Boot up: Apple's smart home?, Bruce Lee's punch, talking to Google, and more

Bruce Lee: dangerous even from an inch away.

A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Tim Bradshaw:

Apple is readying a new software platform that would turn the iPhone into a remote control for lights, security systems and other household appliances, as part of a move into the "internet of things".

…The scheme will be similar to Apple's existing "Made for iPhone" label, given to compatible headphones, speakers and other accessories, but with a new brand and logo. Apple may also provide additional checks and assurances that certified products are not vulnerable to hackers.

The Cupertino-based company was likely to emphasise the privacy protections built into its smart home system, one person familiar with Apple's plans told the FT, given heightened sensitivity about technology companies' access to personal information amid revelations about US intelligence agencies' online surveillance programmes.
Apple considers privacy a key advantage over Google, the person said, since Google relies on targeted advertising as its main source of income.

If that's right, it makes Google's December SEC filing - where it talked about getting adverts everywhere - look like a sort of advert for Apple's approach.

From a single inch away, Lee was able to muster an explosive blow that could knock opponents clean off the ground. Lee mastered it, fans worldwide adored it, and Kill Bill "borrowed" it. But if you're like us, you want to know how it works.

The technology angle? Um.. they used slow-motion cameras. Includes video - which is amazing.

Swscan.apple.com is one of several servers that Software Update uses to communicate with Apple. The apparent problem is that the security certificate for the server appears to have expired. The certificate was originally valid from May 22, 2012 to May 24, 2014.

Sasha Taylor:

As part of BlueLightCamp '14, a group of civil servants, hackers, and emergency service workers got together for a weekend of furious creation.

I decided to look at flooding data. The recent floods in the UK are a brutal remember of the realities of climate change and our poor stewardship of the nation's waterways.

The UK Government has a large collection of flooding data online - including some very detailed river-by-river data.

Great blow-by-blow account of the difficulties of data wrangling.

Over the past week, Google's exposed a handful of new and useful voice-activated features on the Now app for Android. Whether it be figuring out information about your booked car rentals, setting reminders, or finally handling timer queries properly, Google really seems to want you to talk to your phone more. Our question today, though, is just how much do you talk to your phone or tablet?

From the topics the site covers (and the depth it covers them in) you'd expect that this would be quite a technical readership. In the poll, 36% chose "basically never", and 13% "once a week or less" - so 49% never or barely use voice. Add the other 16% who use it "a few times a week" and you have two-thirds of those who voted hardly using voice.

What this entire episode exposes is the tension between D-Wave's claim that it is selling a commercial quantum computer and many other physicists' belief that the device is just a quantum experiment, the outcome of which has yet to be properly determined. Most physicists fully expect a useful quantum computer to eventually emerge, just not in the way D-Wave proposes.

At the moment, the weight of evidence is tipping dangerously against D-Wave, leaving its customers in a precarious position. Could it be that Google, NASA and Lockheed Martin have shelled out tens of millions for a cryogenically-cooled calculator of the classical variety? According to the IBM and UC Berkeley team: just possibly, yes.

In response to Obama's request, the NSA set up a lab where dozens of experts performed surgery for several months on a high-profile patient: the soon-to-be presidential BlackBerry. The course of treatment was to manipulate the device's innards to weed out potential threats to secure communication.

In the end, that meant taking most of the fun out of the phone: the president can't play Angry Birds, for example.

"You try to get rid of any functionality that's not really required. Every piece of functionality is an opportunity for the adversary," [former NSA technical director Richard] George says.

According to George, the president simply wanted a phone that enabled him to communicate with his advisers. Though the president was a well known BlackBerry addict at the time, the choice of smartphone model was the NSA's, not Obama's, George explained.

In the early 1960s, Fernando Corbató helped deploy the first known computer password.

He acknowledges the password's flaws — there seems to be a major breach each month — and the public's frustrations, having to remember strings of code for dozens of digital accounts. "Unfortunately it's become kind of a nightmare," he says.

But at 87 years old today, he isn't sorry.

Then again, think how many times he's had to change his passwords.

Peter Fairley:

more interesting is what Nest has been up to since last May in Texas, where an Austin utility is paying Nest to remotely turn down people's air conditioners in order to conserve power on hot summer days — just when electricity is most expensive.

For utilities, this kind of "demand response" has long been seen as a killer app for a smart electrical grid, because if electricity use can be lowered just enough at peak times, utilities can avoid firing up costly (and dirty) backup plants.

Demand response is a neat trick. The Nest thermostat manages it by combining two things that are typically separate—price information and control over demand. It's consumers who control the air conditioners, electric heaters, and furnaces that dominate a home's energy diet. But the actual cost of energy can vary widely, in ways that consumers only dimly appreciate and can't influence.

While utilities frequently carry out demand response with commercial customers, consumers until now have shown little interest. Nest Labs' breakthrough was to make a device that has popular appeal.

"Popular appeal" might be overstating it. Nest has reportedly sold about 1m thermostats ; there are around 114m US household by the 2012 US Census. There are 5,500 thermostats in the scheme; customers opt in to the service and get a $85 rebate from the energy company. But it's a way to get the "negawatts" idea moving.

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