Category Archives: News

Article note: _Everyone_ wants Samsung to kill Bixby, step 1 of setting up a recent Samsung Android device is to turn on adb and do some "adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0" on all the Bixby components. Google advocating for it is a little anti-trust-y, but I'll take results.

Enlarge / Bixby on the Galaxy S9. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Reuters and Bloomberg are both independently reporting that Google is pushing Samsung to back away from its duplicate Android ecosystem and promote Google apps instead. A "correspondence" between the two companies was seen by both sites, which saw Google push Samsung to promote the Play Store and Google Assistant over the Galaxy App Store and Samsung's Bixby assistant. Google was apparently willing to open its wallet and pay Samsung to make it happen.

Bloomberg's interpretation of the negotiations is pretty vague, saying the deal "would promote Google's digital assistant and Play Store for apps on [Samsung] devices." The later Reuters report is a lot more specific, saying Samsung is "considering dropping its Bixby virtual assistant and Galaxy Apps Store from its mobile devices." Reuters goes on to say that "Google is dangling more lucrative terms for Samsung than in previous deals if it retreats from its app strategy." Part of Google's immense web of Android protection is sharing ad revenue and Play Store app revenue with phone manufacturers, and offering Samsung a higher share is an easy way to bribe the South Korean company into submission.

Whether Samsung would actually be willing to kill Bixby and the Galaxy App store is up in the air. Samsung has invested piles of money in Bixby since its launch in 2017, but Bixby hasn't been very successful. Samsung acquired the assistant startup Viv Labs, which was founded by the creators of Siri, and put the company to work improving Bixby. But Samsung's voice assistant still can't hang in the same crowd as the Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Amazon Alexa.

Article note: I'm always amazed by how poorly documented computer history is, especially considering how short and recent the whole thing is. Here we have an Apple II game (The Caverns of Freitag), written by a well-known developer (David Shapiro), that predates (1982 vs. 1984) and is credited by the author of Dragon Slayer, which is usually listed as "first ARPG," as an inspiration. And it just wasn't written in the history. Plus it's a literal missing-link between turn based and action that can be played with a slow-timer or fast-timer (think Chrono Trigger's active vs. wait mode, but even more deeply integrated and granular). ... If I didn't have too much to do this week I'd go find a copy for my LC's IIe card.

Article note: This is by far the coolest new piece of computer history I've learned in years. A popular open, hobbyist computing platform, designed to be novice-buildable, with a community extensive enough for radio broadcast software in the 1970s. It's like a Spectrum (in many ways, same Z80 and intentional feebleness for cost reduction), but way more cyberpunk.

Article note: Good. The videos of bar behavior and the data on bar-related outbreaks make it _really_ clear that shit needed to stop. Now come _on_ UK, tell me we're going remote so I stop having to plan increasingly unlikely in-person contingencies.

Article note: Y'know what kind of headphones don't have a ridiculous companion app that tries to exfiltrate your data? Wired ones. One of their overwhelming selection of advantages for most uses.

Article note: That was the inevitable outcome. It was never going to be effective, it was never going to be privacy-conscious, it was never going to have enough traction to get adequate scale, especially among the most vulnerable populations...

Article note: Bunnie's note that "The point of open source is not to ritualistically compile our stuff from source. It’s the awareness that technology is not magic: that there is a trail of breadcrumbs any of us could follow to liberate our digital lives in case of a potential hostage situation. Should we so desire, open source empowers us to create and run our own essential tools and services." is a lovely expression. This reminded me to check, it looks like Gadgetbridge + an Amazfit Bip might actually have the feature (heartrate, sleep tracking, etc.) and non-feature (no cloud, records with no bluetooth connection and syncs later) set I've been looking for in a smartwatch.

Article note: I enjoy this. The amount of hype-driven thinking that goes on in tech is really one of the worst things about it, and collecting careful hype-busting studies is a worthy activity. The scaling points are always my favorites, never underestimate sqlite and awk.

Article note: Intel has been considerably later than their public plan to every node for years. I can't tell if they're bad at estimating or making risky choices because they consider themselves bit enough to absorb it.

Article note: So, there are some similarities to earlier Microsoft anti-competitive bundling practices... but fuck Slack for whining about anti-competitive practices, their flavor of IRC with stickers established in large part by bait-and-switching everyone with early interoperability then converting to a walled garden.