High-End Earbuds You Wear All Day Like a Necklace

Rope is a pair of earbuds you wear around your neck all day, like a necklace. A Bluetooth pendant transmits wirelessly to your phone or computer. Roam

When you consider all the problems you run into with earbuds, some of the big ones relate directly to convenience—or inconvenience. Either they’re not on you right when you need them, or you thought you put them into your bag when you didn’t, or the cable is so impossibly knotted that you can’t untangle it in time for a phone call. What can you do to address all these issues in one fell swoop? How about a pair of earbuds you wear around your neck all day.

That’s the thinking behind Ropes, a forthcoming pair of high-end earbuds from newly minted audio startup Roam. They’re essentially earphones reimagined as a wearable, connecting wirelessly to your phone or computer via a Bluetooth pendent that dangles down to your stomach.

Roam was founded by Steven Lamar, no stranger to pushing the boundaries of personal audio. As head of SLS Audio several years back, he worked with Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre in the formative stages of the Beats headphones. Though the duo ultimately teamed with Monster to manufacture the first few runs of the cans, some consider Lamar the true father of Beats, a role Lamar’s currently trying to prove out in the courts.

The industrial design was handled by Frog. Roam

On one level, Lamar sees Ropes as a chance to show people an acoustic world beyond cheap plastic earbuds. “We’ve been programmed to accept the audio quality in these earbuds we get with our phones,” he says, though with a preorder price of $299, they’re competing more with the Shures of the world than Apple’s chintzy EarPods.

Still, Lamar hopes that a personalized approach to high-fidelity audio will set Ropes apart. One of the product’s unique aspects is that users will be able to tune the buds’ sound themselves with an accompanying app.

“Whether it be on a phone call, or listening to music, or watching a movie, we all hear things differently,” Lamar says. “We hear things differently out of each ear. And we’re going to give you a tool that communicates directly with the drivers in the earphones to adjust the sound dynamics however you want.”

The Form Factor’s the Thing

But even more unique is the way Ropes’ attempting to solve what Lamar calls the “ergonomic” problems of earbuds. Mainly, he wants to do away with digging around in pockets and having to fastidiously spool earbuds back into fussy carrying cases. “The concept is you wear it. All day. My earbuds are always on my person,” Lamar says. The industrial design was handled by the renowned consultancy Frog. Essentially, Ropes are a pair of stark, Bang and Olufsen-style buds set in the middle of a thick cable. When you’re not using them, they simply hang from your neck.

The idea of wearing earbuds all day may seem a bit silly on its face. But consider that some people are still willing to endure the stigma of Bluetooth headsets simply because they’re so useful for handling phone calls. At the very least, a set of wearable earbuds could be a less douchey way to cover that use case. Plus, as we’ve seen with Beats and bracelets like the Jawbone Up, the lines between consumer electronics and fashion accessories are starting to blur. We’re increasingly open to the idea of wearing our gadgets conspicuously—if, that is, they’re pretty enough for the job.

The accompanying app lets you adjust the sound profile directly via the drivers. Roam

There’s also the simple fact that our lives are saturated with digital audio, and for many, having a pair of headphones or earbuds at arm’s reach is already the norm. It’s not just phone calls. There’s music, videos, driving directions. Wearing a pair of headphones at work isn’t a signal that you’re slacking off. Today, heaps of jobs legitimately require listening to stuff coming from a computer. Ropes, at least in concept, seem well-suited to accommodate that reality. As Lamar points out, his earbuds aren’t a wearable you put on to be cool. They’re something you wear because it’s practical to do so.

The world may not quite be ready for ubiquitous buds today. After all, part of Ropes’ always-on convenience disappears when you realize you have to recharge them via micro USB after every six hours of use to keep the wireless juice pumping.

But if you look forward a few years, the idea of on-the-body earbuds will probably seem perfectly normal. The movie Her gave us a taste of what that might look like. In a future where we operated computers simply by talking to them, Joaquin Phoenix’s wireless ear plug was the crucial piece of hardware. As natural language interfaces in our own world become more sophisticated, always-on-you earpieces are the obvious hardware complement.

We’re still a ways off from being spurned by our artificially intelligent assistants. But in that context, Ropes’ approach is an intriguing one. With a little imagination, they’re not just a more convenient pair of earbuds for listening to Spotify, but an evolutionary step toward something else, anticipating a time when audio isn’t just entertainment but an interface too.

More here at the Roam site.

A fish, a rabbit — same thing, to a creationist [Pharyngula]

JBS Haldane is said to have responded to a question about how evolution could be disproved by saying, “A Precambrian rabbit”. What was meant by this, of course, is any substantial discovery that greatly disrupted the evidence for the chronological pattern of descent observed in Earth’s life. That pattern of descent is one of the central lines of evidence for evolution, so creationists would dearly love to find something that wrecked it — this is why they send expeditions to Africa to find a living dinosaur, Mok’ele-mbembe, or more conveniently, to Canada in search of a plesiosaur, Manipogo.

The Discovery Institute has it easy. They don’t mount expeditions, they just sit around, read scientific papers, and misinterpret them. Their latest abuse is to claim to have discovered the equivalent of a Precambrian rabbit.

A vertebrate swimming fish with camera eyes, blood vessels, digestive system, muscular swimming, and gills in the Lower Cambrian: for Darwinists, it should hardly be more surprising to find than a Precambrian rabbit.

Only it’s not in the Precambrian, it’s Cambrian. And it’s not a mammal, it’s a very primitive fish, unlike anything extant. Is anyone surprised to find ancient fish-like creatures in the Cambrian? Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to publications about the fossils of the Burgess Shale or the Chengjian fauna in the last century?

Here’s a reconstruction of the animal that Conway Morris and Caron analyzed in a recent issue of Nature. It’s called Metaspriggina.

Just for comparison, here’s Pikaia, a familiar chordate (although it’s classification is somewhat controversial) from the Cambrian. The fossil was first described in 1911.

Here’s another Cambrian beast, Haikouichthys, described in 2002.

Here is a rabbit.

One of these things is not like the others. Which one would surprise you, boys and girls, if it were found swimming in the shallow, silty seas beneath the relatively hypoxic skies of planet Earth, 500 million years ago? Which ones look similar, as if they are related, yet don’t look like any modern organisms?

If you can answer those two questions, you’re smarter than a creationist. There is no prize, I’m afraid that’s a rather low bar to hurdle.

What also surprises is how much the Discovery Institute press release mangles the story. For instance, they want to claim that it is more advanced than modern forms.

All these traits show that Metaspriggina was not a primitive chordate intermediate to lampreys or other extinct Cambrian swimmers, but was in fact more “derived” (advanced) in some respects than some of the alleged descendants.

They then quote a section of an article that explains that lampreys have derived structures — that their branchial anatomy is extensively specialized. What Conway Morris and Caron actually say in the paper is the opposite — that Metaspriggina had primitive or ancestral branchial structures, that they possessed two-part bars in their branchial arches, which was the ancestral condition.

A striking feature is the branchial area with an array of bipartite bars. Apart from the anterior-most bar, which appears to be slightly thicker, each is associated with externally located gills, possibly housed in pouches. Phylogenetic analysis places Metaspriggina as a basal vertebrate, apparently close to the Chengjiang taxa Haikouichthys and Myllokunmingia, demonstrating also that this primitive group of fish was cosmopolitan during Lower–Middle Cambrian times (Series 2–3). However, the arrangement of the branchial region in Metaspriggina has wider implications for reconstructing the morphology of the primitive vetebrate. Each bipartite bar is identified as being respectively equivalent to an epibranchial and ceratobranchial. This configuration suggests that a bipartite arrangement is primitive and reinforces the view that the branchial basket of lampreys is probably derived.

Notice that Conway Morris and Caron have identified Metaspriggina as a “basal vertebrate”, and that they note it’s affinities to other Cambrian forms. This is not a fish out of water; there is no evolution defying anachronism here.

The creationists even comment on the cladogram included in the paper, rather obliviously. Do they even realize that this diagram places Metaspriggina in an evolutionary context, and that it is clearly an intermediate form, more advanced than Pikaia, comparable to its rough contemporary Haikouichthys, and less derived than lampreys?

Cladogram with backbone constraint for cyclostome monophyly, and using rescaled consistency indices, showing the position of Metaspriggina as part of basal stem-group soft-bodied vertebrates. The origin and potential loss of key vertebrate structures is indicated.

Seriously, what part of “basal stem-group soft-bodied vertebrate” did they fail to comprehend? Metaspriggina is an unsurprising resident of the Cambrian era…and no rabbit at all.

---

Morris SC, Caron JB2 (2014) A primitive fish from the Cambrian of North America. Nature 512(7515):419-22.

Garmin’s New Fitness Tracker Looks Simple, But It Acts Like a Smartwatch

The Garmin Vivosmart comes in five different shades. Garmin

Fitness trackers like the Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, and Garmin Vivofit are typically smaller, more minimalist than their smartwatch cousins, but their features are limited too. Garmin’s latest wearable, the Vivosmart, combines these two worlds with a fitness tracker design and robust smartwatch-like features.

Garmin introduced its first general purpose wearable, the Vivofit activity tracker, last year. It could track your steps, heartrate (with a separate heartrate monitor), calories burned, and share the time and date. It also gave you subtle visual reminders to get off your butt and get moving after more than an hour of sitting. The Vivosmart can do all of these things too, but it also delivers vibration alerts for calls, texts, emails, and calendar events when paired with a smartphone. It’ll even preview of the notifications on its display.

Unlike the Vivofit’s always on display, Vivosmart has a hidden OLED display that you wake up with a double tap. A finger swipe on the display rotates through various customizable display pages, like the fitness-focused ones mentioned above.

The Vivosmart is waterproof up to about 50 meters and is specced to get up to 7 days of battery life. It also tracks your sleep based on movement and offers up daily reports on how much time you spent moving vs being still. In fact, through the Garmin Connect app, all your activity data gets translated into easier-to-understand charts and graphs. And if you’ve got one of Garmin’s VIRB action cameras, you can also use the Vivosmart as a remote.

After a short demo of its capabilities, it was clear the Vivosmart could be a great solution for anyone who wants smartphone notifications and fitness tracking on their wrist, but not a big, clunky screen. For someone with a small wrist, like myself, the small form factor and display is a big plus over larger smartwatches and wearables. Still, that small screen also means that navigation isn’t as intuitive as a full color touchscreen display with tappable icons.

Vivosmart will be available in five different colors (black, slate, purple, berry, and blue) in mid-September. It’ll cost $170 for the band alone, or $200 for the band bundled with a heartrate monitor.

New Touchscreen Pens Pull All Kinds of Cool Tricks

The Bamboo Stylus Fineline, a pressure-sensitive digital pen for iPads. It costs $60 and is aimed at digital artists. Courtesy of Wacom

Touch is now one of our primary input methods. Given we poke and swipe at glass screens to get things done on phones, tablets, Windows 8 computers, it surprising styluses and digital pens haven’t caught on in a really big way. Sure, they’re popular accessories in the mobile era. But most people, rather than spend $30 or $40 on a bit of metal and plastic, still prefer to use the pointer they’re born with.

If you are a stylus person—a population whose numbers continue to swell—then no doubt you’re a fan of Wacom’s products. The company has been making digital styluses and tablets (the kind that sit on your desk and take the place of your mouse) for years, and has also seen some great success with its Bamboo pens for touchscreens.

This week, Wacom announced three new Bamboo pens for mobiles. The first two are updates to familiar designs: the $20 Bamboo Stylus Solo, a dead-simple pointer with a carbon fiber nib, and the $30 Bamboo Stylus Duo, which is basically a Solo with a traditional roller-ball ink pen built into the other end. You know, so you can write on paper and stuff. Both of these third-generation Bamboo pens are passive input sticks and work with any touchscreen phone or computer. Doodle with them, swipe and tap with them, use them for games. Clip them into your pocket and use them to sign for Square purchases at the store.

More intriguing is the new Bamboo Stylus Fineline, a $60 Bluetooth-enabled pen made for iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad 3. It has a super-thin tip that offers 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity. It works with all the leading drawing and note-taking apps, including Wacom’s own Bamboo Paper app for iOS.

A pen like this lets you do more than just navigate and jot down notes, which the cheaper pens are great for. The Fineline is made primarily for artists who can take advantage of the control over the thickness of the line that the pressure sensitivity affords. Wacom lent us a Fineline to test, and it’s really fun to draw and sketch with—I’m no Boris Vallejo, but I gave it a good whirl. The button that sits beneath your index finger can be programmed to do a number of things, like hold and scroll, or to trigger the eraser. The internal battery charges over microUSB (no AAAs!) and lasts a few days between charges.

So if you’re looking for a iOS-ready pen that’s smarter than your dumb old finger, this one will serve you well—at least until input technologies advance to the level where you to draw a picture with your voice.

Inside the Rainbow Factory Where Crayola Crayons Are Made

The first box of Crayolas rolled off the production line 101 years ago, and today the company’s Easton, Pennsylvania, factory turns out 12 million crayons a day. “We maintain the process as though we were making food,” says Dave Farkas, manager of manufacturing quality assurance at the plant. Makes sense, given how likely its consumers are to put the product in their mouths. Here’s how Crayola makes the iconic (but inedible) color sticks.

All Photos BRYAN DERBALLA

Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Will Too

Free Press/CC

As the CEO of a young company, I spend most of my time thinking about serving our community of one million sellers, leading 600 employees, building web and mobile products, and managing growth. The last thing I want to think about is an arcane legal proposal at the Federal Communications Commission.

Chad Dickerson

Chad Dickerson is the CEO of Etsy.

But the FCC has proposed an end to the open Internet. This proposal has alarmed the Etsy community and employees. One seller, Beth in Oregon, said “If internet users find it too difficult to load our websites and see our products, it will be impossible for us to grow or succeed.” The FCC proposal threatens any business that relies on the Internet to reach consumers, stream video, process payments, advertise services or products, speak their minds, or do just about anything else. It therefore demands my time, as it should yours.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the business world, because the future of the Internet is the future of American business.

It’s time for the business community to take a public stand in support of the open Internet. Digital rights organizations are calling for a day of action on Wednesday, September 10, when businesses across the Internet will mobilize their communities to contact DC policymakers directly. Etsy will proudly take part. I call upon all my fellow CEOs, small business owners, employees, and Internet users to join the action on September 10 — and encourage their bosses to do so — for three simple reasons.

1. The Future of Our Businesses Is at Stake

If you missed this late-night explanation, we’re fighting for the basic principle that cable and phone companies should treat all websites and applications equally and without new tolls. For years, cable and phone providers have lobbied for the right to charge companies a fee to reach users, creating fast lanes for those willing and able to pay, and slow lanes for the rest of us.

Earlier this year, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler put out a proposal that would give these companies everything they asked for. And it would kill permissionless innovation and free expression. Companies would succeed because of deals struck with cable companies, not because of superior products. That’s why we filed comments and met with the FCC chairman to explain the potential harm to our business and our one million sellers, 88 percent of whom are women and 18 percent of whom make their entire living selling on Etsy.

Etsy offices. Etsy

The current proposal doesn’t just threaten tech or media companies. It threatens any business that relies on the Internet to reach consumers.

Research from Google and Microsoft shows that delays of milliseconds result in fewer page views and fewer sales in both the short and long term. This is true not just for high-bandwidth services like video, but for any content delivered over the Internet. That means businesses in every industry will suffer under the chairman’s proposal. This is a fight for all of us.

2. Policymakers Need to Hear From Businesses

Average citizens and digital rights organizers have spent the last six months sounding the alarm to save the Internet as we know it. At first, these folks were received like an early stage startup — they faced apparently impossible odds and almost everyone wrote them off for taking on a noble but doomed fight. But then something clicked. Three million Americans filed comments in favor of an open Internet. Hundreds of companies, investors, and civil rights groups joined the movement. Fourteen Senators, nearly 40 members of Congress, and the New York City and San Francisco mayors called on the FCC to establish a clear, bright-line rule banning paid prioritization under any circumstances.

Even President Obama spoke out to oppose Internet fast lanes, which the FCC chairman’s proposed rule would plainly authorize. Policymakers have heard from the public and civil libertarians. Different messengers click for different policymakers. Some are waiting to hear directly from the businesses that will be harmed by the FCC’s dangerous proposal. That’s us and the micro-businesses we represent.

3. Now Is the Moment

The action is on September 10 for several good reasons. It is just a few days before the end of the FCC comment period, on the 15th. Plus, Congress is only in town for two weeks before recessing to campaign for reelection. We want our communities to reach out to DC while members of Congress are there and thinking about their reelection. Activists from Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, and Free Press, working with Engine Board Member and lawyer Marvin Ammori, have created tools available at http://ift.tt/1nS8brH that empower people to send comments and call their representatives directly, so most companies should have enough time to implement them.

To be sure, the cable and phone companies are counting on our apathy. After all, businesses are often more conservative than activists and tend to not want to jump alone. But not this time. Our employees care, our communities are invested, and after months of progress, we now have a real shot at victory.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for the business world, because the future of the Internet is the future of American business. I ask my friends in the business community to join us on September 10. Let’s get this done, so that we can all go back to serving our customers and building our businesses without spending the rest of our lives petitioning the FCC and cable companies for permission to innovate and grow.

We’d All Benefit if Celebs Sue Apple Over the Photo Hack

WIRED

David Vladeck believes Apple will likely be sued after hackers grabbed nude photos that celebrities stored on the company’s iCloud service.

Vladeck, the former director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection and a professor of law at Georgetown University, acknowledges that such suits have had little success in the past, but he and other legal and cybersecurity experts also say that a lawsuit over the high-profile hack may be just the thing to push Apple and other online companies to more aggressively protect the people using their services.

Apple hasn’t said much about the hack—in which someone pilfered nude photos of dozens of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst, and Kate Upton. In a brief statement, the company called the incident “a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet,” and not a breach of any Apple systems, including iCloud and FindMyiPhone. But, regardless of Apple’s debatable definition of a breach, some experts believe the hack could inspire a change in the way courts and regulators treat such incidents.

Traditionally, data breach lawsuits rarely make it to trial. They’re typically settled or dismissed. The United States, unlike the European Union, has no overarching law dictating the security of a technology company, unless of course, it operates in health, finance, or another regulated sector. That, combined with the fact tech firms often disavow all liability in their privacy policies and end user license agreements, makes it difficult for courts to find them at fault.

But Vladeck and other experts believe that may change as regulators and courts realize our legal system puts consumers at a fundamental disadvantage against the businesses with which they entrust their digital lives. If Apple were to appear in court, these experts say, the case could finally set precedent for how tech companies must behave. Some, including Google, have made major security improvements in recent years to guard against such hackers. But many, including Apple, are behind the curve.

He says that a lawsuit over the high-profile hack may be just the thing to push Apple and other online companies to more aggressively protect the people using their services.

“We’re in this legal mess where the contracts companies are relying on to protect them from liability are functionally the emperor’s clothes of contracts. It’s a poorly kept secret that no one understands them, and that’s not a tenable position,” says Andrea Matwyshyn, who recently served as senior policy advisor and academic in residence at the Federal Trade Commission. “We’re seeing a trust erosion happening, and the digital economy is entirely predicated on people trusting these products, and being willing to engage with this technology.”

If people no longer trust their information to these companies, she says, they’ll alter their behavior. And that could imperil the entire internet economy—which is precisely why she and others believe now may be the time to set some legal ground rules. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a case come out of this that made some good law around trying to fix some of these power imbalances that exist between consumers and providers,” Matwyshyn says.

What We Know About the Attack

To understand how this could play out, it’s important to understand how the hack happened. Though details are still emerging, many believe the hacker or hackers gained access to victims’ usernames and passwords using a brute force attack, in which hackers, often using software, repeatedly guess passwords until they get them right, or by guessing the answers to security questions in Apple’s password reset functionality.

In some cases, as WIRED’s Andy Greenberg recently explained, the credentials stolen with those techniques may have been combined with law enforcement software that enabled hackers to impersonate victims’ phones and download their data.

This means that, unlike a situation in which a business’s servers are compromised, any legal case or regulatory action would revolve around iCloud’s user interface and whether Apple offers and encourages users to implement reasonable security measures at log in. For instance, if a brute force attack occurred, that might indicate Apple failed to set reasonable limits on the number of login attempts that could be made before a user is locked out. Another question might be whether Apple’s optional two-factor authentication truly could have protected victims’ accounts, even if they had activated it.

“Apple’s argument will be: ‘We’re not responsible. Somebody else got the credentials.’ But it’s Apple that decides what the credentials can be,” says Fred Cate, professor of information security law at Indiana University, Bloomington. That caveat could encourage a lawsuit from the victims that accuse the company of negligence.

According to Vladeck, such a suit is highly likely, considering the high-profile nature of the hack and the deep pockets of the victims. Whether they’ll be successful, however, is a different story. “Those cases have, by and large, foundered on the question of whether the individual has been harmed,” Vladeck says.

Indeed, Cate says there’s never been a successful lawsuit against a company for failing to impose strict enough login credentials. But he believes a high profile suit could change attitudes. “I think this could be just that sort of case,” he says. “It takes egregious cases to move the law along.”

How the Courts Could Change

In such a case, the question also would arise as to whether the victims willingly agreed to a contract with Apple in which Apple disclaims liability. “Apple will claim that when we click ‘yes’ on those very long agreements in tiny fonts that are written by lawyers for lawyers that we fully understand those risks pertain, and we’re choosing to engage with them anyway,” Matwyshyn says.

While such agreements have protected companies in the past, Matwyshyn says, courts increasingly are ready to reassess them, accounting not only for the language in the contract, but for the user’s interpretation of the contract.

Another possibility is the Federal Trade Commission would investigate whether Apple has provided reasonable security measures, given the sensitivity of the data and the risks involved. The question then will be whether the hack was based on a known security flaw that was not fixed. “Unfortunately, that’s still the bulk of our industry,” Matwyshyn says. “Those are the types of problems where you’ll see private sector litigation and enforcement activity from the FTC.”

Indeed, a brute force attack very well could constitute a known risk. After all, Twitter experienced a similar hack in 2009 and quickly shored up its sign in. Even Apple referred to the attack in its statement as an “all too common” practice on the internet. Whether the FTC would view that as evidence that Apple failed to respond to a known threat, though, is unclear. And as Cate notes, such action “doesn’t usually put money in the hands of anyone who’s hurt, but it can provide substantial penalties, so the companies want to behave better next time.”

Apple’s Catch-22

None of this means Apple is in grave danger. The company’s privacy policy very well may serve as adequate disclosure to users. And Apple certainly could argue that just because users give their data to a third party source does not mean users completely relinquish responsibility to protect that data. If the victims didn’t use a sophisticated password, Apple could argue the victims were the ones being negligent.

According to Cate, Apple also will likely argue that forcing stricter log in credentials on users would threaten its business, because hardcore security measures could confuse or irritate the average consumer. “Whenever a company raises the security bar, the public hates it,” he says. “So they’re sort of in a Catch-22. We hate them when they make us use top security, but we hate them when they lose our data.”

That’s one reason why Cate, Vladeck, and Matwyshyn agree the United States is in desperate and growing need for laws that at least set basic ground rules for data security. The fear, of course, is that the rate of innovation in the tech sector will make any laws obsolete almost as soon as they’re passed. And yet, Matwyshyn notes that in other areas of contract law, rules have been created to guarantee basic standards for service. For instance, she says, “Your landlord can’t just turn off your heat in the middle of winter. That’s a basic agreement, no matter what your contract states.”

“For consumers,” she says, “data security is increasingly viewed like heat in winter.”