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Like Uber, But For Credit Card Fraud

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Sharing economy services have made headlines by seamlessly connecting buyers and sellers of services from transportation and lodging to dogwalking and housecleaning. The peer-to-peer rental market alone was estimated last year to be worth upwards of $26 billion.

But, security experts say, the new breed of online services have also made it easier than ever for scammers armed with stolen credit card numbers to extract funds from those accounts.

Credit card fraudsters have long used e-commerce sites to spend other people's money, says John Canfield, the vice president of risk at WePay, a payment processing platform in the vein of PayPal and Stripe. At least since the early 2000s, credit card thieves have used stolen cards, or account info they've acquired after one security breach or another, to buy resellable items on e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, and their smaller competitors, he says.

Those scam artists then had to deal with the logistics of receiving the ill-gotten goods and re-listing them on another website or otherwise converting them into cash, says Canfield, who spent nearly a decade on eBay's Trust & Safety team.

But sharing economy apps, and other online services like crowdfunding sites are changing the equation. In peer-to-peer markets, designed to allow users to both make and receive payments easily, fraudsters can take both sides of a transaction, effectively buying from themselves with someone else's credit card and, if they're lucky, disappear with the money before anyone's the wiser.

"With these platforms, there's opportunity, because they make it easy for people to get started—yes, I'm going to be a doggie babysitter, or yes i'm going to do this crowdfunding," Canfield says. "There is an opportunity for the fraudster to act like the recipient of credit card payments."

How Fraud Happens In The Sharing Economy

To commit fraud in the sharing economy, thieves may hijack valid accounts and associated credit card information—digital security firm ThreatMetrix estimates about 1 in 20 login attempts are fraud attempts on e-commerce sites it works with—or set up new accounts with the credit card numbers that circulate on shady corners of the web after payment system security breaches.

Criminals then pay a seller account also under their control for services that never take place—walking nonexistent dogs, backing fictitious crowdfunded projects, or whatever the victim site allows—and extract the funds to a prepaid debit card or even an online bank account created with more stolen credentials, says Canfield.

"They will work to create a false identity that will get by whatever screening that platform has—obviously the less screening they have the better," he says. "What we found is that most fraudsters are able to come in with perfect identity information—social security information, birth dates, mailing address for the identity they're trying to be."

Ultimately, the marketplace site can be left holding the bag, hit with credit card chargeback fees when account holders or banks detect the fraudulent transactions, unless site operators manage to block them before they happen. Canfield says it's difficult to estimate the exact amount of fraud that already passes through such sites, but he suspects the problem will grow as new sharing and marketplace sites come online.

"The interesting thing with these platforms, the marketplaces, the business tools is, are they in a position to protect themselves?" Canfield asks.

WePay's new payment system, WePay Clear, handles fraud detection for apps and sites that use it, as does Stripe.

How to Catch a Thief

The trick, says Canfield, is recognizing unusual transactions as they happen.

An article by Andreas Baumhof, the CTO of ThreatMetrix, cites suspicious signs like one device registering a series of accounts, or new accounts being created by a known-compromised device or a proxy.

"It would be unusual if I'm signing up to be a seller on your marketplace, but I'm doing so hidden behind a proxy," says Alisdair Faulkner, ThreatMetrix's chief products officer. "There are straightforward things that businesses can do to automate this type of detection."

Stripe offers other telltale signs of fraud on its website, including

  • Unusually large orders
  • Rush orders
  • Use of international cards or orders with international shipping addresses
  • Many smaller transactions made with similar or the same card numbers, especially over a short duration
  • Use of obviously or likely-fake information in the transaction (such as fake phone numbers or gibberish email addresses like asdkf12495@freemailexample.com)

Big sharing economy platforms like Airbnb or Uber, or clients of payment providers like WePay, have the advantage of big data, Canfield notes, giving them more examples of normal and shady, anomalous behavior.

In general, there are steps any site can take to reduce fraud, ideally without making it too much harder for typical users to sign up. One option is analyzing social media profiles of new users: Anyone can set up a Facebook account, but it's hard to fake years of activity.

And to reduce account hijacking, sites can boost the use of multifactor authentication, and techniques like throttling users who are clearly trying multiple usernames or passwords.

"One of the things that we do that's very, very effective is we can see, is the device used by the seller the same that's used by a buyer?" says Faulkner. "That's clearly a dead giveaway."

Criminals can take more complicated steps to hide their tracks, like using multiple computers in multiple locations, or logging in through proxy servers, but with enough data, those tricks will still either stand out from ordinary transactions or require so much time and resources that fraudsters will get discouraged, he says.

"It does become expensive to continually change your devices, change your connections—and if you do a good enough job on a marketplace, fraud goes elsewhere," Faulkner says.

But fraud prevention often comes down to a cat-and-mouse game, as criminals adjust their habits to evade detection or see how much they can get away with.

"It's like a scientist—they're doing experiments all the time: trying this, trying that, trying this, trying that," Canfield says. When companies do detect fraud, it's critical to act quickly, he says.

"You really have to drop everything and get your engineering department to quickly make adjustments yourself and as quickly as possible find a fraud vendor or a partner who can help protect you," he says.

Startups would usually rather focus on building their products and services than preventing fraud. But thieves are always on the lookout for new targets, he says, along with new platforms where they can ply their trade.

"There are these groups and individuals just searching, searching, searching for any place that has vulnerabilities," he says.


"I Feel Exhausted": How The Mailman Is Struggling To Keep Up With Free Shipping

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For shippers, this is a make-or-break week. The last workweek before Christmas is traditionally their busiest of the year. As holiday gifts urgently make their way around the globe—with more than ever being ordered online, and more than ever being sent last-minute—business is very, very busy for shipping companies. In fact, it's never been busier.

This month, the United Parcel Service and FedEx, the two global shipping behemoths, expect to handle a record-breaking 900 million packages, which comes out to about three presents each for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.

All that business, of course, requires some extra not-so-little helpers. Last week, UPS announced that it expects to hire 90,000-95,000 seasonal workers in order to handle the Christmastime surge, and to avoid the late deliveries that plagued its customers and those of rival FedEx last Christmas Eve. For its part, FedEx announced that it would be hiring 50,000 seasonal workers of its own for their busiest holiday season ever. The company's internal forecasts expect a total of 290 million shipments between November 28 and Christmas Eve, which it says is an 8.8% increase over the typical holiday volume.

Monday, Dec. 15, said FedEx, was forecast to be its busiest day ever, with 22.6 million packages traveling through its network, helped in part by a surge in e-commerce in five Latin American markets: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile. UPS, also citing online orders, expects this coming Monday, Dec. 22, to be its highest-volume day in history, with some 34 million packages shipped, twice its normal daily volume.

Both companies have upped their on-time game since last year's debacle, in which 2 million Christmas Eve deliveries were delayed. On Christmas Eve, both companies are forecast to have an on-time rate of over 95%, according to an analysis by ShipMatrix, a company that tracks "raw on-time delivery service"—that is, performance apart from bad weather or traffic.

Photo: via UPS

But the companies are leaving little to chance. Both FedEx and UPS have taken care to learn more from retailers about their shipping expectations, and are attempting to head off bad weather by relying on their teams of meteorologists and dozens of spare airplanes, ready to travel to a choke point at a moment's notice. Both companies say they have spent nearly $1 billion in infrastructure improvements since last year, and at their shipping facilities, both are employing sophisticated package sorters with "six-sided camera tunnels," so that addresses can be read no matter where they are on a box.

Still, there are roadblocks. A labor strike at San Diego's port has led retailers to scramble to restock ahead of the holiday season, which in turn has put new pressure on domestic shippers. The timing is difficult: According to Kurt Salmon, a global management consulting firm, more than 25% of retailers say they will guarantee Christmas delivery for orders placed one to three days before the holiday, a rise of 17% over last year.

"The slowdown in the West Coast ports has been a much bigger deal than people think, and a tremendous amount of inventory was simply not put through the ports in the time frame that the retailers had expected," FedEx Chairman Fred Smith said in a call with analysts on Wednesday. Customers, he said, should expect to see a lot of items out of stock.

Photo: Flickr user Elvert Barnes

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor The Competition For Last-Minute Free Shipping...

Meanwhile, the U.S. Postal Service—in dire need of good news—is also happily reaping benefits from the holidays. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe predicted to USA Today this past October that the post office could deliver as many as 475 million packages this holiday season, a staggering 12-14% increase from 2013.

As Donahoe put it, "We're ready. Our employees are ready." Like UPS and FedEx, the Postal Service bulks up with a significant number of seasonal workers during the holiday season. For busy postal workers who deal with seven-day-a-week parcel delivery as soon as Thanksgiving ends, it's no joke.

More hands are needed. Since the Postal Service and Amazon formed a partnership to allow for Sunday delivery over a year ago, postal carriers say they are straining to keep up with a new volume of packages. Some have complained of 12-hour days and weeks without a single day off. "I feel exhausted and really not looking forward to delivering packages plus doing collections tomorrow (Sunday). It looks like Christmas day will be my next and only day off since Thanksgiving," one carrier from Manchester, N.H., wrote in a comment on GeekWire.

A major driver for all of this shipping is, of course, e-commerce, and industry figures say much of the spike this year has to do with online purchases. In a statement, UPS chief commercial officer Alan Gershenhorn said that "Major retailers have chosen UPS to deliver strong e-commerce growth during 2014, as consumer acceptance for online purchases continues to grow steadily." Making things more complicated are retailers' pledges to deliver by Christmas, and those anxious customers who track their packages as they travel—or don't travel, as it were—from the sorting facility to their house.

Thursday's Free Shipping Day, which follows Amazon's announcement this week that it will extend its cutoff for free Christmas shipping until 11:59 pm E.T. on Friday, December 19, is another reminder of how retailers are leaning heavily on other people to bring you the goods—and of just how busy those people will be during the holidays.

Drone Plus Drum Machine Equals This Killer Flying Musical Instrument

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Haig Beylerian, a musician and UX consultant, is wearing a helmet as he approaches the drum machine, because there's no telling what will happen when you tap a drone to make a beat.

The touch-sensitive drone, built in a lab at the University of Toronto, was set up to send data to a computer running ROS (Robot Operating System), then translated to MIDI and sent to a MacBook running the music software Ableton Live 9 and visual programming language Max. The result is a hovering drum machine capable of boggling the mind—and giving some new meaning to the genre of "drone music."

The drum experiment wasn't just about building a newfangled instrument. It was designed to test how humans can interact with robots, specifically flying ones.

"Interaction based on physical contact has many unique benefits, but the implementation is not straightforward for flying robots," writes the lead student on the project, Xingbo (Isaac) Wang, as part of his flying drum research paper.

Wang, a student in the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, had been working on a separate project—a quadcopter's ability to recover its flight pattern after interaction—but this summer came up with a way to combine his love for music with drone interaction.

The drone drum carries sensors including an accelerometer and gyroscope to determine applied force and acceleration. Physical contact is estimated from the force and torque created when the user, within a certain range of frequencies, taps and bumps it.

To avoid unintended vibrations not related to human interaction, filters were used to eliminate external vibrations. And to simplify the experiment, the quadcopter was in a constant height and position to minimize other variables.

Still, playing a drone, at least with good rhythm, isn't simple.

"The timing for the performance was tricky. Unlike a keyboard or drum pad where there is a definitive point of touch and release, it's harder to decide when a quadcopter sends the MIDI data," says Beylerian, the musician in the video, and a consultant at Toronto-based software developer WaveDNA. (The company's beat creation software, Liquid Rhythm, was used in the final demo.)

"Is it exactly when you touch it, when it moves the maximum distance it's going to move based on that touch (to inform velocity), or something else?" he wonders.

For each tap, the software generates data: one MIDI note indicating which drum instrument to be played, duration of the note, and velocity of the note.

Velocity, or loudness, was calculated based on the magnitude of a user's interaction. Duration of each note was set at a constant 0.25s, which is equal to a sixteenth note, for the sake of simplicity. For those interested getting into the weeds, Wang's paper fully breaks down all the math and calculations he used.

The team encountered a few problems, says Wang, including latency, compared to other MIDI instruments. There was a delay of about 30-40ms between the interaction and response. For now at least, this would most likely keep the drone drum out of most drummers' kits. (Though perhaps John Cage would like to have a go.)

Still, if we can learn how to interact with robots through touch and make music at the same time, the future sounds a little more interesting.

ICANN, The Internet's Gatekeeper, Was Just Hacked

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If the ludicrous aftermath of the Sony Pictures data breach isn't enough to convince you that the Internet is held together by duct tape and string, here's something else to chew on: ICANN, the officious body responsible for doling out domains like .com or .co.uk or (soon) .google, has just been hacked.

In a statement sent out to the press on Thursday, the Southern California-based nonprofit says that its internal systems were breached in late November by what is believed to have been a "spear phishing" attack.

"It involved email messages that were crafted to appear to come from our own domain being sent to members of our staff," the organization said in a statement. "The attack resulted in the compromise of the email credentials of several ICANN staff members."

With these credentials in hand, the attackers were able to gain unauthorized access to files in its centralized zone data system, which is used to store information about registered top-level domain holders. It contains user information such as names, postal addresses, emails, phone numbers, usernames, and cryptographically encrypted passwords. As a precaution, ICANN deactivated all these passwords and is asking members to reset theirs.

Also breached was a members-only index page, the official ICANN blog, and the ICANN "who is" site, where anyone can look up the owner of any generic domain.

At this point it is unclear who was behind the attack. And it is worth mentioning that the organization itself is an enticing target for hackers, using what was likely a sophisticated phishing scheme that tricked some very smart, Internet-savvy people into entering their login information. Thankfully the collateral damage seems minimal.

How A 6-Year-Old Learned Coding Skills With These Adorable Robot Toys

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The learn-to-code movement is aiming younger.

MIT, for example, recently released a free iPad app with its visual programming language ScratchJr., so kindergartners could use it to code stories and games even before knowing how to read. Vikas Gupta, a former Google executive who founded the startup Wonder Workshop (formerly called Play-i), has taken a slightly different path. "We learned that in order to make programming of interest to young children, it has to be a tangible product. It can't be just software," he told Co.Exist last year.

Enter Dot and Dash—Wonder Workshop's two new robots that teach coding skills to children as young as five that are now being field tested in a few dozen elementary school classrooms nationally. And they are definitely tangible: Dash hears and responds to sounds, navigates around a room and avoid obstacles, and comes to life with sound and lights. He can even play the xylophone. Dot, on the other hand, doesn't have wheels and is meant to interact with Dash via Bluetooth and act as a controller. Both have their own customizable "personalities." On the back end, through four apps that control both robots, they are secretly teaching coding skills such as "event-based programming, sequencing, conditionals, and loops."

But what's it like to use these toys if you're a kid? Will young children actually be as excited to program as adults want them to be? After all, at $349 for the full package and $199 for Dash alone, they are a lot more expensive than a free iPad app.

Fast Companyfeature editor John Ness took Dot and Dash home for a spin with his six-year-old daughter (prior Fast Company pseudonym: "Bug"). "This seems like a critical time in her development to start playing with the programming concepts involved: simple math and simple sentence construction. She's just starting to read and write on her own, so she can sponge up the intricacies of computer instructions," Ness says.

She mostly played with Dash, and overall, Ness reports that she loved it. Below, he takes us through his and his daughter's experience with several of the Wonder Workshop apps:

Mapping a path

This app is designed to get kids to start planning and thinking spatially. You're supposed to draw a path on the app, and Dash will then traverse that exact path around the room—a few meters wide. When my daughter tried it, Dash would inevitably crash into the coffee table or some other piece of furniture, and then panic in a series of frightened beeps. Her trouble planning this way, and the robot's apparent discomfort when she failed, turned her off quickly.

Playing a song

On the upside, Dash entranced Bug and her three-year-old sister. Using an attachable arm, Dash plays a series of simple songs on a xylophone placed in front of him (an accessory sold separately). Even more fun, he'll play any notes the kids choose to put into a "song." On the downside: clanging toys can grate on parents when they play songs in a loop. When you put a loop of xylophone banging and empower a child to play it again and again, it's a recipe for a headache. Suffice to say: Their appetite for exploring the structure of music was greater than my appetite for suffering through the learning process.

Coding

This was the process Bug was most attracted to, perhaps because the goal was simply to play. She would program Dash with a series of commands: (Do this three times: Move forward, turn right, if your way is blocked then honk your horn.) With a little help from me she understood the commands, and watched as chaos followed in Dash's wake. He would bulldoze into toys, her sister, or anything else, and then she would create a new sequence for him. There was no need to plan a song or an elaborate driving path, just a couple of actions that might result in unpredictable results. And the process of "coding,"—such a daunting subject if you imagine explaining, say, HTML to a kid—was just a means toward some fun play.

* * *

All in all, Dash seemed like a success. And as children get older, the toy can also grow with them: Wonder Workshop has created an API so programmers can create and launch their own Dash and Dot apps in the Google Play or Apple App stores. The bigger vision is to get children thinking creatively about technology, as Ness has already been doing with his daughter, Bug.

As Vikas puts it: "Do we want kids to grow up as consumers of technology, or do we want them to be creators with what we put in their hands?"

Today in Tabs: Dog and Pyongyang Show

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The dog, of course, is Franco/Rogen vehicle "The Interview," which was an unfunny mess that ended in a bloodbath. Precisely how much of a bloodbath was partly the decision of the State Department. (Aside: Just when you think The Daily Beast has reached some kind of bottom, it hands you this: "…the first threat lobbed by North Korean officials against the holiday blockbuster seemed as empty as a North Korean villager's lunch box." A mass-starvation joke. Great.) The FBI initially said there was "no evidence" that North Korea was involved in the Sony hack, but yesterday, with gramatically-questionable threats proliferating and theatres deciding to pass on it, Sony finally pulled the plug altogether, canceling The Interview's release in any format or medium. The only way you'll see it now is when the hackers release a torrent of it later this afternoon.

I've gotten so used to reading Sony executives' email that it seems strange I don't already know what they think of all this, but there was no shortage of takes online. Rob Lowe compared Sony to Neville Chamberlain and Mitt Romney somehow dragged hashtag-Ebola into it. Vox's Todd Van Der Werffurl-slugged Sony "cowards" for pulling the movie, though he admits it sounded like trash and "I wasn't planning on seeing The Interview… But the current situation makes it feel all the more urgent that none of us can." So feelings is what really matters here, I guess.

But did North Korea even do this hack? Gizmodo's Ashley Feinberg is like idk idk maybe?? The New York Times published this pile of nonsense where anonymous "senior administration officials" assure us North Korea was definitely responsible and not just because that's really convenient, srsly we pinky-swear it. As if we've believed anything the NY Times attributed to "senior administration officials" since 2003. Wired's Kim Zetter, in contrast, finds the evidence flimsy, and also bothers to source her article, like a real journalist. VICE's Jason Koeblertalked to Peter W. Singer, who rightly points out that yesterday's hysteria was "[l]iterally…in the realm of beyond stupid." The thing is, if this blows up into an international incident pitting America against an Evil Communist Empire, then it's no longer a case of one dumb private corporation losing hundreds of terabytes of sensitive data through its own incompetence, but instead an Attack On Our Freedom. The North Korea theory, which has already become the official truth, is the life raft that will save Sony Pictures Entertainment as a functioning company.

Oops, my Take got a little hot there. Anyway, Sony is probably also burying the movie in order to collect on the insurance for it, although the hack alone will still cost them perhaps $200-$300 million, according to NYMag's Annie Lowrey.

Ok Enough, What Else You Got?Slatetracked the whole year's outrages and got Choire, Paul Ford, Willa Paskin, Jamelle Bouie and several more to write about it. There is certainly a lot there for connoisseurs of outré-age, n'est-ce pas?Andrew Goldman's essay about his own twitter shredding prompted Emily Nussbaum to tweet her own recollection of the incident (see tweets preceding that one, mostly), which was interesting. To me. Which is maybe a personal failing.

Give Jessica Williamsa gossip site! The secret history of the Noguchi table. Lol, Bitcoin. Writer Mimi Pondrecalls the first Simpsons episode: "I wasn't invited to be on staff at the Simpsons, because they didn't want any women on staff at the time." Adam Weinstein's "Gift Guide for the Recently Divorced Dad" is unexpectedly touching. Reply Allfound Jennicam! Mallorydid a Shouts & Murmurs dot com! Buzz Bissinger is auctioning off his sweaty leathers! A New Zealand couple reportedly nearly died in their keyless car after spending 12 hours neglecting to try the door handles. A convicted rapist being interviewed by an up-and-coming young rapper at the behest of a clothing brand is the future of media. If there is any justice, the Washington Post's terrible editorial board is the dead past of media.

I know this is already long, but Bijan decided to ramble today too. Sorry.

TODAY'S INTERN TAB, by BIJAN STEPHEN

We here at Tabs Co. think a lot—but not too much, tbh—about the words in heavy rotation around the office. As resident millennial, it's my job to neg Rusty whenever he says something Old, or stupid.


In our line of work—when we're out in the ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ ғɪᴇʟᴅs harvesting the tabs, slicing their buds with a lancet so the milky opioid trash liquid dribbles out—we need a word for the things we constantly encounter. We've chosen garbage. Garb in, garb out. Leave no trace, but for garbage. Word to ur mother.

There's a lot of cool stuff on the 'net, but most of it (sickly sweet, overripe, rotting) is garbage, and merits the classification. In this case, form followed function. Or something.

ANYWAY this is all to say that Rob Meyerpublished an article in The Atlantic about the use (and overuse) of garbage and its attendant abbrevs:

But… a garbage year? A year not even worth paying attention to? A year to be discarded, and nothing more?

No. Garbage is a crutch.

Sure, garbage is a crutch. (And yes, actually, I'd love to forget 2014 ever happened.) It's here to stay, though. I'd argue that its use has wildly increased not because of semantic satiety, but because it adds to the conversation. In tone and in signaling—the word's connotation is (generally) appropriate to its (liberal) application. When something disturbs me on a level equivalent to rotting food, bloody syringes, or industrial waste, I call it like I see it. It's all garbage. And the beautiful thing is that we're all attuned to different garb frequencies: One man's garbage is another man's superfund site. This is okay! People are different, and have correspondingly different standards for things!

It's worth remembering that words aren't pure; they adapt when we need them to. They're superhuman like that. In other words: Not garbage at all.

Personally "garbage" feels kinda played to me, but ok Bijan if that's how you feel about it. liz lemon eyeroll dot gif

Today's Mashup: Bonsoir, "Tuesday vs the Pina Colada Song

Today's Song: Waka Flocka Flame, "3:30"

~Somebody's going to die, or somebody's going to get sick, someone might leave. It's not going to last forever. You know, it's going to be over soon. You know, the thought of that never enters my mind. This is the reality of life. I watched that movie The Notebook.~

Today in Tabs might take tomorrow off just cause today's is so damn long. So many tabs. So many. Sorry. FastCoLabs, Tinyletter, Twitter.

Uncle Sam Wants You...To Crowdsource Science

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It's not just for the private sector anymore: Government scientists are embracing crowdsourcing. At a White House-sponsored workshop in late November, representatives from more than 20 different federal agencies gathered to figure out how to integrate crowdsourcing and citizen scientists into various government efforts. The workshop is part of a bigger effort with a lofty goal: Building a set of best practices for the thousands of citizens who are helping federal agencies gather data, from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to NASA.

"Crowdsourcing produces accurate results quickly," NASA's Lea Shanley told Co.Labs. "The level of enthusiasm for crowdsourcing in different agencies is high, and we're working on a tool kit that shows people how to do this in the federal government." Jay Benforado of the Environmental Protection Agency, who also took part in the workshop, added that "we've been working in agencies and across agencies on citizen science and crowdsourcing."

Officials in the White House are searching for the best possible set of standards for working with the general public on scientific research. It's not just a question of good citizenship and area experts who would get a kick out of collaborating on government initiatives: In an era where science agencies can never be sure of funding, working with citizen scientists means added reassurance that projects won't be delayed or researchers will suddenly be defunded.

Perhaps the best known federal government crowdsourcing project is Nature's Notebook, a collaboration between the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Park Service which asks ordinary citizens to take notes on plant and animal species during different times of year. These notes are then cleansed and collated into a massive database on animal and plant phenology that's used for decision-making by national and local governments. The bulk of the observations, recorded through smartphone apps, are made by ordinary people who spend a lot of time outdoors.

The Nature's Notebook app

Shanley pointed out Old Weather as another interesting example of government crowdsourcing. The game, created by a set of partners including the National Archives, has players transcribe logs from 19th-century ships in exchange for points. The logs are then used to help improve historical data for contemporary climate model projections.

Dozens of government agencies are now asking the public for help. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention runs a student-oriented, Mechanical Turk-style "micro-volunteering" service called CDCology, the VA crowdsources design of apps for homeless veterans, while the National Weather Service distributes a mobile app called mPING that asks ordinary citizens to help fine-tune public weather reports by giving information on local conditions. The Federal Communication Commission's Measuring Broadband America app, meanwhile, allows citizens to volunteer information on their Internet broadband speeds, and the Environmental Protection Agency's Air Sensor Toolbox asks users to track local air pollution.

Other examples of government crowdsourcing apps include, according to the White House:

  • The Citizen Archivist Dashboard (NARA), which coordinates crowdsourcing of archival record tagging and document transcription. Recently, more than 170,000 volunteers indexed 132 million names of the 1940 Census in only five months, which NARA could not have done alone.
  • Did You Feel It? (USGS) has enabled more than 3 million people worldwide to share their experiences during and immediately after earthquakes. This information facilitates rapid damage assessments and scientific research, particularly in areas without dense sensor networks.
  • The mPING (NOAA) mobile app has collected more than 600,000 ground-based observations that help verify weather models.
  • USAID anonymized and opened its loan guarantee data to volunteer mappers. Volunteers mapped 10,000 data points in only 16 hours, compared to the 60 hours officials expected.

A wide swath of government agencies are also relying on internal crowdsourcing projects to generate creative approaches to problems. The VA recently launched a program called the VA Idea House, which holds employee-only competitions that collect ideas for improving the organization on their internal intranet. Similar inward-facing government crowdsourcing projects also take place in the Department of State and the General Services Administration (GSA) among others.

A government crowdsourcing workshop in November asked participants to rehearse launching a citizen science project. Image via OSTP

The Need For Standards

As of now, however, when it comes to crowdsourcing data for government scientific research, there's no unified set of standards or best practices. This can lead to wild variations in how various agencies collect data and use it. For officials hoping to implement citizen science projects within government, the roadblocks to crowdsourcing include factors that crowdsourcing is intended to avoid: limited budgets, heavy bureaucracy, and superiors who are skeptical about the value of relying on the crowd for data.

Benforado and Shanley also pointed out that government agencies are subject to additional regulations, such as the Paperwork Reduction Act, which can make implementation of crowdsourcing projects more challenging than they would be in academia or the private sector.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy expects to finish a crowdsourcing tool kit in early 2015, based on lessons learned in part during its Nov. 21 design workshop. "Indeed," a group of officials wrote on a White House blog post, "the development of the Toolkit is a collaborative and community-building activity in and of itself."

The New York City Hardware Startup Map, Holiday 2014 Edition

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An update for the holidays: Last-minute gift-givers, fret not. The future of gadgets is near, and even if not all of the stuff you want now is available, half of the startups on this list are doing presales right now for the stuff they plan to release next year. And we made way for three new startups on this list—one that's nurturing the digital art community, another that's making parents feel okay about letting their kids play with the iPad, and one that made Indiegogo's $1 million club.

New York City is no Shenzhen when it comes to electronics manufacturing. But the city has seen a number of impressive hardware startups take root and grow. And it's a diverse set of companies, like veterans MakerBot and Adafruit Industries, which exist to help other makers realize their own hardware dreams, or organizations like the New York Hardware Start-up Meetup and the R/GA Accelerator, that are like support groups for tinkerers. But why here?

"They're starting their companies here because of the ancillary connections with some of the areas that New York has been very strong in, whether that's commerce, advertising, fashion, et cetera," says Jenny Fielding, managing director of Techstars.

This is our map of some of the most notable hardware startups in New York City. Since October, we've updated it twice with some suggestions via email and comments. Who have we missed that should be on the list? Drop a line and let us know.

  1. Electric Objects

    URL: http://www.electricobjects.com
    Address: 356 Bowery New York, NY 10012
    Digital art lovers may have once only admired artwork on their laptop's desktop. But this startup's digital art poster lets them keep their other gadgets stowed away when all they want to do is admire the pieces of work on the wall—and helps digital artists reach new audiences, and sell their hard-to-sell work in new ways. Electric Objects' tech is ever-evolving to support high-octane graphics and newer visual forms, like JavaScript files that change in response to data streams. As of this year, it has amassed $1.7 million from a slew of investors, among whom are RRE Ventures, Betaworks, and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare. Beta testers will receive the revamped product this January, and it is now taking orders for its first shipment in May 2014.

  2. Tiggly

    URL: http://tiggly.com
    Address: 222 Broadway, Level 19, New York, NY 10038
    The littlest ones on your Christmas list might appreciate the super functional toys from Tiggly. The Tiggly team made sure its iPad-connected toys let toddlers actively handle physical objects with their hands, instead of zoning out on the device. The company's latest product, Tiggly Counts, showed up in Apples Stores around the world in November. The Bavarian toy manufacturer Habermaaß led a Series A round that brought in $4 million this year, topping the already $1 million it had in its pocket.

  3. Bluesmart

    URL: http://bluesmart.com
    Address: 25 Broadway, 5th floor, New York, NY 10004
    Your travel system is the next thing in line to get connected, after everything in your home and pockets. Bluesmart has redesigned the carry-on suitcase to connect to your mobile device. It is running a pre-sale through Indiegogo, temporarily selling the Bluesmart carry-on at $260 from $450. An Indiegogo favorite, the company recently raised $1.6 million in crowdfunding through the site and is set to deliver at the end of next summer. There's even a printable Christmas card on the site that you can pair with your order.

  4. Ringly

    URL: https://ringly.com
    Address: 200 Park Avenue, Suite 1501, New York, NY 10166
    Ringly knows that wearables have big potential for female consumers. So it's little wonder that its presale for its first product, a ring that lights up and vibrates to alerts you to phone calls, text messages, and emails from your mobile device, reached its first-day goal in under eight hours (and that was after raising over $100,000 on Kickstarter). The Ringly team, which fetched $1 million in seed funding from First Round Capital and Andreessen Horowitz among others, is doing a pre-sale on its $195 electronic jewelry right now.

  5. GoTenna

    URL: http://www.gotenna.com
    Address: 102 S. 6th St. Brooklyn, NY 11249
    In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, sibling cofounders Daniela and Jorge Perdomo found themselves without cell service, making their startup a product of necessity. GoTenna lets you text off the grid when your phone doesn't have service. Your mobile device transmits your text to the goTenna device via Bluetooth, which then sends it to a receiving goTenna device over radio waves. It has raised $1.8 million in seed funding and is doing pre-sales this month.

  6. Canary

    URL: http://canary.is
    Address: 96 Spring St 7th Floor New York, NY 10012
    This plug-and-play device, which is currently in under pre-sale, alerts you on your mobile device when there are changes in movement, temperature, air quality—you name it—in a room. Canary is working on a smoke detector that measures overall air quality as well as a $199 home security device that raised $2 million on Indiegogo. The company recently received $10 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures as well as Dropbox investor Bobby Yazdani.

  7. LittleBits

    URL: http://littlebits.cc
    Address: 601 West 26th St, #410 New York, NY 10001
    LittleBits, led by MIT Media Labber Ayah Bdier, is Legos for electronics. Their kits turn gadget prototyping into easy-to understand modules that snap together magnetically, with blocks that dole out power, let you connect an input, and spit out actions. The company has over $15 million in funding, the bulk of which came from a Series B round last November that included O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Nicholas Negroponte, Khosla Ventures, and Lerer Ventures.

  8. BotFactory

    URL: https://www.botfactory.co
    Address: 20 Jay St #312 Brooklyn, NY 11201
    The founders of BotFactory, two NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering grad students and one of their professors, found a way for makers to design and print their own circuit boards faster and cheaper than had been possible before. Makers can even watch their boards being printed from home, via BotFactory's web interface. After raising a little over $100,000 from a Kickstarter campaign, the company is gearing up to begin selling its Squink printers for around $2,500 apiece, so you can brew your own boards in your bedroom.

  9. Adafruit Industries

    URL: http://www.adafruit.com
    Address: 150 Varick Street New York, NY 10013
    Adafruit Industries connects makers with open-source hardware, like the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino controller, to use in their own creations. The company keeps adding new electronics to their roster, while cultivating a community of DIY hardware enthusiasts. With over $22 million in revenue for 2013, Inc. recently named it one of the fastest growing private companies in manufacturing.

  10. MakerBot

    URL: http://www.makerbot.com
    Address: 87 3rd Ave Brooklyn, NY 11217
    MakerBot brought 3-D printing to the masses. The company was acquired by Stratasys in a $403 million transaction last year, and it's not yet clear whether the headquarters will remain in the city. Meanwhile, founder Bre Pettis stepped down from his role as CEO and announced his new project Bold Machines, which is headquartered in a Brooklyn and will use Stratasys, MakerBot, and Solidscape 3-D printers to create, among other things, a feature film that will offer fans the ability to 3-D print every character.

  11. SOLS

    URL: http://www.sols.co
    Address: 1201 Broadway Suite 301 New York, NY 10001
    SOLS draws on NYC's fashion tradition to make their 3-D-printed insoles appealing to wearers. The company, founded by the former director of operations and industrial engineering at Shapeways, attracted $6.4 million in Series A funding this year led by Lux Capital.

  12. R/GA Accelerator

    URL: http://rgaaccelerator.com/connecteddevices
    Address: 350 W 39th Street, New York, NY 10018
    Although technically not a startup, this tech accelerator started giving makeovers to ten worthy startups in the connected devices and IoT space last year and is getting started with its [url=http://www.fastcolabs.com/3037262/internet-of-things/not-your-typical-hardware-the-r-ga-accelerators-class-of-2015]second class[\url] this month. With R/GA's marketing know-how and Techstars' funding force, these temporary NYC-transplants take advantage of business advice from local business leaders and a $120,000 check in seed funding to prepare for VC pitches. Last year's [url=http://www.fastcolabs.com/3035330/as-its-first-grads-go-to-market-r-ga-accelerator-shifts-focus-from-hardware-to-software-and-]inaugural class[\url] attracted millions of dollars in outside funding by the end of the three-month program.


All I Want For Christmas Is This Nonexistent Technology

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The holidays are a time to spend with family and friends, to share in the joy of giving, and to puzzle over a preponderance of technological crap. Those truly terrible widgets and gadgets that line our virtual shelves, the ones designed to want to be wanted by us. But we don't want them.

So, last Christmas we asked Co.Labs writers and friends to describe the technology products they wanted but which didn't actually exist. Our 2014 Christmas list includes mind transfer, DNA music storage, and an app that tells you when technology companies are screwing you over.

Mobile Internet For All

"The cost of tablet computers and smartphones are going down, but there are still millions of struggling Americans who see even a cheap $30 burner Android as a hard-to-afford expense, and mobile Internet data usage is expensive, whether obtained on a monthly subscription or on a pay-as-you-go plan. Let's make this stuff cheap. Let's bring well-designed and durable Android devices down to a $15 price point and make free public broadband a priority. I'll gladly argue for days and months that steady Internet access is an economic necessity in America 2015, and, yes, let's 'disrupt' this." - Neal Ungerleider

Telerecording And Teleportation

"I wish two technologies existed. One is easy and almost certainly will exist within a year, and the other one is hard and will probably never exist. I wish there were an app that made recording podcast-quality phone interviews easy. It would need to allow two-way conversation over a data or mobile phone network, while simultaneously recording each end of the call separately using each phone's full audio recording quality. When a call is done, the app should upload the high-quality audio of both sides of the call to some kind of cloud storage and automatically sync them into one file of the whole call. Right now most podcasts and radio shows do basically this to record phone calls, but it's a much more laborious and manual process.

I wish we could teleport matter instantaneously—even light speed would be acceptable I guess—from any place to any other place, because it would change literally everything about human existence." - Rusty Foster

Mind Transfer

"Aside from totally immersive cinema, the only technology I'd really like to exist right now is mind transfer. This comes from my fascination with its appearance in Roger Zelazny's science fantasy novel Lord of Light, in which mind transfer is used as a tool of surveillance, allowing the technological elite to assess human karma and control reincarnation. But it needn't be such a dark enterprise.

I'm more interested in mind transfer's potential for allowing humans to occupy various bioengineered bodies and virtual realities. We'd have to master bioengineered bodies first; but if we did, mind transfer would allow our conscious minds to take on nearly any form or avatar. This gets me thinking of the metamorphosing abilities of the main character in J. G. Ballard's The Unlimited Dream Company and that would be one heck of a way to exist. Things would get really interesting when it comes to reproduction, with women impregnating men, and men giving birth to babies, or multiple people getting in on the act.

If mind transfer were possible, it might also help make intergalactic travel to, and colonization of, Earth-like alien planets possible. The fewer bodies on board, the smaller the payload, and the better the chances of success." - DJ Pangburn

Iron Man Interface

"All I want for Christmas...is a pan-device clipboard standard paired with a sweet three-dimensional interface. In short, using Tony Stark's (Iron Man) virtual desk to send links, images, and snarky GIFs across all my devices and all the conversations I'm holding on SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, email, Gchat, etc. The best way to get a photo from your phone to your laptop's editing program is still through email, a process older than AOL. It's an issue of paltry convenience, sure, but it's also finalizing a standard for data transfer and streamlining workflow as our conversations and presentations increasingly turn to visual and video language. It's also the aspiration for a supreme UX, the true NUI that someone can walk up to and use without knowing how nested OS file trees work, for instance.

We've seen apps start simplifying copy and paste across devices. Now let's get to the true marriage of digital and tactile, unburdened by screens and corporate format restrictions. I'm not the only one eagerly waiting." - David Lumb

DNA Music Storage

"I'd want a way to store all of my music in DNA storage. Harvard's Wyss Institute was able to store 70 billion books into a single strand of DNA. If it can be done for books, why not music? It would be the ultimate portable MP3 player. I've been looking for a way to compile all of my music from disparate devices without having to use a cloud service or a bulky hard drive. It would literally fit into my pocket because, let's face it, smartphones don't fit into women's jeans pockets. And the enormous storage space has so much potential." - Tina Amirtha

The Ultimate Lie Detector

"An app for wearables which would use extremely accurate voice biometrics to pick up when someone you're talking to is lying and maybe use haptic feedback to notify the user, not to mention hold the speaker accountable. It could be used for casual conversations, jury or judges, interrogation purposes or presidential speeches. Data would show honesty or integrity stats on the person speaking. I picked this because I was thinking of ways to oust people in important positions, like faulty foster parents who abuse their kids, and how that could be prevented in the interview process." - Jennifer Elias

"You've Been Screwed" Dashboard

"My problem is I never want any technology… How about a quantified 'How am I getting screwed?' dashboard that shows what and how much of my data is being used, by which apps and websites and when, if the cable company is throttling my Internet, what unnecessary fees I may be incurring, etc. This tackles the problem of us not having metadata about our own metadata. Metametadata?" - Alex Pasternack

Karma Contraption

"I wish we had a (compulsory) technology which would make it impossible to harm someone else without feeling the same pain you are inflicting. It would instantly put an end to most of the violence in the world and become the ultimate empathy aid. Things get tricky in a case like a breakup where it's impossible to avoid hurting someone without harming yourself also or when your actions may be ultimately be for the best, and of course logistically it would be impossible to enforce, but such a technology would make tangible how interconnected we all really are." - Ciara Byrne

A True Universal Translator

"Machine translation is getting better all the time, and we're seeing the arrival of more and more tools in this area, such as third-party smartphone keyboards that translate as you write. What I'd love, though, would be a Star Trek-style Universal Translator, capable of turning spoken words into high-quality translation—possibly fed to you via earpiece. With virtual assistants getting better at voice recognition all the time, it seems like this technology should be in our near future. But it would be totally astonishing to see it become a reality.

I speak with people from all over the world for work, and the idea of not having to go through a human translator, or rely on a long, drawn-out email/Google Translate process would be liberating." - Luke Dormehl

What Astronauts Will See—But Not Hear—When They Return To Earth From Mars

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This is what astronauts returning from Mars—and those who missed the '60s—will see when they re-enter Earth.

The hypnotic video—recorded through the crew module's windows—was among the first data removed from the unmanned Orion capsule after its Dec. 5 test flight that lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 4.5 hours later after traveling 3,600 miles above Earth. It was the farthest journey of a human-spaceflight vehicle since 1972, when the last of NASA's Apollo missions flew to the moon.

Unlike its real-time airing on NASA TV, this video shows all of the re-entry footage, beginning 10 minutes before splashdown, and including parts missed during the original downlink's blackout, when atmospheric friction caused peak temperatures of 4,000 ºF temperatures. As the capsule hurtles through the atmosphere at 20,000 mph, the resulting trail of plasma changes color from white to yellow to lavender to magenta as temperatures increase. The camera also captures the elaborate parachute deployment that slowed Orion's fall to a gingerly 20 mph for landing.

NASA, as part of a ramped-up effort to engage the public, added production flourishes to the nearly unedited video, long by social media standards, to keep viewer attention. On top of the captivating visuals, the moody drone music—an unusual touch for NASA—adds the sort of dramatic flourish that can help propel a science video into the Internet stratosphere.

"The audio in the video is composed of two stock pieces chosen for their sci-fi tone—"Drone for the Dying" and "Interstellar Spheres" by William Pearson—selected from Pond5," which provides royalty-free media, says NASA spokesperson Rachel Kraft. "They were chosen by the producer, Rad Sinyak, who put together the video, and who has done many of the imagery and graphics associated with Orion."

Media check out Orion at Kennedy Space Center after its cross-country trek from Naval Base San DiegoNASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

Now back at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, engineers are analyzing data—like the behavior of the capsule's computers and its heat and radiation shields—in preparation for a future Orion launch atop NASA's new Space Launch System rocket, which will be the most powerful ever built.

That launch, scheduled for 2018, will take Orion on an unmanned mission to lunar orbit. In 2021, NASA hopes, astronauts will ride Orion to a captured asteroid in lunar orbit, a mission that will investigate spacewalks far from Earth, new propulsion systems, and habitat modules that will attach to the Orion crew capsule, before returning to Earth at 11 km/s, the fastest re-entry ever.

That mission will prepare NASA and Orion for an eventual trip to Mars—and back. In 2010 Barack Obama visited NASA after canceling a $10 billion program to return Americans to the moon, and sketched a new vision for the space agency. "By the mid 2030s," he said, "I believe we can send humans to orbit, Mars, and return them safely to Earth."

This Isn't The First Time Sony Didn't Have Enough Hacker Insurance

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Sony is only the latest, most visible case in a string of corporate data breaches in recent years. Hackers regularly broke into Home Depot's systems in 2014. Twitter and Pinterest lost control of users' login data last spring. A breach at JPMorgan Chase resulted in the theft of 76 million customers' data. And Target left all of its customers' credit card info open to Internet burglars during last year's holiday season. For companies now, the occasional hacker attack is becoming business as usual.

That's where hacker insurance comes in. A type of specialty insurance that some insurance companies offer alongside their regular offerings, it covers the losses companies incur as a result of a hacker attack. (Typically, general liability policies specifically exclude losses incurred because of Internet breaches.) The insurance industry has seen its popularity grow in recent years under its technical name, cyberliability insurance. Its sales made up around $1 billion in premiums in 2013, a fraction of the $1 trillion U.S. insurance industry. By the end of 2014, sales of hacker insurance premiums may reach $2 billion.

Sony should know the importance of having hacker insurance. In 2011, it faced down 64 class-action lawsuits after a breach of the company's PlayStation Network resulted in the theft of 200 million customers' data and 12 million credit card numbers. Sony had purchased cyber insurance, but not enough: It quickly exhausted its limits of liability defending the class action lawsuits. When Sony called upon its other general liability insurers to step in, Zurich American Insurance Co. claimed in New York State Supreme Court that its policy only covered "bodily injury" and "property damage" caused by occurrences. In other words: not cyberattacks. This past April, the court ruled in favor of Zurich.

But even after that, and with all the resources Sony has, it was still unprepared for this latest data breach. When Sony was hacked last month over The Interview, it was also covered by a cyber insurance policy[/url], issued by Marsh, which reportedly only protects the company up to $60 million in damages. The policy came at an annual cost of $356,963, with coverage until April 1, 2015, according to leaked documents.

But a more robust insurance policy could have made the fall a lot softer.

"Sony is a large enough company that they should've had some technology deployed that would've alarmed on the unusual behavior of transferring 10's of TB of data including all kinds of proprietary information," says Andrew Bagrin, CEO of My Digital Shield, a security provider for small businesses.

According to the law firm McGuireWoods, small and medium-sized businesses make the best candidates for cyberliability insurance. They tend to have fewer resources than larger companies do, like beefed-up IT and legal departments.

With hacker insurance, covering a company's losses is possible up to hundreds of millions of dollars of cyber damage. Companies can typically buy individual policies from insurers like Travelers, AIG, Chubb, ACE Limited and CNA that cover up to $20 million in cyber damage. They can then subsequently stack up several limits of liability into the hundreds of millions of dollars by mixing coverage together. (Sony's cyber insurer eventually consolidated policies for Sony Pictures and Sony Entertainment of America into its $60 million policy.) The policies and prices of these cyberliability insurance plans are still in flux, since the market is still young. Increasingly more providers are offering their own flavors of hacker insurance, bringing prices down to levels that even small companies can afford.

"Just about every business today needs cyber-insurance," Bob Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, told CNBC. "More and more businesses are transacting online and the reality is it's only going to increase as we move forward."

The costs to Sony will be huge, by some estimates. According to FiveThirtyEight, the loss in potential box office earnings alone could amount to $100 million. And the costs of replacing servers and generally cleaning up the digital mess from the attackers might add up to twice what it cost to produce The Interview, around $80 million. And that's not to mention indirect costs from upset actors and disgruntled staff, whose private data is now public knowledge. Bloomberg puts the final tally at $200 million.

The warnings have been coming faster and louder. A global study of U.S.-based companies found that over the course of the past year, the average cost of cyber crime climbed by more than 9% to $12.7 million, up from 11.6 million in the 2013 study. The average time to resolve a cyber attack is also rising: 45 days, up from 32 days in 2013. A 2014 study from the Pew Research Internet Project also concluded that cyber attacks are on the rise. These latest attacks, like Heartbleed, are lessons for companies as they consider preventative measures and plan for worst-case scenarios.

"If an admin at Sony didn't change all his passwords after Heartbleed, or other mass password theft scares, he is asking for others to impersonate his credentials," Bagrin says, noting that the exact vulnerabilities exploited in the hack are still under speculation.

It's nearly impossible to protect a business from every type of hacker threat. Increasingly, getting insured for them is a no-brainer.

Today in Tabs: Is 2014 Over Yet?

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No, 2014 isn't over yet! There are 9 days left, which by my calculations means there will be at least 3.2 more news events that surprise us by proving that, despite all indications, our assessment of the long-term value of humanity had not yet reached an absolute minimum. This is the penultimate Tabs of 2014, so in keeping with the rest of the media I'm mostly going to be phoning in formulaic year-end wrap-ups in my increasingly brief interregna between "hungover" and "drunk again."

If you need 2014 in a nutshell, here it is: the first mountain lion to be seen in Kentucky in 150 years was immediately shot dead. According to Rachel Syme, Kim Kardashian's Hollywood was the most important game of 2014, and tbh Kim herself might have been the most important person of 2014. The year can also be viewed through the lens of Twitter trends, 'net Art, Balk headlines, media mistakes, Style section articles (but I repeat myself…), or Updog. Jessica Roy even claims that 10 good things happened in 2014, but that number sounds high to me. Last night may not have been the longest night in the history of the Earth, but every night has felt like it lately.

While 2015 is still slouching toward Bethlehem to be born, some things have already ended. The nine-year run of the Colbert Report, for example, ended last Thursday night, and a lot of famous people had opinions about it. Serial also ended, bringing with it a tragic end to 2014's best new genre, the Serial Thinkpiece, but not before one final efflorescence of them: Did we get any closer to the truth? Was Serial racist after all? What might happen next with Adnan's case? How does Rabia feel about it? (Not-really-a-spoiler: Rabia is not happy.) And Saturday Night Live's Cecily Strong put the final bow on it with her perfect Serial parody this weekend.

Sam Biddlehad dinner with Justine Sacco, the former IAC PR chief Sam helped to get fired for a bad tweet. A lot of people thought it was a good tab. Others did not! Whatever you think, it inspired Anne Helen Petersen to point me toward Tressie McMillan Cottom's blog post "Racists Getting Fired: The Sins of Whiteness on Social Media" from earlier this month, which is worth reading, so the Wheel of Tabs grinds on I guess.

Also worth reading: Jess Lowry's "51 Minutes in a Revolving Door." Nicholas Carlson's book extract about Marissa Mayer flailing at Yahoo, especially for the excruciating children's book anecdote at the end. Rachel Sklar's call for hiring quotas in 2015. Adi Robertson's reassessment of The Handmaid's Tale for the Verge. And if you're pressed for time, try Mat Honan's first article for Buzzfeed, which appropriately enough can be read in the form of a screenshot.

You know, I have a lot of tabs about Sony and North Korea bookmarked but the hell with it. You want to know about that, I'm sure you can find out for yourself. It's all turned into total nonsense now anyway. Bijan, you're up.

TODAY'S INTERN TAB, by BIJAN STEPHEN

There are so many things in the world! A lot of them are not good, but some of them are good. There is also a lot to say about things. The Awl, a pretty cool website, writes about a lot of them, for some reason. Today they have Silvia Killingsworth—the managing editor at the New Yorker, another pretty okay website—recounting a nice time she had in Costa Rica earlier this year.

The plane was a twelve-seater with two pilots (a "puddle jumper," as my father says), and there were six other passengers on board. After about fifteen minutes we made a "technical stop" on the Pacific Ocean side, in Drake Bay, a fact I had been warned about in an email update from Sansa Airlines. What I did not expect was for all the other passengers to disembark. Where the hell were these people going? I could have sworn the stop was just technical. I wondered, was I supposed to get off too?

I wondered that too. I was worried! What would happen? What would she do if the plane were, in fact, not hers alone? Would she ever make it home? Where does she take the cat??????

Turns out she made it back to Manhattan's garb, though, so all was well I guess.

The rest of 2014 was pretty crappy. I hurt people I loved, I fought with a landlord, I got a canker sore ON MY TONSIL. But for a brief moment there in the sky, things were good, because there were no things.

Lol. "My friend went on vacation!" Good to see you getting into the year-end spirit Bij.

Today's Video: George Clooney takes over Downton Abbey

Today's Song: this Twitter essay on the history of hip hop that Q Tip wrote to Iggy Azalea

~Condemn me, it does not matter: tabs will absolve me.~

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The Year's Best Art On The Internet

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A random dark net shopping bot, a rabid meme music video collage, concept websites, and a browser-based film—these were some of the best artworks of the year, and they weren't hanging in a Chelsea gallery. Some were born digital. Some where built with shareware platforms or crowdsourced. Many referenced, intensified, and disrupted everyday Internet user experience, while spilling into the "physical."

Maybe the antiquated, catch-all term "net art" should be applied very loosely to this group, unless you'd like to get into a long, footnoted discussion about the latest art lexicon update in the age of (or rather, after) the Internet. This year in particular, the web-enabled stand-out artworks were accessible, obsessive, interdisciplinary and ballsy.


Random Darknet Shopper, !Mediengruppe Bitnik

!Mediengruppe Bitnik
Every media outlet talked up "Deep Web" this year, but the technical aspects of anonymized browsers exploring its legally murky depths aren't exactly obvious to the general audience. For a group show at the Kunst Halle St. Gallen gallery in Switzerland, the !Mediengruppe Bitnik art collective capitalized on these inquiries by creating the mysterious "Random Darknet Shopper," a bot that would randomly buy something from the Agora digital marketplace and have it shipped to the gallery.

With its 100 bitcoin weekly budget, the bot has purchased MDMA pills, black market Nikes, Ukrainian cigarettes and, since Fast Companyprofiled the project, a "Hungarian passport scan" and "a baseball cap with hidden camera." Ongoing documentation is freely viewable online.

The project raised important questions, such as, "How does the ethical reasoning of capitalism work in an unregulated digital market place, particularly when the consumer is a bot?" "Is that really MDMA?" and "Is this art?"


The Urgency, Extreme Animals

Just over a half hour, The Urgency is a sensory onslaught in form of a music video album "dedicated to all the people who have had their lives wrecked by computers, the Internet or social media." As Extreme Animals, artists Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman deliver a mix of hardcore, experimental electronic noise and metal, while the video splices found footage, YouTube's one-hit-wonders, and cartoonish, hallucinatory animation. Extreme Animals released their latest video on Undervolt & Co, a unique artist-founded experimental video art label, selling reasonably priced downloadable audiovisual artworks.

The Urgency takes place in a neon realm where Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell defends herself as "not a witch" during a 2010 campaign ad, set to a techno Harry Potter theme cover. (And that's quite another thing altogether when performed live with projections, guitar shredding, and shrieking vocals.) Perhaps the overwhelming theme of this particular piece is the sad idea that once you become a thing on the Internet, it will eat try to eat you alive, regurgitating parts of you in loops and bits, in a process that's never quite done, and that leaves neither you nor it fully satisfied.


Ways of Something curated by Lorna Mills

This is much more than a take off of John Berger's seminal 1972 BBC documentary series Ways of Seeing. Ways Of Something is a timely and insane retelling of an outdated art history documentary by keeping the original soundtrack and replacing the visuals with videos made by digital-born and web-based artists from all over the world, one minute at a time. It's a quite serious but very entertaining artwork.

The first two episodes—a Euro-centric "fine art" history and a exploration of the female nude—involved 58 artists contributing webcam performances, edited gaming footage, animated 3-D renderings, and experimental flash films. It premiered at Transfer Gallery in Brooklyn and has since screened internationally. Curated by Lorna Mills for the One Minutes project at Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, the resulting film updates art history, subverting and reworking its themes for the less exclusive realm of web-based, technologically enabled art-making. Photoshop jokes help narrate the history of perspective. Sexts and fleshlights mock the male gaze. WikiLeaks "Collateral Murder" footage makes the conversation of reproduction of imagery actually relevant.


"BEFNOED: Performances By Everyone For No One Every Day" by Eva and Franco Mattes

For their latest project, stalwart art provocateurs Eva and Franco Mattes utilized a little-known Internet-based labor platform where anonymized users from around the world perform commissioned tasks on webcam—reminiscent of adult cam services, but much more innocent in nature.

"BEFNOED" specifically focuses on absurdist combinations of very mundane, harmless tasks. The performers were paid to spill candy on their chests while wearing balaclavas, twins stood in doorways, and men saluted from ponds and pools with buckets on their heads. The videos were then distributed through "peripheral" non-U.S. social networks and video hosting services. Eons away from Marina Abramović performing in a London gallery, this is a strange sort of web-enabled instructional performance art project. In assembling a work of art out of the work of thousands of low-paid volunteers, "BEFNOED" also raises questions about labor exploitation in a time of crowdsourcing, rampant freelancing, and precarious work.


"With Those We Love Alive" by Porpentine

Photo: Tumblr
Porpentine's"For Those We Love Alive" is a mostly text-based game, playable online for free, and built with the open-source Twine platform, a story-telling tool that is open to everyone. In a realm that is both dream-like and nightmarish, you are a transgender woman serving an insectoid alien Empress who emerges from an inky black lake with instructions for you to follow. On your read-and-click journey, you search for yourself, for autonomy, for love. You also physically draw on yourself with a marker, off screen. By the end of the game, you have covered your arm with runes and signs and symbols.

This is Porpentine's diary, rooted in trauma, flowering in fantasy. On top of an already large cult following, Porpentine's projects are finally getting long-overdue mainstream attention this year.


"Windows 93" by Jankenpopp & Zombectro

"Windows 93," maintained by Jankenpopp and Zombectro, is a collection of online artworks on a platform mimicking an ancient Windows operating system. There's "Star Wars" in ASCII, glitchy longform animation, an 8-bit Photoshop, and even a shout-out to Olia Lialina's "My Boyfriend Came Back From The War," one of the first (and still best) net art pieces. There are several interactive "applications," some of which involve light coding, "Defrag" which is actually a game of Snake, a Bytebeat album, and a funny "Manifesto" of alert windows like "corgi + open source = acid" and "glitch + php = meta-realism." Click everything, particularly the credits section, and soak it in.


The Villains by Rhett Jones

Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's "La Chinoise" and Marshall McLuhan, The Villains is a timely and twisted film. In 1968, Godard's passionate Parisian political dilettantes attempt to start a Maoist revolutionary cell in their parents' apartment. Rhett Jones' "villains"—prophetically flawed, pre-Occupy Wall Street young Brooklynites—are trying their damnedest to utilize the proliferation of the Internet, new media, and social networks to empower the people. But they weren't exactly sure what they were doing, until the film's jarring end. Here, Godard's jump cuts are replaced with datamosh and a fragmented Stockhausen score. The story is saturated with cutaways to found footage and YouTube videos, providing texture and counterpoint. It's a crazy project, made even more relevant when it was reborn as a "Search Engine Generated Artwork" in 2014.

The new version of the film is rigged with code—part algorithmic, part randomizing—connected to YouTube's APIs. At various points of the film, the code sets off a search for "baby plays with iPad" or "man destroys office" or other related interjections, and randomly selects the videos from the results. These play in variously sized pop-ups, adding even more texture and thematic over-stimulation to the already psychedelic experience, making the film different each time it's played. This version of the film has screened at Videology in three simultaneous projections and is now playable online.


Cunny Poem Vol. 1 by Bunny Rogers

Artist Bunny Rogers had been publishing her poetry online since 2012. Whatever form her art takes—physical installations, Second Life captures, performance, online projects—it has always presented incredibly specific signifiers, all tying together in pristine, interdisciplinary compositions. They are characters culled from the outer ridges of online culture (i.e., the Usul Neopet), or disconcerting tangential elements of tragedies or collective illnesses (young girls' obsessions with the Columbine shooters, children as objects for adults on the Internet).

In her recently released book Cunny Poem Vol. 1, Rogers' poems are published chronologically, delivering an honesty we are trained to suppress as we grow distant from unresolved and reoccurring traumas and pitfalls. Every misspelled feeling is that much more specific. Every symbol is devastating. Every short stanza is a concentrated deliberate burst, hanging in silence. (And all of her poetry is still online, just like, probably, a lot of our own, somewhere.)


"BiteLabs," "McMass," and "Genecoin" by Hello Velocity

In the tradition of The Yes Men's culture jamming, the Hello Velocity group has been responsible for some of this year's most viral "fake" projects. Still, it is possible we will one day eat sausage from cloned celebrity stem-cell meat ("BiteLabs") or encode our DNA into a bitcoin chain ("Genecoin"), or see a religious group try to crowdfund the installation of a fast food chain inside a church to lift attendance ("McMass"). It just didn't really happen. But the media ran with it and a conversation was started, which of course was the point all along.


"Excellences & Perfections" by Amalia Ulman

The year's most existentially terrifying project comes from Amalia Ulman, who assumed several distinct fictional personalities on her Instagram account by following scripts she derived from observing Instagram culture and its "consumerist fantasy lifestyle." She switched between a swag-obsessed "sugar baby" to a rich girl next door type, going as far as to fake detailed preparation for and recovery from a totally fictional breast augmentation.

By following trending topics, presenting herself in easily digestible, fairly vapid, and polished stereotypes and other "shortcuts to popularity," Ulman amassed 65,000 followers on Instagram. Her posts and interactions with "fans" have been preserved by Rhizome's new archiving tool, for generations to come. Yikes.

The Music Streaming Wars Are Just Getting Started

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Music streamed to our devices—that is, not downloaded—has been hustling us and buffering on our phones and bothering the music business for years now. But this year marked one of the biggest shifts since Steve Jobs launched his music store in 2003.

Back in November, Taylor Swift pulled her entire catalog from Spotify amidst a debate over royalties. Her indictment of streaming may not have been a lament for the traditional music business, but it may also be futile. The following day, Kobalt, a company that helps collect music royalties on behalf of thousands of artists, reported that in Europe, the streaming service's revenues had overtaken iTunes earnings by 13%. That trend is happening to a larger extent globally too.

Just as iTunes once killed the CD, high profile companies are now in a mortal battle to be the Thing That Killed The Download. Alongside the streaming royalty—Spotify, Pandora, Sonos, Rdio, and Apple's own Beats Music—other startups and streaming services are becoming unlikely bedfellows: apps like Uber, Line, Snapchat have all formed partnerships with or acquired music services this year. Last week, it emerged that speaker maker Bose is is interested in building its own streaming service.

As the medium takes off, artists and the music industry are staring at big declines: a flat $7 billion in 2013, and $3.2 billion for the first half of 2014, says the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—it's lowest numbers since it started keeping track in 1973.

Why is tech fixated on music streaming, given the paltry revenues so far? One reason, suggests David Porter, CEO of 8tracks, is that music "over indexes in mindshare vis-a-vis economics because it adds context to our lives." Music holds great emotional sway, and in a tech world desperate for users' attentions, emotion has never seemed more important.

And The Debate Over Streaming Raged On

For as long as streaming music has been discussed, the conversation typically landed on what Apple would do with iTunes. The music store was, for a brief period, a defining figure—able to push out both Walmart and Best Buy from being the biggest music retailers. Now, ITunes is now less relevant than its ever been in the music space.

Apple's acquisition of Beats Music in May—at $3 billion, the largest the company has ever made—is interesting for a number of reasons. Initially, the music service was labeled as artist-friendly and demonstrated that with reputable figure heads leading the charge. Now Beats' chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, former record label executive Jimmy Iovine, and Dr. Dre are working for Apple as rumors swirl of integrating some part of Beats into the wider iTunes experience. Cupertino has already said that Beats will be pushed to every iOS user in 2015.

That kind of distribution power and its arsenal of talented music veterans will likely be Apple's way of competing against the streaming Spotify. In early December, the streaming service lowered its three-month subscription price to just just 99¢, amidst a debate over royalties raised by Taylor Swift and other musicians.

In a recent interview with Billboard, Spotify founder Daniel Ek defended how the company pays artists. "There are many artists to whom, through the labels, we're paying out millions a year already," he says. "Those check sizes will just keep increasing. I'm certain that if we can get the billion-people-plus that are consuming music online and move them into a model like Spotify, the industry would be considerably bigger than it is today."

Music industry analyst Mark Mulligan recently mused that streaming services may need to find new revenue flows besides ads and subscriptions. For instance, merchandise. "If streaming is eating into sales then the obvious next step is to drive other spending from streaming music consumers," he wrote.

Pandora is trying to combat artist fatigue with analytics. Pandora AMP was announced in October and features a detailed breakdown of where listeners are originating and meta data about song interaction, among other things.The massive Internet radio company is hoping that huge amounts of data—helping artists locate their fans—will offset some of the other royalty trouble Spotify is walking through.

Swift Punishment And Pro Bono Work

Like Taylor Switft, Radiohead's Thom Yorke is clearly not happy with all of this streaming. A veteran of alternative models, Yorke partnered this year with the file sharing protocol company BitTorrent to experiment once again. With BitTorrent's new media distribution platform called Bundles, artists can use the decentralized sharing protocol to more cheaply sell their music. Yorke put up his new solo album as a $6 Bundle which has reportedly been downloaded over 4 million times—both paid and free.

U2 also dipped their toes into alternative (and arguably terrible) distribution methods when the band partnered with Apple to give away their new album, Songs Of Innocence. As with Apple's plans for Beats, the album was pushed automatically to many iOS users as a way to keep the store and software in the spotlight. Customers were not amused. "I had this beautiful idea and we kind of got carried away with ourselves," he said in an online apology. "Artists are prone to that kind of thing. Drop of megalomania, touch of generosity, dash of self-promotion and deep fear that these songs that we poured our life into over the last few years mightn't be heard."

Though it was never announced, multiple reports put Apple's deal with U2 at $100 million, a figure that could never be achieved by sales or streams in today's music climate. Corporate subsidization isn't new, but since Samsung teamed up with Jay Z last year, it's become another viable option for high profile artists.

Amazon didn't pay any artist to release an album—yet—but it did bring free streaming music to its list of Prime perks. Without launching a full fledged Spotify or Beats Music competitor, Amazon added on-demand streaming to a back catalog of older songs and albums. It still isn't vying for the latest and greatest in streaming with only a million advertised song library available for free consumption, but it is playing up its "expert-programmed Prime Playlists."

Google also beefed up its playlist abilities with the acquisition of Songza. The music startup, known for its mood and activity matching skills, has since been rolled into Google's on-demand service, All Access. Interestingly, Google wasn't satisfied with only one music streaming service and so it also debuted YouTube Music Key, a subscription service.

The streaming video site is actually one of the places people listen to the most music. It only made sense for Google to try and capitalize on that. $10 per-month focuses the service more on music and gets a listener ad-free and background listening. The point of YouTube, however, is its weird side. All the remixes, live bootlegs, and unofficial content make it a fantastic compliment to the current slate of streaming music services; those are not included in Music Key.

SoundCloud is in the same boat. Being the audio version of YouTube with user uploaded content means that the service has some fantastic tracks you can't really find anywhere else. It's also why the service has had trouble over the last year reaching deals with the major record labels to turn it into a legitimate streaming service. That will change in 2015 as SoundCloud has announced a partnership with Warner Music Group for the coming year.

Meanwhile SoundCloud partnered with Twitter to do for audio what Vine did for video. The addition of AudioCards turns Twitter's official client into more of a music player with music or podcasts (or other content) now playing directly in users' feeds.

Even tech companies that would seem to have nothing to do with music are inching into streaming, recognizing how important music is to their users.

"Apart from the technical implications, I think it's about the fact that people love music," says Ghostly International founder and Drip.fm co-founder Sam Valenti IV. "Everyone has their own relationship with it and given how it perpetuates feelings it's similar to Brian Eno's idea of 'art-as-triggers-for-experiences' ideal for creative work. It literally engages everyone."

Uber's hook-up with Spotify, whereby taxi passengers can blast, say, Blink-182 through their drivers's stereos, is one example. Even Snapchat wants music: The company knows it's already a platform for sharing music and, according to recently leaked emails, has sought to capitalize on that through a possible partnership with the YouTube music video service Vevo. The hold up, apparently? The limited revenue available between labels, artists, and Vevo, which balked at Snapchat's demand for a 40% revenue share—normal for tech entrepreneurs but out of step with the standards of the music industry.

Sure, streaming music may not yet be the money-maker that previous forms of distribution were. But the money generated by streaming music and its millions of paid and unpaid subscribers is finally seeming to make up for the losses in digital download sales. And while ITunes might not be the same 800-pound gorilla it once was, when Apple finally puts its seal of approval on streaming music it's going to matter, despite Spotify's current success. Others will continue to enter the fray too, in a feverish fight for dominance that, for now at least, will only grow louder and more discordant.

Of course, before any disruptive new product or technology can fully take hold it must pass through a rigorous gantlet of evaluation—not beta testing, but a sometimes ugly period of public criticism and navel gazing and tech crunching. Twitter was examined and dissected repeatedly before it moved on to acceptance and wide appeal. Uber is sparking its own debate over transportation, regulation, and the taxi industry. This is how we figure out what the future looks like.

That's where streaming music is—finally advancing and ruffling enough feathers that its mainstream moment is coming, if it's not already here. Whether it brings more of a drop in revenue, or jump-starts the music business isn't yet clear, but it's coming nonetheless. It's like the feeling in your throat before vomiting. Not even the strongest willpower can keep it down, but there are still moments you're convinced it won't come. You hope you'll feel better afterwards.

Today in Tabs: Christmas Steve

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Here it is, Christmas Eve eve, what men's rights activists know as "Christmas Adam" and atheists call "Christmas Steve." I used to consider myself an atheist, but apparently now there is an atheist Ten Commandments, only instead of Charlton Heston we get Adam Savage. So I'm joining the Detroit Satanists (the religious freethinkers group, not the Major League Soccer team of the same name). Satanic Temple spokesperson Jex Blackmore communed with the infernal spirits and returned with the news that my new Satanic name is Snax Pentagenét, so please address me as such for all Satanic purposes from now on.

It's the last Tabs of the year, so you know I'm not putting much work into this. This reporter burning 8.5 tons of drugs is basically me today:

So let's check in with the Take Tree! That'll use up a lot of space.


"Your lived experience is bullshit," said the tree, "but
mine is a broadly relevant cautionary tale."
(art by Alison Headley)

If you're here looking for something good to actually read, (a) we need to talk about the proper holiday spirit, but (b) ok fine read this New York Times feature on the Stanford Class of 1994, by Jodi Kantor. It is that rarest of unicorns, the over-produced #longread that is worth actually reading. While you read it, you may be interested to learn, as I just did today, that the word "meritocracy" started as a joke. I mean an on-purpose joke.

But don't read things! It's Christmas Steve! Watch some Trash TV. Learn what was good in 2014 according to Laura Olin. Grab an Up Dog. Write some Draco Malfoy slashfic. Laugh at how much Columbia Journalism school costs. Play Goat Simulator. Or, if all else fails, visit Flavortown:

Tweets! Tweets take up lots of space! I'm calling it now, this is the Tweet of the Year:

These last few months I think we've all gotten to know Bijan a lot better. I suspect that he's headed for bigger and better things in the new year, but while we still have you Bij, what do you have to say about the end of 2014?

TODAY'S INTERN TAB, by BIJAN STEPHEN

I thought I was going to write about Migos today, the last tabs day of 2014. I'd planned to tell you about the Migos Flow™, about how "Versace" and "Hannah Montana" are more brilliant than they appear, about why their rise is evidence that all hasn't been garb this year. But then I saw that Shea Serrano had written a better parable in Grantland—with pictures!

And then I saw a book: Everybody Dies: A Children's Book For Grown-Ups, by Ken Tanaka and David Ury. I brought it back to my desk and read their sad—but realistic!–this is for grown-ups—portrait of death. If we're being honest, the dedication was the most striking part. "Dedicated to Lisa Nguyen," it reads, "who should have been the exception."

It made me think of the other visual story I read recently, Yumi Sakugawa's superb I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You, which came highly recommended, of course, by a friend. The book is moving in the way it shows how friendships begin, deepen, and eventually end.

Lisa wasn't the exception—and neither are we—but she was a friend. And here's where I'll end this year: 2014 has taught me that a lot of things are bad. But many things are good! It's been, as my friend says, a good year for friends but a bad year for pretty much everything else.

All is not lost, all is not garb. You are a good person! Listen to Migos. 2015 will come soon enough.

xoxo, bij

Thanks Bijan! See you in 2015.

Today's Song:Endless Jingling, by Josh Millard (doesn't work on iPhone sorry)

Last Words:

~This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a tab but a whimper.~

Thank you so much for reading this nonsense every day, or once a week, or reluctantly that one time when it confirmed all of your least charitable suspicions about your media friend's taste, as the case may be. I technically could do it without you, but there would be little point. Thank you as well to Fast Company Labs where the tabs live on the web, and to Tinyletter who have continued sending them by email despite my far exceeding their nominal subscriber limit. Thanks to Bijan for interning, and Dark Social for everything you do. This concludes 2014 in Tabs, I'll be back on January 5th! Till then you can follow @rustyk5 or @TodayinTabs. FELIZ NAVIBLAH!


The 8 Things Technology Wants To Kill Next

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One day I woke up and realized it had been years since I'd thought about my old Dell Axim X30 personal digital assistant (PDA), let alone touched one. The device quickly became extinct, replaced by other technology forging ahead. PDAs are the ancestors of our modern mobile phones, in the same way a lot of the items we're currently carrying around today will be looked back on in a few years the same way—in laughable disbelief that they lasted for so long.

It'd be hyperbole to say technology is on the brink of replacing some of the most important items ever, but as the new year rolls in, it brings with it a hit list full of items currently crucial in our everyday lives.

Some will protest that we're still years away from losing such reliable material things; others will bring on the change with a sense of good riddance. Either way, these things are all on the verge of going the way of a New York City payphone.

Keys and Locks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is in the beginning stages of taking hold of our homes, connecting the simplest, everyday, objects to each other—and among its first orders of business is upgrading our locks.

A number of different manufacturers and startups are looking to take the hassle out of carrying keys, as well as add some additional benefits. For instance, smart locks could allow temporary digital keys that can be sent to people needing access to your home—and just as easily revoked.

August is a new startup providing its own smart lock and has been one of the companies helping to jump-start the space. Its product has been one of most highly regarded in terms of design, ease of use, and functionality. It isn't the only one, however. Goji provides a similar offering and Sony has just recently overseen a crowdfunding project to do its own smart lock.

It isn't just new startups or technology companies trying to make physical keys extinct. Long-time lock manufacturer Kwikset has developed something called the Kevo Smart Lock, a hybrid deadbolt lock that adds connectivity to your traditional keyhole, and currently retails for under $200.

Wallets

Speaking of money and security: Wallets are here for the long haul, but in a race for convenience and consumer protection, they'll continue to move from our pockets to our mobile phones. They've already become less personal with the loss of pictures, which have also largely been ported to our phones; it's only a matter of time before they completely become 1s and 0s.

There are a lot of factors at play and over the course of this next year, after a number of fits and starts and bits and bitcoins, the digital wallet might actually happen. Google has offered a wallet solution in some form for a while, but since the introduction of Apple Pay, both now have a much better shot at making a meaningful impact. Both use NFC, contactless payments to house credit and debit cards.

Meanwhile, credit card companies in the United States are transitioning to a chip-and-pin payment system, like the kind Europe has, before the end of next year. That means that merchants are updating or replacing their payment terminals, most of which should include the ability to accept NFC payments.

Not only are consumers starting to get onboard with these new payment methods, but banks are as well. The banks like that digital wallets are typically more secure than physical cards—which will save them money. Besides NFC, there's a retail consortium called CurrentC pushing another form of digital wallet. In this future consumers will use QR codes and barcode scanning to make purchases at stores and the retailers will gain spending information on consumers. This is unlikely to pan out for CurrentC, but stores want digital wallets as well, they just aren't sure how to quite go about it yet.

On a flip side, Coin and Plastc are pushing the ball in their own way, getting people comfortable with a digital wallet, even if there's still a physical component to it. Both startups will offer a physical card that has the ability to link up with a user's smartphone and side load cards on to it. It's all in the name of putting the pocket cowhide out to pasture.

Wired Headphones

Yo, wired headphones and earbuds: don't let the door hit you on the way out. It can't be too long before something catches the cord and my earbuds are violently ripped from my unsuspecting ears. Finally, the end is nigh.

Bluetooth headphones are steadily becoming more common, but the real advancement coming in 2015 is true, independently wireless earbuds that should get a lot of people to kick the wired habit.

Right now, we're stuck with a cable connecting the speaker in our right ear with the one in our left ear. With advancements in software, however, we'll soon have two separate and tiny earbuds that connect wirelessly to each ear and wirelessly to our mobile device. The Bluetooth spec allowing this advancement has been around for a while, but it's only been in 2014 that companies are exploiting it.

Earin will most likely be one of the first with wireless stereo earbuds, but others like Ownphones aren't far behind. It also wouldn't be surprising to see Motorola get in the space, its mono Bluetooth headset was one of the smallest around.

Taxi Regulations

The chance you'll literally ride Uber into the new year—home from a new years party—isn't small. Along the way, long-standing taxi regulations are showing increasing signs of weakness under the weight of your finger, calling a ride with a few taps. (Millions of dollars in lobbyists and armies of public relations experts and mobilized riders can't hurt either.)

If it's not Uber, then it'll be Lyft or Sidecar or Hailo or one of the dozens of different options waiting to capitalize on how people commute and move around a city in an era when private car ownership is on the decline.

It's not that taxis or these new ride sharing services shouldn't have regular maintenance or driver background checks—or that the people driving them shouldn't have dependable and good salaries and protections and insurance. But the divide between the old style of regulating taxis and the new peer-to-peer visions of Silicon Valley are reaching a breaking point. What those new regulations will look like in hundreds of cities around the world remains to be seen, but in 2015, tech companies will continue to play an outsized role in nudging the old rules aside.

Music Downloads

Music isn't becoming extinct, but downloads are.

It's crazy to think that just a few years ago the word "download," in reference to music, meant that you were on the cutting edge. But digital music has moved on and now it's streaming music that garners all the interest.

This chart below, via the RIAA, shows where the music industry's revenues come from now—the red represents CDs, dark purple is a downloaded single, light purple is a downloaded album, and the rest represent ad-supported streaming, paid subscriptions and internet and satellite radio. (Earlier in the 2000s, that little bit of turquoise represents music videos).

Not only are physical music sales slipping, but iTunes downloads are as well—pretty quickly too. People are finding ways to listen to music that usually include the words Spotify or YouTube.

In a shot across the bow of Spotify, Apple, the current king of paid downloads, is rumored to be preparing to tip the scales and put an end to most people downloading their music in 2015 with a rebranding or integration with Beats' streaming music service the company bought in 2014. Whether subscriptions and advertisements can bolster the music industry in general against it's record-setting losses isn't yet clear.

For those that still want CD quality music, both Deezer and Tidal have made high fidelity streaming (with 1141 kbps Flac streams) a reality. And wireless carrier T-Mobile has a program in place that doesn't count streaming music against people's data plans. Downloads are quickly becoming toast.

Windows Phone

2015 is do or die for Microsoft's mobile Windows platform. It hasn't pushed the needle in terms of users in a while and it continues to lose once major champions of the platform.

Tom Warren, The Verge's Microsoft reporter, recently did the previously-unthinkable: he gave up his Windows Phone in favor of an iPhone. Among his top complaints were the lack of top-tier apps or apps that fail to get updated and rapidly start to decay.

It's not for a lack of trying, the latest 8.1 phone software is practically on part with other mobile operating systems. But Microsoft's timing has never been ahead of the curve enough to snatch potential users and get high-profile developers excited.

Nokia's handsets are great, but they've yet to be enough to stop the exodus. At just 2.5-percent of the mobile phone market, there's a real chance that Windows on phones goes away.

Analog Watches

While some people are clinging hard and fast to their analog watches, the vast majority have given up on a wrist-worn object in favor of their mobile phone. Much like the payment space, Apple, Google, and many others are all vying for that personal piece of real estate—which just happens to be on your arm instead of in your back pocket.

Apple announced its Apple Watch is coming in early 2015, starting at $349, while Google already has many manufactures pumping out cheaper Android Wear smart watches. Some of these new watches are made to embrace the classic analog aesthetic, though many take advantage of new shapes and technologies.

Not only are Apple and Google looking to the wrist, but fitness companies like Jawbone, Garmin, Fitbit, and more are all actively trying to convince people to track their activity with wristbands full of advanced sensors. Many of these wearable makers are including screens to display the time and taking the concept of a watch in a new, healthier, direction.

Reality

Yup, reality itself might be steamrolled next year by something bigger—virtual reality.

The company most likely to change the future of virtual reality, Oculus was bought up by Facebook this year. That may have come for a bit of a shock for the hardcore Oculus fans, but for the rest of us, that means that the company will get the funds it needs to continue its work—finally making virtual reality that doesn't suck.

Samsung is in on the virtual reality bandwagon as well, but instead of directly competing with Oculus, it has partnered with the company to power its Gear VR. Already available for purchase, owners of a Note 4 can slip it into the $199 headset to view games, videos, and movies in a whole new way.

Even if Apple isn't yet publicly touching virtual reality yet, other companies have already begun to tap into the iPhone market. Pinc is one of those that offer a cheap ($99) headset for iPhone 6 owners and promises an immersive experience of games, shopping, and videos.

Coming from the less expensive side, Google is fully embracing Cardboard, the project it debuted at its I/O developers conference this year. With over 500,000 Cardboard units shipped, it's now transitioning from being a "20-percent project" to a full time one which will be further developed in 2015. There are a few Cardboard kits that range from $15-20, but as long as you have the materials, free plans are available for anyone to construct a DIY headset that a phone can slide into.

And once Oculus finally publicly launches its offering you can bet Facebook will try to push virtual reality to a significant portion of the planet, in its continuing and much larger effort to kill "reality" as we have known it.

The Apps You Need Now to Keep Your Privacy Intact

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There are the basic things you can do to protect your data and your phone, like avoiding public Wi-Fi networks, enabling built-in tools like "Find My iPhone," and using a good password. Both iOS and Android phones offer options for turning off "location services," so apps can't track your coordinates. But in an age of cyberattacks from renegade hackers, non-state actors, and government spies, it's not a terrible idea to arm your phone with apps that provide encrypted communication, anonymous browsing, and theft protection. Below, a tour of some of the best ones out there.

TextSecure (Android)

TextSecure, like its name suggests, secures your text messages. It's the easiest to use open source end-to-end encrypted messaging app out there. It can act as a full replacement for your default texting app or a standalone Wi-Fi/data messaging app like WhatsApp—or both. When messaging other TextSecure users, your messages are automatically encrypted on the fly, though both parties need to have TextSecure installed to benefit from its encrypted messaging. TextSecure handles all of the necessary key exchanges in the background. The app can be set to send messages only over the Internet or only SMS or to just use whichever is available.

TextSecure has two modes: It can handle all of your text messages or it can be used only for texts between TextSecure users. You might think that there's no reason to use TextSecure as your default texting app since the encrypted messaging only works with other TextSecure users. However, there's another privacy benefit to using TextSecure: All of the messages stored locally on your phone are kept in a password-protected encrypted database. So if your phone is ever lost or stolen, your texts can't be accessed by someone who otherwise compromises your phone.

WhatsApp recently integrated TextSecure's code for encrypted messaging. So WhatsApp users are already benefiting from TextSecure's work on messaging security. But to best ensure your privacy, opt for TextSecure because it's fully open source, with code that can be publicly audited.

RedPhone / Signal (Android / iOS)

RedPhone and its iOS equivalent Signal come from the makers of TextSecure and boasts the same ease of use not commonly found in encryption apps that aren't peddling snake oil. What TextSecure does for texting, these apps do for phone calls. (You remember phone calls, right?) Simply install the Android or iOS app and call a friend who also has one of the apps and your calls will be automagically encrypted. The apps are interoperable, so people who use RedPhone can call Signal users and vice versa.

If you're worried that you won't know who of your friends has one of these apps installed, don't worry, the developers have you covered. When you first launch RedPhone or Signal, you'll be prompted to register your phone in their database. That way, when you open your app, you'll instantly see who in your phone's address book is using RedPhone or Signal.

RedPhone comes with one feature boast over Signal. On Android, if you try to place a regular phone call to someone whose number is registered with either app, RedPhone will prompt you to ask if you want to upgrade to an encrypted call. Signal doesn't have that same functionality, presumably because Apple won't allow for the normal phone call user experience to be interrupted.

Orbot + Orweb (Android)

If you pay any attention to the world of digital privacy, you've most likely heard of Tor, the traffic routing software that makes it harder (but not impossible) for your web browsing to be tracked. Orbot brings Tor to Android. It allows other applications to connect to the Internet through Tor, which can help anonymize your traffic and also circumvent bans on websites that have been blocked by repressive governments.

Any app that can use specify proxy settings can route its traffic through Orbot. That includes the default Twitter app, so that you can tweet anonymously on the fly. But the most practical use case is probably for your general web browsing. Orweb is a mobile web browser that is built to work with Orbot out of the box.

ChatSecure (Android / iOS)




ChatSecure is also made by The Guardian Project, the same people who created Orweb. So naturally, you can run ChatSecure through Orbot to get the same benefits of traffic anonymization and firewall circumvention.

But you don't need Orbot to use ChatSecure (which is good for iOS users who don't have access to Orbot). Even if it doesn't anonymize your traffic through Tor, ChatSecure can still act as an encryption layer for messages you're already using to talk to your friends like Facebook chat. Using ChatSecure is a great middle ground to talk more securely with friends who aren't ready to take the leap off of precipices like Google or Facebook chat.

Prey (all platforms)

Prey is billed as an anti-theft tool. If your phone is lost or stolen, your online Prey account lets you track your phone using its GPS. It also lets you remotely lock your phone, sound a loud alarm, and display a message on your phone to whomever is looking at it. While your device is missing, Prey will send you email reports every five minutes (less frequently, if you'd prefer) that include your phone's location and a picture taken with your phone's camera, which might help you identify where exactly it is or who took it.

If everything goes to hell, Prey is also your nuclear security option. You can use it to remotely wipe your phone so that whoever stole it can't access your personal files and settings. There are lots of comparable anti-theft apps out there. But because you're giving permission to an app to remotely access your camera and location, it's important that you be able to trust that app. Because Prey's client software is open source, independent coders can verify that the app isn't doing anything it shouldn't be doing. Prey versions also exist for your Windows, Mac, and Linux laptops.

A Top 10 List Of The 2014 Lists We Liked

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  • The web itself was once famously described in a giant list (see right).
  • That giant list became what we call Yahoo.
  • The year will often be described in a giant list.
  • Here, the list will be a list of the other lists, generally focused on media, science, and technology.
  • This list is not algorithmically ranked.
  • This list is not a listicle.

10. The Master List Of Tech Internships Revealed (Betabeat / New York Observer)

The list includes 97 tech firms—including Palantir, Quora, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Facebook, Uber, and Google—alongside a few non-tech names that are in the market for coding interns, like Goldman Sachs and Boeing. The data we have includes the base monthly salary for engineering interns, the monetary value of their monthly benefits, and what kind of internship it was.

Maybe you work as an engineer in the tech sector, in which case this list might not surprise you. If you don't, there's a good chance it shocks you. There's also a good chance this list makes you consider whether being an engineer is actually your true calling.

In the interactive portion of the chart, the results are broken down with clear indicators of base pay plus benefits for a comprehensive package offering. The graph also includes the company name and specific location of the internship.

9. Top 10 Emerging Technologies For 2014 (World Economic Forum)

Among the wild, big picture types of technologies that have further emerged in 2014—from nanostructured carbon composites to brain-computer interfaces—is one that we could be staring into very soon: screenless displays. Whether it's a headset like Oculus Rift or something else that's a radical change from what we're used to, it also appears to be a lot closer to fruition than many people realize.

Screenless display may also be achieved by projecting images directly onto a person's retina, not only avoiding the need for weighty hardware, but also promising to safeguard privacy by allowing people to interact with computers without others sharing the same view.

By January 2014, one startup company had already raised a substantial sum via Kickstarter with the aim of commercializing a personal gaming and cinema device using retinal display. In the longer term, technology may allow synaptic interfaces that bypass the eye altogether, transmitting "visual" information directly to the brain.

8. 10 New Breakthrough Technologies 2014 (MIT Technology Review)

One of the more mind-blowing technologies on this list from MIT is the neuromorphic computer chip.

These "neuromorphic" chips—so named because they are modeled on biological brains—will be designed to process sensory data such as images and sound and to respond to changes in that data in ways not specifically programmed. They promise to accelerate decades of fitful progress in artificial intelligence and lead to machines that are able to understand and interact with the world in humanlike ways.

Medical sensors and devices could track individuals' vital signs and response to treatments over time, learning to adjust dosages or even catch problems early. Your smartphone could learn to anticipate what you want next, such as background on someone you're about to meet or an alert that it's time to leave for your next meeting. Those self-driving cars Google is experimenting with might not need your help at all, and more adept Roombas wouldn't get stuck under your couch. "We're blurring the boundary between silicon and biological systems," says Qualcomm's chief technology officer, Matthew Grob.

As to whether AI is something to fear, my colleague Michael Grothaus assembled a list of responses to that question from a roboticist and a chatbot, among others.

7. The Best Drone For Every Beginner (Gizmodo)

The intrigue with drones is obvious and now they're no more expensive than any other gadget. But what's the right one to get started with—you know, for fun? Gizmodo tested a boat-load of entry-level drones with that specific question in mind.

It lost its tiny propellers whenever it crashed into objects, and my puppy nearly swallowed one. The second put scratches on my walls, and another one in my palm. So I set out to find the perfect beginner drone: easy to learn, durable, cheap, and safe to fly indoors.

Among the best, the most affordable is the $65 Air Hogs Helix X4 Stunt. Gizmodo also lists its picks for quietest drone and best mini drone.

6. Top 10 YouTube Videos And Stars Of 2014 (What's Trending)

Here, Shira Lazar covers a swath of both independent and mainstream YouTube videos that garnered millions of views, including the biggest sensation, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

5. The 26 Most Popular Yik Yak Posts Of 2014 (BuzzFeed)

Yik Yak is a new, anonymous, social app that lets people share messages with anyone within a 10-mile radius. Launched in late 2013, the app blew up in 2014, especially, reportedly, among teens. The startup—which has been eager to quell concerns about the risks of teens sending anonymous messages to everyone in their vicinity—recently shared its most popular Yaks as favorited by viewers.

4. The Most Amazing Science Images Of 2014 (Imgur)

Imgur did what it does best: gather viral images from the world of science. And yes, that means GIFs.

Earlier this year, while vacationing in Papua New Guinea with his wife, Phil McNamara captured this captivating footage of Mount Tavurvur ejecting untold heaps of lava, rock, and ash hundreds of meters into the air. Between the striking burst of clouds above the volcano and the jarring boom of the delayed shockwave, it's one of the most dramatic eruption videos we've ever seen.

3. The Year's Worst Hacks (Wired)

The hack of Sony's servers has already made huge waves, but the entirety or full severity of it likely won't still be known for a while. And the crazy thing is that Sony wasn't the only company brutally hacked this year.

It's amazing to look back on the some of the biggest hacks and realize what a tumultuous year it was. Following the Snowden revelations, 2014 would, one hopes, be a turning point for security. Then again, as Home Depot's case illustrates, we're not always so good at heeding the warning signs.

Continuing the wave of attacks that struck Target, Michael's and Neiman Marcus, Home Depot announced in September that it had suffered a breach that exposed some 56 million credit and debit cards of customers, a figure that surpassed last year's Target breach by more than 10 million.

The attackers had been in the company's network since at least April, before the company discovered the breach five months later, and had gained entry following two previous, smaller breaches of the company's network. Security contractors had reportedly urged the company to activate an extra security measure that might have helped spot the malicious activity but failed to do so.

2. There Are Way Too Many Best Of 2014 Lists (FiveThirtyEight)

FiveThirtyEight got out its calculators and broke down the best-of lists for the year. It looked at, among other things, the overlapping selection of TV shows, movies, and books across different sites. The books category, however, definitely has the least overlap.

One reason the "best books" lists were the most diverse is because they were the longest. While most of the lists looking at movies and TV shows were limited to 10 or 20 titles, a lot of the books lists topped 100 titles. I asked Publishers Weekly's deputy reviews editor, Gabe Habash, why he thought lists of the best books were so long.

As it turns out, Habash hit the nail on the head. According to the bibliographic information publisher Bowker, there were 1.4 million books published in the U.S. last year, whereas the Motion Picture Association of America's data shows that only 659 films were released. Numbers on TV shows in production are harder to come by, but Showtime's president of entertainment, David Nevins, has estimated that there are currently about 350 scripted original shows in production.

1. The Coolest Hacks Of 2014 (Information Week)

Not all hacks or hackers are bad—obviously. Sometimes after a rough year it's nice to see that at least some of the vulnerabilities are being discovered by the good guys before they can be exploited in the wild. Information Week collected a roundup of hacks from security researchers.

Images from a hacked X-ray scanner. Image via Qualys

Turns out you can easily sneak a weapon or a banned substance past US airport security by exploiting "lame bugs" in a pervasive X-ray scanner for carryon baggage at TSA checkpoints.

That's how renowned researcher Billy Rios described the flaws in the Rapiscan 522 B x-ray system used by the TSA at some major airports. Rios and his colleague Terry McCorkle discovered some painfully wide open holes in the scanners, including user credentials stored in plain text, the outdated Windows 98 as the underling operating system, as well as a training feature for screeners that injects .bmp images of contraband, such as a gun or knife, into a passenger carry-on in order to test the screener's reaction during training sessions. The researchers say the weak logins could allow a bad guy to project phony images on the X-ray display.

The list also includes a weaponized USB thumb-drive, an NAS worm, and methods for accessing traffic systems and infiltrating your own home's Internet of Things. What it conjures is both wondrous and terrifying. And, in the buzz-fueled age of listicles, a terrifying list can be a rare thing indeed.

LinkedIn's Data Science Secret: Your Hidden Org Chart

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LinkedIn enjoys one big advantage against competitors Facebook and Twitter: It's the social network people can use at work. By positioning it as a service for professional development, LinkedIn has embedded itself into offices worldwide. And in the process, found a holy grail of corporate data: The social hierarchy of people inside an organization… even if the people themselves don't know it.

LinkedIn's affable head of search quality, Daniel Tunkelang, spoke with Co.Labs earlier this year. Tunkelang is the person responsible for making sure LinkedIn's searches connect people to the contacts they're actually looking for. This means learning a lot about how people know each other, and how people interact with each other, in the process.

One thing LinkedIn's users don't always realize is that the search process works differently depending on whether you're using a desktop or laptop computer, a smartphone, or a tablet. Tunkelang says typing is harder on mobile devices, which leads his team to see a higher incidence of shorter queries from users.

"In mobile, we really emphasize the autocompletion experience because the environment in which people use a laptop versus a phone is quite different." People also use the search function differently on mobile devices too. Tunkelang told me that his company sees a lot of what he calls "meeting intelligence" being conducted on smartphones—LinkedIn users inside meetings encountering someone at a real-life event, taking out a phone, and looking up the person's profile.

Because Tunkelang and LinkedIn's other data scientists are able to see how users search on the service and how they use it in different circumstances, this means they get deep insights into how recruiters search for candidates, how sales teams evaluate potential leads, and how different departments of organizations relate to each other.

One of the most fascinating parts of his job, he says, is finding unexpected results when finding data to prove or disprove different hypotheses. Tunkelang's team discovered the way people's social networks related to each other, and found that changed the search experience. Specifically, the way people search for names on LinkedIn and the way people search for titles on LinkedIn have little to do with each other at all.

When LinkedIn users search for someone by name, it's primarily for someone relatively closely connected to their social network (to be exact, one population away from them). But when searches are conducted for job titles, users are primarily contacting individuals two populations away from them in their social network—further away than searches by name. Although the discovery wasn't counterintuitive, it wasn't what they were looking for… and Tunkelang says the trend came "shining through the results" when they analyzed the data.

Other LinkedIn data projects require more user input to glean insights. Take for example that endorsement box that sometimes pops up asking you to vouch for someone's skills? There's actually a sophisticated project going on there.

These requests might seem like LinkedIn's way of increasing engagement on the site, but it's also part of a sophisticated mapping mechanism that lets data scientists figure out what job titles at organizations actually mean. Endorsements help LinkedIn figure out what skill sets and talent requirements align to which jobs.

LinkedIn engineer Sam Shah and data scientist Pete Skomoroch explained how the endorsements feature worked at the 2013 edition of data science conference Strata. Endorsements are used to build a "Skills Dictionary" for the social networking site. Defined as a taxonomy of work skills, the skills dictionary is primarily based on mining data from the site's millions of profiles and then augmenting them through other sources like endorsements. A big part of Skomoroch and Shah's work is cleaning the data—over 250 different phrases map to "Microsoft Office" alone.

In one case study of mapping skills to the correct occupation, they showed which phrases map to "Angels" (as in alternative medicine) and "Angels" (as in venture capital). It's easy to figure out where psychic readings, clairvoyancy, and early-stage investing map. This information is then used to infer what skills someone with a specific title actually has.

LinkedIn then uses skills endorsements to see both which particular contacts users feel have these skills… and who they choose to endorse. The results in aggregate are used to both build social maps and to understand the difference in responsibilities between jobs with identical titles at different companies.

Facebook has its own social graph, of course. But those connections have been mapped to personal histories rather than job skills. And that results in an entirely different kind of network effect than the one LinkedIn is trying to capitalize on.

Why You Should Learn Product Management Instead Of Coding

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Apparently we should all learn to code. Men. Women. Children. CEOs. Everyone. Even President Obama is imploring his constituents to learn computer science already. But what if learning to code isn't the right mantra after all?

A 50-person Brooklyn-based dev shop called Happy Fun Corp thinks the pressure to program should be replaced by something else. Don't just learn to code, HFC says—learn to make products.

With their upcoming HFC Academy, the digital engineering firm is using its experience to lay out a course that teaches product management. It's no longer enough to learn some coding and call it a day. Thriving in tomorrow's tech world needs training in taking your digital product from vision to uploaded, accessible reality.

HFC should know: They've spent a lot of time training new recruits. In a way, their HFC Academy is self-serving, teaching students to code, design, develop, and iterate a product through a project timeline just like they've taught their recruits.

"Selfishly, our ability to grow is based on getting smart people," says HFC cofounder Ben Schippers.

University degrees have been the gold standard for decades, and their graduates often scoff at bootcamp graduates. Many academically trained programmers praise their computer-science education for expanding their problem-solving skillset. But Schippers sees a great disconnect between those programs and practical preparation for getting programming jobs.

"For people graduating now, what these expensive colleges are saying is, 'You are now prepared for graduate school,'" says Schippers. "They're not preparing you for the tech workplace. By the time they get to us, it takes just as long to teach four-year graduates as to teach a layman who's really hungry to learn."

Computer-science education teaches the abstracts of computer workings, but not the critical thinking to evaluate public-facing products, says Schippers. Liberal arts colleges teach more of the soft skills Schippers values, like communication and critical thinking. But as HFC Academy starts teaching interested students the practical project management and programming skills that Schippers says tech titans like Google and Facebook have been teaching for years, the hope isn't just to sneak ahead of the competition—it's to guide students into jobs they wouldn't have gotten with yesterday's code classes.

Coding in the Ivory Tower

Schippers isn't going into the Tech Academy blind; he's already taught a version of the course to college students. Schippers' alma mater, Bates College in Maine, chose Schippers and HFC cofounder Will Schenk as part of its first wave of "Practitioner Taught" short courses. Bates is using the inter-term courses to bring business-savvy alumni back to explore the post-graduation world that's nebulous to academia.

While HFC's Technology Academy and The Flatiron School have similarly simple goals—educate professionals to find jobs in tech—Bates doesn't view the Practitioner Taught courses as purely pragmatic or vocational. They complement Bates' ambition for its students to find "purposeful work."

"Purposeful work is a notion of discovering through coursework what really matters to you," says Dean of Faculty Matthew Auer. "There's no sense in getting a job with no way to grow personally and professionally."

Like many Liberal Arts colleges, Bates stacks its faculty with long-term tenured professors instead of filling out the faculty with many higher-turnover associate professors and adjunct lecturers. While it's a win for faculty, it means the expertise pool is limited to whoever Bates hires long-term. Since Bates has no computer-science department, any programming education is part of patchwork courses taught by faculty who happen to have related theoretical experience for courses on number theory, artificial intelligence, or robotics design.

The Practitioner Taught courses address that experience gap, as much about exposing students to new concepts as keeping their critical faculties honed. Schippers' and Schenk's course doesn't just instruct how to build, but prompts students to ask if the world really needs this new product.

And as much as Bates shies away from the "pragmatic" label, Schippers' and Schenk's course had very work-practical elements—like mock interviews. According to the extensive student evaluations Bates collected, students raved about the workplace preparation that's largely absent from academic coursework.

"This is what students really want. Let's not pretend that they don't know what they want," says Schippers.

No matter how eager, Schippers felt the three days per week, five-week program was too short—hence why HFC Academy has been stretched to five days per week for seven weeks. On the whole, Schippers had to adjust his expectations of tech fluency. This is partially a generational issue: students grown on the app interface of iPads and iPhones were clueless about file system locations, for example. These are kids who may have never seen a DOS prompt. Schippers has separately taught Baby Boomers who missed the computer train and struggle to get on Facebook. These refinements don't just help certain demographics—they refine the educational process of programming education as a whole.

For Bates, the five-week length was a great testing ground for integrating programming in future courses. The faculty have talked about applying Big Data analysis to microeconomics and health courses, or even Dean Auer's own bioinformatics courses. And while those talks have a long way to go before implementation, Bates is seeing an uncommonly high number of faculty on the verge of retirement. Now is the time to plan for integrating programming in courses for the next 20 to 30 years, says Dean Auer.

Even Learning To Code Can Benefit

Of course, there are brick-and-mortar Learn To Code schools that see just as much opportunity—and prove their worth by getting their graduates employed. For The Flatiron School's offshoot Brooklyn campus, that number stands at a staggering 98 percent of job-seeking graduates getting placed at programming jobs in New York City within three months.

Flatiron doesn't venture into the product management that HFC Academy is exploring, but its focus on employment-centric skills sets it apart from online and theoretical coding courses. While it doesn't pioneer project-management skills, the Brooklyn campus exists to innovate a different aspect of America's next generation of coding classes: educating the less-skilled and unemployed.

Through a deal with the city, Flatiron's Brooklyn campus holds tuition-free classes exclusively for students who are unemployed or make less than $50,000 per year. In addition, the school goes out of its way to enroll women, veterans, and minorities. The Brooklyn campus runs a 22-week course including a four-week job-placement externship that extends the course past Flatiron Manhattan's 16-week standard, but the instruction is otherwise identical. The Brooklyn students are held to the same standards, says the Brooklyn campus instruction lead Blake Johnson.

Flatiron Brooklyn has graduated one class and are in the middle of their second. Despite drawing an experience range from computer-science dabblers to students who didn't know what a URL was, the school found employment for all. It's a testament to the concept that literally anyone can walk into the right bootcamp's doors and walk out ready for programming work—even those with extensive obstacles. Poverty increases stress levels, Johnson says and decades of studies have supported, and there are very unfortunate moments where students can't afford a ride to class on public transportation.

And yet, Flatiron found them jobs—including getting one student a programming gig at Etsy.

The Argument For A Classroom

Flatiron's job guarantee is a great carrot in a still-challenging economy, but the benefits of a brick-and-mortar classroom have always been teacher facetime and peer support. Students aren't just building a peer network in the classroom—they're training for tomorrow's group-oriented programming culture.

"That cliche of the cowboy coder in his parents basement—it doesn't happen anymore," says Johnson.

Those cowboy coders have always been the determined few who can learn on their own with minimal support. The classroom provides the space and authority for everyone else to learn. This includes the teacher facetime and the confidence of following structured learning.

"The most important thing you can give people is a map," says Johnson. "You say, 'Trust me. Do this now and do that tomorrow.'"

Obviously, having a structured timeline stretched over weeks is reassuring, but Johnson finds himself coaching his students through the difficult process of gearing up to learn again as much as he's actually teaching skills. Acting like a combination psychiatrist, priest, and parent on top of teaching means Johnson's troubleshooting his students as much as he's troubleshooting their code.

"One of the biggest obstacles is that programming makes you feel stupid. It's really crippling. The emotional aspect is the hardest thing," says Johnson.

It's especially hard to admit difficulty in tech—one doesn't want to look weak and unable to keep up with technology's progression. But that obstructs learning and builds poor communication habits. Part of Flatiron Brooklyn's program is Feelings Friday, a circle-up confessional period. Students vent—and nobody gets to respond. It's not just cathartic for the confessor. Chances are, others around the circle are relieved to discover that they aren't the only ones having trouble. That's the safe space and personal exchange that builds strong networks among the students themselves—something difficult to grow in online courses.

For their part, HFC Academy wants to keep their students in contact after graduation by launching a concurrent Academy Network. LinkedIn comparisons aside, HFC is setting up the Academy Network to be both an alumni hub and a job board stocked with listings by companies that trust the HFC name.

That's in addition to the business personnel HFC has lined up for facetime with students—connections HFC has made through years in the NYC tech scene. In a digital age, the future of programming education is in the human connections to learn, collaborate, and improve.

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