastered and unmastered track is immediately obvious. Mastered recordings sound like real records. That is to say, they all sound a little bit alike.

by Tom Whitwell, Cuepoint | Read more:
Image: uncredited

Anita Lane

Anita Lane, Founding Member of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, Dead at 61 (Rolling Stone)

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Jack Nicklaus: Golf My Way

[ed. Can't believe it. Jack Nicklaus's Golf My Way on YouTube. One of the best golf instruction videos, ever.]

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[ed. Jingle and Sam]

Why Stocks Soared While America Struggled

You would never know how terrible the past year has been for many Americans by looking at Wall Street, which has been going gangbusters since the early days of the pandemic.

“On the streets, there are chants of ‘Stop killing Black people!’ and ‘No justice, no peace!’ Meanwhile, behind a computer, one of the millions of new day traders buys a stock because the chart is quickly moving higher,” wrote Chris Brown, the founder and managing member of the Ohio-based hedge fund Aristides Capital in a letter to investors in June 2020. “The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming at times.”

The market was temporarily shaken in March 2020, as stocks plunged for about a month at the outset of the Covid-19 outbreak, but then something strange happened. Even as hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, millions of people were laid off and businesses shuttered, protests against police violence erupted across the nation in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and the outgoing president refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election — supposedly the market’s nightmare scenario — for weeks, the stock market soared. After the jobs report from April 2021 revealed a much shakier labor recovery might be on the horizon, major indexes hit new highs.

The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, between corporate CEOs and the working class, has perhaps never felt so stark. How can it be that food banks are overwhelmed while the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits an all-time high? For a year that’s been so bad, it’s been hard not to wonder how the stock market could be so good.

To the extent that there can ever be an explanation for what’s going on with the stock market, there are some straightforward financial answers here. The Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to support financial markets and reassure investors it wouldn’t let major corporations fall apart. Congress did its part as well, pumping trillions of dollars into the economy across multiple relief bills. Turns out giving people money is good for markets, too. Tech stocks, which make up a significant portion of the S&P 500, soared. And with bond yields so low, investors didn’t really have a more lucrative place to put their money.

To put it plainly, the stock market is not representative of the whole economy, much less American society. And what it is representative of did fine.

“No matter how many times we keep on saying the stock market is not the economy, people won’t believe it, but it isn’t,” said Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist. “The stock market is about one piece of the economy — corporate profits — and it’s not even about the current or near-future level of corporate profits, it’s about corporate profits over a somewhat longish horizon.”

Still, those explanations, to many people, don’t feel fair. Investors seem to have remained inconceivably optimistic throughout real turmoil and uncertainty. If the answer to why the stock market was fine is basically that’s how the system works, the follow-up question is: Should it?

“Talking about the prosperous nature of the stock market in the face of people still dying from Covid-19, still trying to get health care, struggling to get food, stay employed, it’s an affront to people’s actual lived experience,” said Solana Rice, the co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation, which pushes for economic policies that reduce racial disparities. “The stock market is not representative of the makeup of this country.”

Inequality is not a new theme in the American economy. But the pandemic exposed and reinforced the way the wealthy and powerful experience what’s happening so much differently than those with less power and fewer means — and force the question of how the prosperity of those at the top could be better shared with those at the bottom. There are certainly ideas out there, though Wall Street might not like them.

by Emily Stewart, Vox |  Read more:
Image: Vox

[ed. See also: Counting the Chickens Twice; and, Always a Reckoning (Hussman Funds).]

Sam Middleton, 1927-2015, Untitled, Mixed media on paper.

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Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō), frequently abbreviated to LDP or Jimintō (自民党), is a conservative political party in Japan.

The LDP has almost continuously been in power since its foundation in 1955—a period called the 1955 System—with the exception of a period between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012. In the 2012 election it regained control of the government. It holds 285 seats in the lower house and 113 seats in the upper house, and in coalition with the Komeito since 1999, the governing coalition has a supermajority in both houses. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and many present and former LDP ministers are also known members of Nippon Kaigi, an ultranationalist and monarchist organization.

The LDP is not to be confused with the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan (民主党, Minshutō), the main opposition party from 1998 to 2016, or the Democratic Party (民進党, Minshintō), the main opposition party from 2016 to 2017.[16] The LDP is also not to be confused with the 1998-2003 Liberal Party (自由党, Jiyūtō) or the 2016-2019 Liberal Party (自由党, Jiyū-tō). (...)

Beginnings

The LDP was formed in 1955 as a merger between two of Japan's political parties, the Liberal Party (自由党, Jiyutō, 1945–1955, led by Shigeru Yoshida) and the Japan Democratic Party (日本民主党, Nihon Minshutō, 1954–1955, led by Ichirō Hatoyama), both right-wing conservative parties, as a united front against the then popular Japan Socialist Party (日本社会党, Nipponshakaitō), now Social Democratic Party (社会民主党, Shakaiminshutō). The party won the following elections, and Japan's first conservative government with a majority was formed by 1955. It would hold majority government until 1993.

The LDP began with reforming Japan's international relations, ranging from entry into the United Nations, to establishing diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union. Its leaders in the 1950s also made the LDP the main government party, and in all the elections of the 1950s, the LDP won the majority vote, with the only other opposition coming from left-wing politics, made up of the Japan Socialist Party and the Japanese Communist Party.

Ideology

The LDP has not espoused a well-defined, unified ideology or political philosophy, due to its long-term government, and has been described as a "catch-all" party. Its members hold a variety of positions that could be broadly defined as being to the right of the opposition parties. The LDP is usually associated with conservatism and Japanese nationalism. The LDP traditionally identified itself with a number of general goals: rapid, export-based economic growth; close cooperation with the United States in foreign and defense policies; and several newer issues, such as administrative reform. Administrative reform encompassed several themes: simplification and streamlining of government bureaucracy; privatization of state-owned enterprises; and adoption of measures, including tax reform, in preparation for the expected strain on the economy posed by an aging society. Other priorities in the early 1990s included the promotion of a more active and positive role for Japan in the rapidly developing Asia-Pacific region, the internationalization of Japan's economy by the liberalization and promotion of domestic demand (expected to lead to the creation of a high-technology information society) and the promotion of scientific research. A business-inspired commitment to free enterprise was tempered by the insistence of important small business and agricultural constituencies on some form of protectionism and subsidies. In addition, the LDP opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage.

by Wikipedia |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

[ed. When countries are run like corporations (the LDP has been in power most of my life, how could I not have known this?). See also: the 1955 System link; and Did Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Serve Obama Beefsteak-Flavored Revenge for US Trade Representative Froman’s TPP Rudeness? (Naked Capitalism).]

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Mark Lanegan

[ed. See also: The Winding Sheet (full album).]

Three Club Challenge

You probably have a club in your bag that you love. One that’s as reliable as Congress is dysfunctional. For Kevin Costner in Tin Cup it was his trusty seven iron. For someone like Henrik Stenson, probably his three wood. For me, it’s my eight iron. There are certain clubs, either through experience, ability or default just seem to stand out.

But then there are those clubs that just give us the willies. For example, unlike Henrik I’d put my three wood in that category. I’m convinced no amount of practice will ever make me better with that club. I invariably chunk it or thin it, rarely hitting it straight, but I keep carrying it around because I’m convinced I might need to hit a 165 yard blooper on a 210 yard approach. A friend of mine has problems with his driver. He carries it around off and on for weeks and never uses it because “it’s just not working”. Little wonder.

If you’ve been golfing for a while you’ve probably indulged in the ‘what if’ question. I’m not talking about the misery stories you hear in the clubhouse after a round, those tears-in-the-beers laments of ‘what if I’d only laid up instead of trying to cut that corner’, or, ‘what if I hadn’t bladed that bunker shot into the lake’? Bad decisions and bad breaks. Conversations like those will go on as long as golf exists and really aren’t all that interesting (except, perhaps, for the person drowning their sorrows).

What I’m talking about is a more existential question. One that goes to the heart of every golfer’s game: What if you only had three clubs to play with, which ones would you choose? And why?

It’s a fun thought experiment because it makes you think about your abilities in a more distilled perspective: how well do I hit my clubs and what’s the best combination to use to get around a course in the lowest possible score?

Maybe you’ve had the chance to compete in a three-club tournament. They’re out there. Once in a while someone puts one together and they sound like a lot of fun. I’ve never had the opportunity to play in one myself, but recently did get the chance to try my own three club experiment with some surprising results.

Caveat: I’m not here to suggest that there’s one right mix of clubs for everyone, but I will say that it’s possible to shoot par golf (or better) with only three golf clubs.

First, some background. I’m an old guy, a senior golfer that’s been playing the game for nearly 25 years. High single to low double digit handicap (I’m guessing since I don’t keep a handicap). Usually shoot in the low to mid-80s with an occasional excursion into the high 70s.

Lately I’ve been playing on a nice nine hole course that rarely sees more than a dozen golfers at any time, even on the weekends. It’s not an executive course or a goat-track. In fact it’s as challenging a course as any muni, if not more so, and definitely in better condition. The greens keeping staff keep it in excellent shape and share resources with a nearby Nicklaus-designed course. It’s your average really nice nine hole course, and would command premium prices if expanded to 18 holes.

Anyway, because there’s hardly anyone around I usually play three balls, mainly for exercise and practice. I’ve always carried my bag, so it’s easy to drive up, unload my stuff, stick three balls in my pocket and take off.

A while back we had some strong winds. Stiff, persistent winds. I don’t mind playing in wind, but these were strong enough that my stand bag kept falling over when I set it down, and twisting around my body, throwing me off balance and making it hard to walk. I must have looked a bit like a drunk staggering up the fairways (not an uncommon sight on some of the courses I’ve played).

So I decided to dump the bag and play with three clubs.

But which ones? Keep in mind that everyone is different, so the clubs I selected are the ones I thought would work best for me.

To begin with, I realized that two are already taken. First, I’d need a putter. According to Golf Digest and Game Golf, you need a putter roughly 41 percent of the time on average. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to try putting with a driver, three wood, or hybrid no matter how utilitarian they might be. It just feels too awkward. Perhaps it’s just personal preference, and if that’s not a big deal with you go for it.

The next club I selected was something that could get me close from a 120 yards out, help around the fringe, and get me out of a bunker. No brainer: sand wedge. I thought about a lob wedge but it didn’t have the distance, and a gap or pitching wedge was just too tough out of the sand and didn’t have enough loft for short flops to tight pins.

Finally, the last club in my arsenal. Six iron. Why the six? A number of reasons. First, and probably most important: I'm terrible with my six iron. Not as bad as my three wood, but for some reason the six has always given me problems. Maybe it's because I’ve never been fitted for clubs and it always stood out as being more difficult than most of the others. I don’t know why, really. In any case, I thought “why not get a little more practice and see if I can get this guy under control”? It also has the distance. When I hit it well I can get it maybe roughly 170 yards. Maybe. So that completed the set. My new streamlined self was ready for the wind.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Given that most Par 4s are generally in the 350 – 450 yard range (see here and here) and Par 5s generally about 450-690 yards (see here), it’s not that hard if you’re hitting a 170 yard six iron to get on the green in two shots on shorter Par 4s, and on in three for shorter Par 5s. Even on longer holes if you come up short, you’re still close enough that it’s a sand wedge into the green, usually pitching or chipping from 100 yards or less. Then it’s just a putt for par. Plus, that second or third shot is usually from the middle of the fairway, so there’s an excellent chance you’ll put your wedge shot in a good position. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find how many pars I can make, and sometimes even a birdie or two, with just three clubs. It all depends on the length of the hole and the accuracy of my chipping and putting. And of course the wind. It’s a great way to get better at iron play and, especially, your short game from 100 yards in.

But there’s more, and here’s where it really gets fun. For various reasons, sometimes I’ll find myself somewhere in the 120 – 160 yard range coming into a green. Too long for a sand wedge but too short for a six iron so I’ve had to learn to dial it back a bit. Hitting a six iron a 140 yards is not that much different than hitting a half swing pitch, but with more control and easier effort. The fun thing is learning how much swing is needed for the various distances within that 40 yard gap. For a while, I’d frequently come up 10 yards short or 10 yards long of the green, but it’s getting better, and again, it’s been another opportunity to sharpen up my short game.

I’ve tried substituting a five iron and even a hybrid for more distance off the tee, but the second shot seems harder to control with less lofted clubs (particularly tough on short Par 3s). Maybe those clubs might work better for other golfers depending on their skill set, but dialing it back is the trickiest part for me. To each his own. The six iron just seemed to strike the right balance. The main thing is finding the right clubs that will give you the greatest accuracy, distance, and control.

Now I have a whole new perspective on the game. Besides being in the fairway more often, I’m hitting more greens in regulation and, when short, still chipping or pitching up to putt for par. I’ve also enjoyed the new sense of creativity. Too often in the past I’d just take whatever club was at the outer limits of my abilities and swing away, full blast (with variable directional and distance control). Now I don’t mind taking a lesser club and swinging easier. To top it off, my iron play and short game have improved considerably. My sand wedge used to be my go to 80-90 yard club, now it tops out at 115. Six iron went from a shaky 170 to a reliable 170. My putting still stinks. Maybe the pros can dial in pin point accuracy with every club, but given the variability I have throughout my bag it’s been much more helpful to just focus on a few clubs and work on improving those. It also speeds up the game considerably.

So, last week I took my full bag out thinking I needed to tune up my driver, three wood and other clubs since I didn’t want those skills to get too rusty. Guess what? I shot worse than I did with my three club setup - mainly because I was all over the fairway and in the woods again. I’m not ready to give up my whole bag yet, but it is gratifying to know that there are still a few new ways to rediscover the game and enjoy new challenges. Give it a try sometime. You might find less is more.

by markk, Duck Soup

Image: markk

Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.

At approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, the sun began to lower from its position in the sky in a westward trajectory, eventually disappearing below the horizon. Reports of this global emergency continued to file in from across the continent until 5:46 p.m. PST, when the entire North American mainland was officially declared dark.

As the phenomenon hit New York, millions of motorists were forced to use their headlights to navigate through the blackness. Highways flooded with commuters who had left work to hurry home to their families. Traffic was bottlenecked for more than two hours in many major metropolitan areas.

Across the country, buses and trains are operating on limited schedules and will cease operation shortly after 12 a.m. EST, leaving hundreds of thousands of commuters in outlying areas effectively stranded in their homes.

Despite the high potential for danger and decreased visibility, scientists say they are unable to do anything to restore light to the continent at this time.

"Vast gravitational forces have rotated the planet Earth on an axis drawn through its north and south poles," said Dr. Elena Bilkins of the National Weather Service. "The Earth is in actuality spinning uncontrollably through space."

Bilkins urged citizens to remain calm, explaining that the Earth's rotation is "utterly beyond human control."

"The only thing a sensible person can do is wait it out," she said.

Commerce has been brought to a virtual standstill, with citizens electing either to remain home with loved ones or gather in dimly lit restaurants and bars.

"I looked out the window and saw it getting dark when I was still at the office working," said Albert Serpa, 27, a lawyer from Tulsa, OK, who had taken shelter with others at Red's Bar and Grill. "That's when I knew I had to leave right away."

Ronald Jarrett, a professor of economics at George Washington University who left his office after darkness blanketed the D.C. metro area, summed up the fears of an entire nation, saying, "Look, it's dark outside. I want to go home," and ended the phone interview abruptly.

Businesses have shut their doors, banks are closed across the nation, all major stock exchanges have suspended trading, and manufacturing in many sectors has ceased.

Some television stations have halted broadcasting altogether, for reasons not immediately understood.

Law-enforcement agencies nationwide were quick to address the crisis.

Said NYPD spokesman Jake Moretti: "Low-light conditions create an environment that's almost tailor-made for crime. It's probably safe to say we'll make more arrests in the next few hours than we have all day."

Darkness victims describe hunger pangs, lassitude, and a slow but steady loss of energy, forcing many to lie down. As many as two-thirds of those believed afflicted have fallen into a state of total unconsciousness.

Many parents report that their younger children have been troubled, even terrified, by the deep darkness. To help allay such fears, some parents are using an artificial light source in the hallway or bedroom.

As of 2 a.m. EST, the continent was still dark, the streets empty and silent. However, some Americans remained hopeful, vowing to soldier on despite the crisis.

"I don't plan on doing anything any different," said Chicago-area hospice worker Janet Cosgrove, 51. "I'm going to get up in the morning and go to work."

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: Satellite view at 4:50 p.m. EST shows sun disappearing from the sky. Houston-area victims flee their workplaces ahead of the growing wave of darkness.

Katherine Lam

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Bad Bunny

Tracking Transparency: The Problem With Apple’s Plan to Stop Facebook’s Data Collection

On Monday, Apple released iOS 14.5, the smartphone update that Facebook fears.

The operating system upgrade includes improvements like a Face ID that’s better attuned to face masks, as well as more convenient interoperability between Siri and various music apps. What’s generating the most discussion, though, is a tool called App Tracking Transparency, which allows users to prevent apps from sharing identifiable personal data with third parties. The tool, billed as a major step forward for user privacy, could roil the digital ads industry, whose major players often track users as they move between apps on their phones. The update should’ve shown up on your iPhone by now; if you weren’t prompted to download it, go to “Software Update” under your general settings. It’s a milestone for the consumer web and a possible blow to social media’s business model, which depends on selling highly personalized advertising. There’s one hitch: Even when you turn it on, you might not notice a single thing has changed.

Whenever you download an app using iOS 14.5, a notification will appear asking whether you want to allow it to “track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites.” You can either select “Ask App Not to Track” or “Allow.” You can also opt in or out of tracking for an app at any time by navigating to the “Privacy” menu in the device’s settings and clicking on “Tracking.” From there you’ll see a list of apps alongside switches you can toggle to turn the tool on or off. Asking an app not to track you means that it isn’t allowed to transmit any of the identifiable location, contact, health, browsing history, or other info that it collected on you with advertisers, data brokers, or anyone else who might be interested in learning more about you. This should prevent, say, Facebook from serving you ads on grills based on the fact that you were searching for them on Chrome. Apps won’t be able to combine data they gather on you with information collected elsewhere by third parties.

It might seem like a fairly unremarkable feature, but App Tracking Transparency has the potential to reorient users’ relationships with their personal data, primarily by making the tracking opt-in. Prior to iOS 14.5, users did have the ability to limit the data that apps shared, but the default was to allow tracking, and you had to proactively check the settings to turn it off. Having the apps themselves ask this question upfront is an important aspect of the shift. “It’s not just giving users the choice,” said Gennie Gebhart, acting activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the internet-rights advocacy group. “It’s forcing these app developers to ask permission and possibly just stop tracking preemptively so they don’t have this scary permission associated with their app.” There’s a whole industry built around targeting ads using personal data, and if enough people start regularly opting out of tracking, Apple’s new tool could frustrate many of the businesses in this space. Facebook, in particular, is expecting the tool to have a small but noticeable effect on its revenue and has been taking out full-page ads characterizing Apple’s move as hurting small businesses. During the company’s quarterly earnings call in January, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg accused Apple of trying to “use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work.”

However, if you turn tracking off for everything, will there be any actual differences in how you use your apps or what ads you see? According to Gebhart, it might not be so clear-cut. For instance, if you’re searching for grills on Chrome and then see ads for them on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the tool isn’t doing its job. The ad-targeting ecosystem is so complex and multilayered that there are a number of ways that Facebook could determine that you want a grill just from your activity through first-party tracking on its own app. The platform could gather that you’re a middle-aged man who just bought a house in the suburbs at the beginning of the summer and determine that it’s likely that you’re in the market for a grill without ever looking at your Chrome browsing history. In other words, there probably won’t be any noticeable signs indicating that the tool is or isn’t working. You’ll know in theory that apps shouldn’t be swapping your data amongst themselves, but it likely won’t look all that different in practice.

This opacity is partly meant to make the user experience simpler. Being constantly exposed to the under-the-hood mechanics of the apps on your phone could be overwhelming. At the same time, though, keeping all this tracking hidden serves to obscure just how much of your personal info your apps are collecting and sharing. Apple’s new tool adds some more transparency—and thus friction—back into the equation, but there’s still a lot you won’t really be able to see. “There’s so much going on under the surface that advertisers and data brokers don’t want you to see, and all of the sudden Apple is forcing some of that above the surface, but it’s hard to say what to look for to know whether App Tracking Transparency is working,” Gebhart said, adding that users will continue to be at a disadvantage in trying to maintain their privacy online because of this dramatic information asymmetry. Still, one change that could result from Apple’s move is more chicanery from the data-hoovering business, which will need to find more creative ways to build profiles of internet users that can help advertisers target consumers. That’s why Gebhart says she’ll track which apps, if any, Apple decides to kick off its store for violating the tracking rules and any changes in strategy that companies in the digital ads industry are making.

With Apple acting as an unofficial regulator of user privacy, how will companies that want your data cope? It helps to understand how Apple’s update works.

by Aaron Mak, Slate |  Read more:

Image: Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images

[ed. See also: Apple robbed the mob’s bank (Mobile Dev Memo).]

Decision Fatigue: Inside Netflix’s Quest to End Scrolling

Ten years ago, Netflix got the idea that its app should work more like regular TV. This was early on in its transition from DVD delivery to streaming on demand, and product engineers at the company were still figuring out how the platform’s user interface would work. Instead of having subscribers start their streaming sessions scrolling through rows and rows of content, they wondered what would happen if a show or movie simply began playing as soon as someone clicked into the app — you know, like turning on your dad’s boxy old Zenith.

“It was the early days of Netflix having a television user interface, and we saw this as a great possibility,” says Todd Yellin, who as vice-president of product for the streaming giant helps shape how users interact with the platform. They liked the idea so much, they quietly tested it out among a small slice of subscribers.

But users weren’t impressed. “It failed,” the 14-year Netflix vet tells me. “The technology wasn’t as good. And I don’t think consumers were ready for it.”

Netflix believes audiences are ready now. Today, the company is launching Play Something, a new viewing mode designed to make it easier for the indecisive among us to quickly find something to watch. As with those early forays into instant-playing content, the goal of this new shuffle feature is to eliminate, or at least ease, the Peak TV-era anxiety so many of us feel while trying to find something to watch. But unlike its past attempt, it won’t be automatic: You’ll have to opt in — either at start-up or when you’re browsing your home page. If you do, the usual page upon page of box art and show descriptions disappears. Instead, the Netflix matrix chooses something it thinks you’ll be into and just starts streaming it, along with an onscreen graphic briefly explaining why it chose that title. Don’t like what you see? A quick button press skips ahead to another selection. If you suddenly decide an earlier selection is actually a better pick, you can also go backward. (The feature will initially be available on all Netflix TV apps and, soon, on mobile for Android devices.)

by Josef Adalian, Vulture | Read more:
Image: Martin Gee

FDA Will Authorize Pfizer COVID Vaccine for Ages 12 and Older

The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine for adolescent kids aged 12-15 years within a week, according to federal officials who spoke with the New York Times. If and when that happens, it would mark the first time any coronavirus vaccine has been authorized for emergency use for Americans under the age of 16 — a long-awaited development for countless parents in the U.S., as well as the beginning of a new phase in the country’s vaccine rollout.

Pfizer has previously reported that its vaccine was found to be as effective in the 12-15 age group as it was in adults, with no additional side effects, in its clinical trial involving adolescents. (The side effects were in line with what recipients aged 16-25 experienced.) FDA authorization of the vaccine for the new age group would likely be followed by a quick review from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel, as was the case for other previous vaccine authorizations. After the panel makes its recommendation, vaccine administration sites would likely be able to start giving out doses to adolescents immediately.

As the Times notes, amid consistent supply and weakening demand, there is currently a vaccine surplus in the U.S., including some 31 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine which have already been delivered throughout the country — by itself would roughly be enough to fully vaccine every adolescent. While all people 16 and older are currently eligible to receive a COVID vaccine, it’s not clear if all states would immediately expand that eligibility to ages 12 and over following the FDA authorization of the Pfizer vaccine.

by Chas Danner, Intellingencer |  Read more:

Image: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

[ed. See also: ‘Long Hauler’ Study Shows Covid Can Kill Months After Infection (Bloomberg)]

Higher Ed 2.0 (What We Got Right/Wrong)

Higher education is the most important industry in America. It’s the vaccine against the inequities of capitalism, the lubricant of upward economic mobility, and the midwife of gene therapies and search engines. College graduates lead longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives. University research provides the raw material for corporate innovation. Our institutions call to our shores the best and the brightest from around the world, many of whom stay to make America a stronger nation, and form connective tissue with their home countries.

Higher ed presents a promise for America and the world. But every year, my industry falls further from that promise. The underpinnings of that view are simple and static: Higher ed has increased its prices by 1,400 percent since the late 1970s, but the product has not appreciably changed — the biggest cost driver is administrative bloat. And, rather than catalyzing economic mobility, U.S. higher ed is stifling it. At 38 of the top 100 colleges in America, including five of the Ivies, there are more students from the top 1 percent of income earning households than there are from the bottom 60 percent.

Yet, higher ed’s brand strength (nobody donates $20 million to name a building on Apple’s campus), cash reserves (among elite institutions), and stranglehold on the American psyche have insulated it from disruption for decades. The litmus test for success — and for determining your role in our species — is if (and which) college your daughter graduates from. Suzy might be a heroin addict, but if she’s at Dartmouth, all is forgiven.

Last year, we predicted the pandemic would be the fist of stone that finally meets higher ed’s glass jaw. Were we correct regarding the coming storm? Or were we alarmist, underestimating institutional strength (or rather, inertia)? The answer is … yes.

K-Shaped (College) Recovery

As we begin to emerge from Covid-19 (God’s ears), American colleges look like the rest of America. Specifically, the fifth installment of the Hunger Games franchise, wherein our society engages in the idolatry of economic winners, everyone else hopes to survive, and many meet a gruesome end.

The most selective schools received 17 percent more applications than last year, and the elite of the elite saw even greater increases: Yale, 33 percent; Harvard, 43 percent; MIT 66 percent. The rich are getting richer. (...)

Admission to a top school can be life changing, but in a country that graduates over 3.5 million people from high school every year, the 1,700-person freshman class at Harvard is immaterial. Over the past 30 years, the number of seats at Ivy League schools has increased only 14 percent, while the number of high school graduates has expanded by 44 percent. The Ivy League sits on a total endowment of $140B, and shares this wealth with just 17,000 freshmen each year. (...)

A year ago, I predicted that these schools would leverage their extraordinary brand strength and the forced adoption of distance learning technology to partner with big tech and radically expand their class sizes. “In 10 years,” I told New York magazine, “it’s feasible to think that MIT doesn’t welcome 1,000 freshmen to campus; it welcomes 10,000.”

I was wrong. The leadership and alumni of elite universities continue to register tremendous psychic reward from the Hermès-ification of their institutions, versus any remaining claim of public service.

Wildlings

While the lords of American higher ed fortify their walls, and the erasures of second-tier castles multiply, there is a gathering force about to ignite a fire the North has never seen. Last year, I believed the change would occur on the supply side, with expanded enrollments at the top schools. It now looks as if the demand side will change the game: Employers are rethinking certification.

From Elon to Apple, some of the most admired employers are dropping the college degree requirement from more and more jobs. Over 130 companies have committed to accepting Google-certified courses as equivalent to credits earned at traditional four-year colleges. More than 250,000 people took Google’s IT certificate program in its first two years — and 57 percent of them did not have a college degree.

Similarly, Amazon announced a partnership with Lambda School, launching a nine-month, full-time training program in software engineering, designed to put graduates in jobs with an average base salary of $80,000. Students are not obligated to pay anything upfront; instead, they pay based on their salary after graduation. Again: no college degree required.

Here in Florida, Governor DeSantis has proposed using $75 million in federal Covid relief funds to invest in vocational training programs. There’s a scarcity of skilled tradespeople, and those are good paying, secure jobs — it will be a long time before robots replace electricians and plumbers.

This is bad news for schools without the global brand equity of the elites. They are being unbundled, piece by piece, just as newspapers were dissected (classifieds, movie listings, news, sports) and sold for parts to benign billionaires. Today, we have a handful of elite newspapers that are thriving, a wasteland of dead/dying second-tier papers, and a roiling maelstrom of tech-enabled news sources serving the mass market. Since 2004, two thousand newspapers have shuttered. It could be as bloody among universities.

by Scott Galloway, No Mercy No Malice |  Read more:

Image: Prof G Analysis of Ivycoach Data

What “Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” Really Means.

The Biden administration has finally announced its North Korea policy after having completed a three-month long policy review. And the policy it has decided on is a bit of a surprise.

That’s because its stated end goal is apparently the same as Pyongyang’s: “The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

That specific phrase, “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” is one the North Korean government likes to use a lot. To Pyongyang, it means that it is willing to dismantle its nuclear program if and only if South Korea also denuclearizes.

But South Korea doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. What it does have is what’s called the US “nuclear umbrella.” That basically means that the US promises to defend South Korea from the North — up to and including with the use of US nuclear weapons. (There are also currently 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea to defend it from potential aggression from the North.)

So what North Korea understands from this phrase is, “Sure, we’ll give up our nukes, just as soon as you (President Biden) withdraw all US military support for South Korea.”

That is a very different end goal than what the US has traditionally, at least until President Donald Trump came along, sought: the “denuclearization of North Korea.” That phrasing implies Pyongyang is the only one that must make nuclear concessions. It’s an end goal that would see North Korea give up all of its nuclear weapons while South Korea is still under US nuclear protection.

If you’re Kim Jong Un, that’s one hell of a difference. In the first scenario, he gives up his nuclear arsenal, which makes his regime more vulnerable, but it’s offset by the US no longer supporting South Korea with its nukes, either. In the second scenario, he just gives up his nukes, making his regime more vulnerable. Period.

So the difference of a couple of words here isn’t just semantics — the wording really, really matters.

Which brings us to another question: Why would the Biden administration adopt wording on the perennially thorny nuclear issue that North Korea likes?

Partly because it might make Kim happy — and that’s potentially a good thing.

Three reasons why Biden probably adopted North Korea’s favorite nuclear phrasing

When Biden announced that US troops would be leaving Afghanistan, he noted that one reason for his decision was that former President Trump made a deal with the Taliban that a full withdrawal would happen.

“It is perhaps not what I would have negotiated myself, but it was an agreement made by the United States government, and that means something,” the president said.

Biden may have come to a similar conclusion here. In 2018, Trump met with Kim in Singapore and signed a declaration which stated they would “work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

That may not be the formulation Biden would like, but it is the latest US-North Korea deal on the books, and so he may have honored that. Anything else would look like a unilateral backtrack in the diplomatic process, experts said.

“It’s the right formulation to use because both sides agreed to it,” said Vipin Narang, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at MIT.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in also adopted this phrase in his yearslong efforts to broker a deal between Pyongyang and Washington. He supported it in an April interview with the New York Times, noting that it was “clearly an achievement” for Trump and Kim to have met in Singapore and signed an agreement.

Moon is coming to the White House on May 21, and it would’ve been awkward if the US dropped the formulation he backs just weeks before his arrival.

by Alex Ward, Vox |  Read more:

Image: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

[ed. They should just get on with it. In this day and age, nobody is going to nuke anybody (Israel excluded). And if a nuclear war did break out, a broken treaty would be the least of our concerns. North Korea is suffering economically and this is a prime opportunity.]

FDA To Ban Menthol Cigarettes

FDA Commits to Evidence-Based Actions Aimed at Saving Lives and Preventing Future Generations of Smokers (FDA)

Image: The Onion