Showing posts with label businessweek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label businessweek. Show all posts
Monday, April 17, 2017
The Most Important Passages From Apples Challenge to the FBI BusinessWeek
The Most Important Passages From Apples Challenge to the FBI BusinessWeek
"GovtOS" may make us all part of a police state, and other stark warnings from Apple.
GovtOS. Thats what Apple Inc. calls the newest product in its pipeline. Its not the brainchild of the gadget masters in Cupertino but rather an iPhone operating system conceived by some buttoned-down folks in Washington, D.C. Unlike the latest iPhone or iPad, it wasnt revealed on a stage before thousands of the faithful. Instead, it was unveiled in a stark response to the Obama administrations attempt to force the computer maker to assist in a terrorism probe. And, Apple has warned, it may someday lead to every American being made an unwilling assistant to law enforcement.
In a 65-page federal court filing on Thursday in Riverside, Calif., Apple said making it override the encryption of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters was wild overreach. As a legal matter, Apples lawyers swiftly disassembled the governments use of an 18th century law (the All Writs Act) to justify its demand and described in minute detail how forced compliance would play out, both for Apples technicians and whoever else is next.
Although Apple has a growing number of lawyers in this fight, it may have telegraphed its intent to make a First Amendment argument a pillar of the case. Forcing someone to write code is like forcing them to speak, Apple suggested, and thats usually a constitutional no-no. The briefs main author, Ted Boutrous of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP, is one of the nations premier media lawyers. Here are some highlights:
A Broader Threat
"Under the same legal theories advocated by the government here, the government could argue that it should be permitted to force citizens to do all manner of things necessary to assist it in enforcing the laws, like compelling a pharmaceutical company against its will to produce drugs needed to carry out a lethal injection in furtherance of a lawfully issued death warrant, or requiring a journalist to plant a false story in order to help lure out a fugitive, or forcing a software company to insert malicious code in its autoupdate process that makes it easier for the government to conduct court-ordered surveillance. "
A Threat to Privacy on a Global Scale
"This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe."
A Trifecta of Illegality
"No court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the Constitution forbids it."
Christmas for Criminals and Spies
"The government wants to compel Apple to create a crippled and insecure product. Once the process is created, it provides an avenue for criminals and foreign agents to access millions of iPhones. And once developed for our government, it is only a matter of time before foreign governments demand the same tool."
The Internet of Big Brothers Things
"If Apple can be forced to write code in this case to bypass security features and create new accessibility, what is to stop the government from demanding that Apple write code to turn on the microphone in aid of government surveillance, activate the video camera, surreptitiously record conversations, or turn on location services to track the phone?s user? Nothing."
"Compelling Apple to create software in this case will set a dangerous precedent for conscripting Apple and other technology companies to develop technology to do the government?s bidding in untold future criminal investigations."
Forgot to Call Tech Support
"Unfortunately, the FBI, without consulting Apple or reviewing its public guidance regarding iOS, changed the iCloud password associated with one of the attacker?s accounts, foreclosing the possibility of the phone initiating an automatic iCloud back-up of its data to a known Wi-Fi network, which could have obviated the need to unlock the phone and thus for the extraordinary order the government now seeks. Had the FBI consulted Apple first, this litigation may not have been necessary."
Congress Already Said No
"Congress has never authorized judges to compel innocent third parties to provide decryption services to the FBI. Indeed, Congress has expressly withheld that authority in other contexts, and this issue is currently the subject of a raging national policy debate among members of Congress, the President, the FBI Director, and state and local prosecutors. Moreover, federal courts themselves have never recognized an inherent authority to order non-parties to become de facto government agents in ongoing criminal investigations."
We Just Made It, We Dont Own It
"Apple is no more connected to this phone than General Motors is to a company car used by a fraudster on his daily commute."
"Nothing connects Apple to this case such that it can be drafted into government service to write software that permits the government to defeat the security features on Apple?s standard operating system. Apple is a private company that does not own or possess the phone at issue, has no connection to the data that may or may not exist on the phone, and is not related in any way to the events giving rise to the investigation."
Thin End of the Wedge
"The government?s flawed suggestion to delete the program and erase every trace of the activity would not lessen the burden, it would actually increase it since there are hundreds of demands to create and utilize the software waiting in the wings. If Apple creates new software to open a back door, other federal and state prosecutors?and other governments and agencies?will repeatedly seek orders compelling Apple to use the software to open the back door for tens of thousands of iPhones."
"This enormously intrusive burden?building everything up and tearing it down for each demand by law enforcement?lacks any support in the cases relied on by the government, nor do such cases exist."
"The alternative?keeping and maintaining the compromised operating system and everything related to it?imposes a different but no less significant burden, i.e., forcing Apple to take on the task of unfailingly securing against disclosure or misappropriation the development and testing environments, equipment, codebase, documentation, and any other materials relating to the compromised operating system."
It Cannot Be Destroyed
In an affidavit attached to the court filing (formally called "Apple Inc.s Motion to Vacate Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search, and Opposition to Governments Motion to Compel Assistance"), Apples manager of user privacy, Erik Neuenschwander, summed up the governments "use and destroy" idea this way: "The virtual world is not like the physical world. When you destroy something in the physical world, the effort to recreate it is roughly equivalent to the effort required to create it in the first place. When you create something in the virtual world, the process of creating an exact and perfect copy is as easy as a computer key stroke because the underlying code is persistent. Even if the underlying computer code is completely eradicated from Apple?s servers so as to be irretrievable, the person who created the destroyed code would have spent the time and effort to solve the software design, coding and implementation challenges. This process could be replicated.
Thus, GovtOS would not be truly destroyed."
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Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Who Needs Apple When the FBI Could Hack Terrorist iPhone Itself BusinessWeek
Who Needs Apple When the FBI Could Hack Terrorist iPhone Itself BusinessWeek
- Experts say Feds could access data without going to court
- A kiosk in a Chinese mall holds a potential solution
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has put the onus on Apple Inc. to break into the iPhone 5c carried by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook. In fact, the feds almost certainly could do it themselves.
Security experts say there are many ways the FBI could hack the iPhone now at the center of a standoff between Apple and the U.S. government. They argue that doing so would be faster than waiting for the courts to decide whether Apple should be forced to create software that would let investigators try multiple passcodes without erasing the device. No one is saying a government hack would be easy, but the experts interviewed for this story have concluded the Feds aren?t even trying because they?d rather win a legal precedent that gives agents the power to access phone data with a warrant.
Jonathan Zdziarski, a cybersecurity researcher who consults with law enforcement, says the FBI could learn something from back-alley techies in China who break into iPhones all the time. He describes a kiosk in a Shenzhen mall that charges $60 to upgrade a 16-gigabyte phone to 128 gigabytes. Using a PC, tweezers and screwdrivers, he says, the kiosk operator copies the contents of the iPhone onto a chip with more capacity then swaps it in.
Zdziarski says the FBI could use a similar workaround: copy the phone?s contents onto a chip so there?s a backup file when password attempts erase the device. The trick is figuring out a way of doing this hundreds of times without destroying the chip. He says the problem could be solved with research and that typically investigators can crack a passcode with fewer that 200 attempts because people usually choose easy ones.
That?s just one of multiple ways the FBI could extract data by messing with iPhone hardware, Zdziarski says. Other potential solutions include finding and exploiting cracks in the software. All systems contain flaws and they continue to be found every month in Apple?s software, according to Jason Syversen, a former manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and now chief executive officer of cyber security firm Siege Technologies. In fact, Apple publicly lists the security vulnerabilities that researchers have found. There?s no shortage of cyber experts within the FBI, contractors that work on-site, or third parties and academic organizations that law enforcement could enlist to try and use those cracks to extract the data, Syversen says.
Some experts have argued that the FBI should ask the National Security Agency for help. They note that the NSA is the best-funded spy agency on Earth, employs legions of hackers and almost certainly can break into secure computer systems. But in testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Worcester Polytechnic Institute cybersecurity professor Susan Landau said the NSA may be reluctant to help the FBI, since the secretive agency?s hacking abilities could become public should it be hauled into court.
In written testimony for the congressional hearing, Landau said the FBI needs to build its own investigative center employing agents with deep technical understanding so surveillance can keep up with advances at Apple and other tech companies. The cost to maintain this would be in the hundreds of millions, but a worthy investment and probably the only long-term solution, she wrote.
?The FBI must learn to investigate smarter; you, Congress, can provide it with the resources and guidance to help it do so,? Landau wrote in her testimony. ?Bring FBI investigative capabilities into the twenty-first century.?
In the meantime, the FBI will continue to use the courts to force Apple to build back doors into its devices -- which Apple says would risk exposing customers? private information to hackers and authoritarian regimes. FBI Director James Comey said at the congressional hearing that ?we have engaged all parts of the U.S. government to see, does anybody have a way, short of asking Apple, to do it, with a 5C running iOS9, and we do not.?
Jay Edelson, a class-action lawyer at Edelson PC that specializes in suing technology companies (going after tech giants including Apple and Google), is on Silicon Valley?s side this time. He says the FBI chose this case to score political points -- not because hacking iPhones is too hard.
?The government?s take is even if we have experts in the government, we don?t have an obligation to enlist their help,? Edelson says. ?They?re just trying to establish precedent.
They think they have a decent argument where they can force companies to change their business systems to help them.?
Available link for download
Sunday, February 12, 2017
VW CEO Flubs Interview With Apology Tour Off to Rocky Start BusinessWeek
VW CEO Flubs Interview With Apology Tour Off to Rocky Start BusinessWeek
- VW CEO: U.S. Is a Core Market
- Mueller says German carmaker `didnt lie to U.S. regulators
- VWs Mueller faces meetings Wednesday with EPA and lawmakers
Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller is struggling to find the right tone on his first official U.S. visit, where he?s under pressure to placate lawmakers and regulators to emerge from the emissions-cheating scandal.
In an interview with National Public Radio at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Mueller said the German carmaker ?didn?t lie? to regulators when first asked about irregularities between test and real-life emissions in its diesel cars.
The issue, related to rigging engines to cheat on emissions tests, was instead caused by ?a technical problem? and stemmed from a misinterpretation of U.S. law, the CEO said, appearing to downplay the company?s role in actively deceiving regulators. He then questioned the reporter?s assertion that Americans believe there are ethical issues within the company: ?I cannot understand why you say that.?
The German carmaker asked for a second chance after the public radio network aired the comments, which were made at a VW event Sunday evening, on its ?Morning Edition? program, a staple of the commute for many U.S. professionals. Mueller apologized in the follow-up interview on Monday, citing noisy surroundings in the first conversation.
?We fully accept the violation,? he said. ?There is no doubt about it,? and the company is doing its ?utmost? to resolve the issue.
Opera Ball
The to-and-fro is indicative of Volkswagen?s response to the scandal, which is being steered largely by company veterans while customers have had to wait as the carmaker figures out what to do with the affected vehicles. The public-relations gaffe was the latest in a series by Mueller, who has come under criticism for waiting nearly four months to meet U.S. regulators while at times giving the impression that the crisis wasn?t his top priority.
The 62-year-old Volkswagen veteran, who previously ran the Porsche sports car brand, was photographed with a bottle of champagne at the Leipzig Opera Ball shortly after he took over as CEO in the wake of the scandal. He then turned up a few weeks later smiling on the sidelines of a car race in Bahrain. He also cut short his appearance on Volkswagen?s third-quarter earnings call to join German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a trade trip to China.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, who is helping to lead a multistate investigation into the automaker, called Mueller?s comments "disturbing" and criticized Volkswagen for not cooperating with the probe.
"In an apparent moment of candor in Detroit, we now learn that the company?s newly appointed and most senior leader doesn?t believe Volkswagen lied, which is undisputable, and cannot say when it plans to deliver its solution to a problem that is affecting millions of Americans, which is unacceptable," Jepsen said in a statement.
Causing Stir
It?s not the first time Mueller has caused a stir with media comments. Last year he suggested to a group of journalists in Stuttgart, Germany, that he was too old to succeed then-CEO Martin Winterkorn. He later said he?d been misunderstood. Then during Porsche?s annual earnings press conference he let slip plans for an all-electric vehicle. Though he evaded follow-up questions, the unit showed the car months later at the Frankfurt motor show.
Volkswagen defended Mueller, saying this week?s comments were a misunderstanding stemming from the chaotic environment at the Detroit event.
?This was a very extreme situation in which this interview took place,? spokesman Claus-Peter Tiemann said by phone. ?Mueller was standing in a crowd of journalists with questions being shouted at him in different languages. One question obviously was misinterpreted, taken out of context maybe, so the interview was redone.?
With meetings looming Wednesday in Washington D.C. with lawmakers and Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy, Mueller must now convince authorities that he?s taking them seriously and their concerns are being addressed, said Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany.
?Not all has gone smoothly since he took the scepter, especially with the U.S. authorities,? Bratzel said. ?It?s important to admit that there actually were untruthful answers, that there was deception.?
?Night and Day?
Volkswagen obfuscated for nearly a year before admitting to regulators that it had installed software to bypass pollution tests in its diesel cars, the EPA said in September. Its relations with the agency have been strained since then, and there?s still no confirmed solution for how to fix about 480,000 cars with 2-liter diesel engines in the U.S.
Mueller has cultivated a relaxed image in Germany, a stark departure from the stern presence of his predecessor. In October, he encouraged Volkswagen employees to be more open and cooperative, with the goal of making the company ?more fun to work for.?
The company might be able to fix about 430,000 of the vehicles by adding a newly-developed component to neutralize the smog-inducing nitrogen oxides in the emissions, Mueller said on Sunday. Still, the actual number could vary and depends on the EPA?s approval, he said.
?We have worked night and day to find solutions. Not only technical solutions,? Mueller said in the followup interview with NPR. ?It?s a lot of work for the lawyers and also for the press department.?
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Saturday, January 21, 2017
The Most Important Apple Executive Youƒ??ve Never Heard Of BusinessWeek
The Most Important Apple Executive Youƒ??ve Never Heard Of BusinessWeek
A visit with Cupertino?s chief chipmaker, Johny Srouji.
A little over a year ago, Apple had a problem: The iPad Pro was behind schedule. Elements of the hardware, software, and accompanying stylus weren?t going to be ready for a release in the spring. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and his top lieutenants had to delay the unveiling until the fall. That gave most of Apple?s engineers more time. It gave a little-known executive named Johny Srouji much less.
Srouji is the senior vice president for hardware technologies at Apple. He runs the division that makes processor chips, the silicon brains inside the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. The original plan was to introduce the iPad Pro with Apple?s tablet chip, the A8X, the same processor that powered the iPad Air 2, introduced in 2014. But delaying until fall meant that the Pro would make its debut alongside the iPhone 6s, which was going to use a newer, faster phone chip called the A9.
This is the stuff that keeps technology executives up at night. The iPad Pro was important: It was Apple?s attempt to sell tablets to business customers. And it would look feeble next to the iPhone 6s. So Srouji put his engineers on a crash program to move up the rollout of a new tablet processor, the A9X, by half a year. The engineers finished in time, and the Pro hit the market with the faster chip and a 12.9-inch display packed with 5.6 million pixels.
Srouji was nicely rewarded for his efforts. In December he became the newest member of Cook?s management team and received about 90,000 additional shares of Apple stock, which vest over a four-year period.
He also stepped into the kind of spotlight he?s avoided since joining Apple in 2008. Srouji runs what is probably the most important and least understood division inside the world?s most profitable company. Since 2010, when his team produced the A4 chip for the original iPad, Apple has immersed itself in the costly and complex science of silicon. It develops specialized microprocessors as a way to distinguish its products from the competition. The Apple-designed circuits allow the company to customize products to perfectly match the features of its software, while tightly controlling the critical trade-off between speed and battery consumption. Among the components on its chip (technically called a ?system on a chip,? or SOC) are an image signal processor and a storage controller, which let Apple tailor useful functions for taking and storing photos, such as the rapid-fire ?burst mode? introduced with the iPhone 5s. Engineers and designers can work on features like that years in advance without prematurely notifying vendors?especially Samsung, which manufactures many of Apple?s chips.
At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He?s compact, he?s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. ?Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,? he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. ?The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,? he answers another question. He?ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. ?When designers say, ?This is hard,??? he says, ?my rule of thumb is if it?s not gated by physics, that means it?s hard but doable.?
Srouji recently spent several hours with Bloomberg Businessweek over several days and guided a tour of Apple chip facilities in Cupertino, Calif., and Herzliya, Israel. This was, no doubt, strategic. Investors have battered Apple stock over the past year, sending it down more than 25 percent. Most people are already pretty satisfied with their phones, the criticism goes, and aren?t compelled to spend an additional few hundred bucks on an upgrade. (In March, Apple intends to announce an updated iPad and smaller-screen iPhone featuring the latest A9x and A9 chips, according to a person familiar with the plans, who wasn?t authorized to comment publicly.)
Apple?s usual response is to point to Jony Ive and his team of fastidiously cool, Wallabee-shod industrial designers, or to highlight elegantly tooled aluminum or an app or some new feature or gadget. There?s always something new to show off. But none of that has ever explained anything about a crucial part of Apple?s profit machine: its chips.
?I think it?s too good of a story not to be told at this stage,? Srouji says. ?Hopefully, we won?t reveal too much.?
This is the stuff that keeps technology executives up at night. The iPad Pro was important: It was Apple?s attempt to sell tablets to business customers. And it would look feeble next to theiPhone 6s. So Srouji put his engineers on a crash program to move up the rollout of a new tablet processor, the A9X, by half a year. The engineers finished in time, and the Pro hit the market with the faster chip and a 12.9-inch display packed with 5.6 million pixels.
Srouji was nicely rewarded for his efforts. In December he became the newest member ofCook?s management team and received about 90,000 additional shares of Apple stock, which vest over a four-year period.
He also stepped into the kind of spotlight he?s avoided since joining Apple in 2008. Srouji runs what is probably the most important and least understood division inside the world?s most profitable company. Since 2010, when his team produced the A4 chip for the original iPad, Apple has immersed itself in the costly and complex science of silicon. It develops specialized microprocessors as a way to distinguish its products from the competition. The Apple-designed circuits allow the company to customize products to perfectly match the features of its software, while tightly controlling the critical trade-off between speed and battery consumption. Among the components on its chip (technically called a ?system on a chip,? or SOC) are an image signal processor and a storage controller, which let Apple tailor useful functions for taking and storing photos, such as the rapid-fire ?burst mode? introduced with the iPhone 5s. Engineers and designers can work on features like that years in advance without prematurely notifying vendors?especially Samsung, which manufactures many of Apple?s chips.
At the center of all this is Srouji, 51, an Israeli who joined Apple after jobs at Intel and IBM. He?s compact, he?s intense, and he speaks Arabic, Hebrew, and French. His English is lightly accented and, when the subject has anything to do with Apple, nonspecific bordering on koanlike. ?Hard is good. Easy is a waste of time,? he says when asked about increasingly thin iPhone designs. ?The chip architects at Apple are artists, the engineers are wizards,? he answers another question. He?ll elaborate a bit when the topic is general. ?When designers say, ?This is hard,??? he says, ?my rule of thumb is if it?s not gated by physics, that means it?s hard but doable.?
Srouji recently spent several hours with Bloomberg Businessweek over several days and guided a tour of Apple chip facilities in Cupertino, Calif., and Herzliya, Israel. This was, no doubt, strategic. Investors have battered Apple stock over the past year, sending it down more than 25 percent. Most people are already pretty satisfied with their phones, the criticism goes, and aren?t compelled to spend an additional few hundred bucks on an upgrade. (In March, Apple intends to announce an updated iPad and smaller-screen iPhone featuring the latest A9x and A9 chips, according to a person familiar with the plans, who wasn?t authorized to comment publicly.)
Apple?s usual response is to point to Jony Ive and his team of fastidiously cool, Wallabee-shod industrial designers, or to highlight elegantly tooled aluminum or an app or some new feature or gadget. There?s always something new to show off. But none of that has ever explained anything about a crucial part of Apple?s profit machine: its chips.
?I think it?s too good of a story not to be told at this stage,? Srouji says. ?Hopefully, we won?t reveal too much.?
In Israel, Srouji (second from left) and Cook (right) with Apple employees.
When the original iPhone came out in 2007, Steve Jobs was well aware of its flaws. It had no front camera, measly battery life, and a slow 2G connection from AT&T. It was also underpowered. A former Apple engineer who worked on the device said that while the handset was a breakthrough technology, it was limited because it pieced together components from different vendors, including elements from a Samsung chip used in DVD players. ?Steve came to the conclusion that the only way for Apple to really differentiate and deliver something truly unique and truly great, you have to own your own silicon,? Srouji says. ?You have to control and own it.?
One of Jobs?s trusted advisers, Bob Mansfield, Apple?s top hardware executive at the time, recruited Srouji to lead that effort. Srouji, then at IBM, was a rising star in the arcane world of semiconductor engineering. Mansfield promised him an opportunity to build something from scratch.
The decision to design semiconductors was risky. About the size of a small postage stamp, the microprocessor is the most important component of any computing device. It does the work that makes playing games, posting to Facebook, sending texts, and taking pictures seem easy. Small currents of energy move from the battery through hundreds of millions of tiny transistors, triggering commands and responses in nanoseconds. It?s like an intricate city design that fits on the tip of your finger. When the chip isn?t doing its job efficiently, the device feels sluggish, crashes, or makes users want to throw it against a wall.
If there?s a bug in software, you simply release a corrected version. It?s different with hardware. ?You get one transistor wrong, it?s done, game over,? Srouji says. ?Each one of those transistors has to work. Silicon is very unforgiving.? Among computer and smartphone makers, industry practice is to leave the processors to specialists such as Intel, Qualcomm, or Samsung, which sink billions into getting the chips right and making them inexpensively. (Apple used to co-design processors for the Macintosh, but Jobs abandoned the work in 2005 in favor of more powerful models from Intel, whose chips still power all Macs.)
When Srouji joined Apple, the company had a group of about 40 engineers working on integrating chips from various vendors into the iPhone. That grew by about 150 people in April 2008, after Apple acquired a Silicon Valley chip startup called P.A. Semi, which had a power-efficient semiconductor design. Srouji?s team found itself interacting regularly with other departments, from software programmers, who wanted chip support for new features, to Ive?s industrial designers, who wanted help making the phones flatter and sleeker. An engineer who sat in on Srouji?s meetings remembers senior managers preparing extensively for presentations, because his support was critical for getting new features approved. He was known for peppering engineers with technically sophisticated questions, particularly about contingency options if something didn?t work out as planned. He?d ask, for example, if a different form of plastic could be used that wouldn?t interfere with another component.
?The only way for Apple to really differentiate and deliver something truly unique and truly great, you have to own your own silicon?
The first public signs of Srouji?s work came in 2010 with the debut of the iPad and iPhone 4. The processor, the A4, was a modified version of a design from ARM Holdings, a British company that licenses mobile technology. The A4 was designed to power the handset?s new high-definition ?retina display.? Srouji says it was a race to get that first system-on-a-chip produced. ?The airplane was taking off, and I was building the runway just in time,? he says.
Over the next few years, Apple kept making improvements to its designs, introducing chips to accommodate fingerprint identification, video calling, and Siri, the iPhone?s voice-activated assistant, among other enhancements. When the companies using Google?s Android operating system started making tablets, they mostly used conventional mobile phone processors. Starting with the third-generation iPad in 2012, Srouji?s team designed specific chips (the A5x and A6x) to give the tablet the same pixel-packing high-definition screens as the iPhone.
These mysterious semiconductors coming from Apple were the curiosity of the tech industry, but it wasn?t until the release of the iPhone 5s in 2013 that rivals really started to pay attention. The phone featured the A7 processor, the first smartphone chip with 64 bits?double the 32-bit standard at the time. The new technology allowed for entirely new features, such as Apple Pay and the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Developers had to rewrite applications to account for the new standard, but it gave way to smoother maps, cooler video games, and generally more responsive apps that don?t hog as much memory. (Apple?s control over hardware and software is also useful for encrypting everything on the device, a capability that has landed the company in a controversy: On Feb. 16, a judge ruled that Apple must help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple is fighting the order, saying it would set a precedent that would undermine the privacy of all its customers.)
Qualcomm, then as now the biggest designer of phone chips, made the expensive decision to scrap development of its 32-bit chips and put all its resources into catching up. Handset companies all ?wanted the shiny new thing,? says Ryan Smith, the editor-in-chief of AnandTech, a website that publishes exhaustive reviews of semiconductor designs. ?The A7 really turned the world upside down.?
Srouji can?t restrain a smile when recalling competitors? reactions to Apple?s 64-bit surprise. ?When we pick something,? he says, ?it?s because we think there?s a problem that nobody can do, or there is some idea that?s so unique and differentiating that the best way to do it is you have to do it yourself.?
Chip-durability testing at an unmarked Apple lab in Cupertino.
Srouji was born in Haifa, a port city in northern Israel. He was the third child of four. His family was Christian Arab, a minority within a minority in the Jewish state. ?Haifa is one of the most integrated cities in Israel,? he says. ?You have Christians, you have Muslims, Jews, Bah ?¡s, you have any religion you want, and everyone lives together in peaceful harmony. Integration worked for me.?
Srouji?s father owned a metal pattern-making business outside the city, and from age 10, Srouji spent weekends and summers helping him pattern wooden moldings that were used to make engine parts, medical equipment, and other machinery. His father had an unusual philosophy: He would undercharge customers for complicated work while overcharging for easier jobs. ?If there was a very complex thing that he?d never done, he wanted to do it,? Srouji says.
His father, who died in 2000, constantly reminded him not to get comfortable in the family business. Education was more important. In high school, Srouji got perfect grades in math, physics, chemistry, and science. He was introduced to computers by an instructor who also taught at the nearby Technion Israel Institute of Technology, one of the world?s top engineering schools. ?I fell in love,? Srouji says.
He enrolled at the Technion, spent late nights in the computer lab drafting out code in pencil, and earned undergraduate and master?s degrees in computer science. His master?s thesis was on new techniques for testing software and hardware systems. ?At the time it was very progressive,? says Orna Berry, general manager of the EMC Center of Excellence in Israel and corporate vice president of innovation, who met Srouji at the Technion. ?I?m not surprised he is where he is.?
After graduating, Srouji got a job with IBM, which had placed its largest non-U.S. research facility in Haifa, the better to attract the big brains coming out of the Technion and other Israeli universities. He researched distributed systems, an emerging field in which computers in different locations are networked together to complete computationally intensive assignments. Ensuring the machines communicated correctly required skill building hardware and writing software algorithms.
?Sometimes I wondered?when he got an assignment and within a day it was complete and perfect?if he was brilliant or just didn?t sleep at night,? says Srouji?s first boss, Oded Cohn, vice president and lab director for IBM Haifa Research. ?In some cases, the conclusion was both.?
Although Israel grapples with Jewish-Arab tensions all the time, none of it mattered in Srouji?s world. Cohn, who remains friends with him, says their different backgrounds never came up. ?Technical people treat technical people based on personality and technical ability,? he says. ?You don?t think about it. You just work together. The rest goes away.?
In 1993, Srouji left IBM for Intel, where he created techniques for running simulations that test the strength of semiconductor designs. During a visit to the U.S. in 1999, he used a 20-minute car ride with a manager, fellow Israeli Uri Weiser, to lobby for a three-year stint at Intel?s research hub in Austin. Assuming Srouji was also Jewish, Weiser invited him to an Israeli Memorial Day celebration at a synagogue in Texas.
?He looked at me and said, ?I?m a Christian Arab,??? recalls Weiser, who gave Srouji the Texas assignment. ?I said, ?Well, come and join and learn about your environment,? and he said OK. He was there sitting with a kippah in the synagogue and following everything.?
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Friday, January 20, 2017
The Navys 864 Million Underwater Drones Still Dont Work BusinessWeek
The Navys 864 Million Underwater Drones Still Dont Work BusinessWeek
- Pentagon test data show 24 major failures since September 2014
- Crippled Lockheed drones towed to port seven times this year
Remote Minehunting System
The U.S. Navy?s new Littoral Combat Ship would be ineffective at hunting for mines because an underwater drone made by Lockheed Martin Corp. that?s supposed to find them often fails to work, the Pentagon?s weapons-testing office found.
While mine-hunting is intended to be the primary combat mission of the ship, the drones required to detect underwater explosive devices from a safe distance have failed 24 times since September 2014, according to Navy test data provided to the Defense Department?s Office of Operational Test & Evaluation.
Most recently, the drones failed 14 times over 300 hours in a five-month round of preliminary trials at sea that ended Aug. 30, according to the data. Crippled drones were towed to port seven times, and the intense combat testing required for increased purchases has been delayed. The Navy plans to spend $864 million buying 54 drones from Lockheed, the biggest U.S. contractor.
Frank Kendall, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, has scheduled a Jan. 19 review of the drone?s reliability woes, the latest setback for the troubled Littoral Combat Ship program. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon?s director of combat testing, prepared a 41-page classified assessment dated Nov. 12 for the review.
An independent team named by the Navy also is reviewing the drone program because the service realizes ?reliability performance has not been acceptable,? Captain Thurraya Kent, a spokeswoman for the service, said in an e-mail.
Lockheed?s Response
Lockheed spokesman Joe Dougherty said in an e-mail that the drone ?exceeded or met key performance parameters during a Navy-led development test conducted in early 2015.?? He said the Remote Minehunting System is ?the only system on track for delivery that can fill? an ?imminent capability gap.?
Equipped with a mobile sonar made by Raytheon Co., the drone is supposed to provide the ship with a system that can spot underwater explosive devices without sailing near them, as current Avenger-class mine-hunting ships must do.
?We remain confident the RMS is the most mature system to identify and destroy mines,? Dougherty said. A Lockheed brochure posted online and dated 2014 says the drone ?meets or exceeds all key performance parameters and is available today.
?
Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an e-mail Tuesday that the new report ?only furthers my concerns about the testing and reliability performance of the Littoral Combat Ship?s troubled mine countermeasures capability. ?
The Arizona Republican said decisions over the next few months will set the course for U.S. maritime anti-mine capabilities for decades so?there should be no rush to failure.?
Previous Questions
The drone failures add to previous questions about how much value the U.S. will get from what?s now supposed to be a $23 billion program to build 32 Littoral Combat Ships in two versions made by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed and Austal Ltd. based in Henderson, Australia. Both versions depend on the drones to detect mines from a safe distance.
The Remote Minehunting System
The Navy spent $109 million buying the first eight drones, spare parts and logistics services from Lockheed in 2005. The drone was supposed to complete combat testing and be declared ready for combat by September of this year. Lockheed stands to gain more than $700 million in orders for the remaining 46 drones. That includes as much as $400 million in February for the next order of 18 that Kendall will review.
Gilmore, the testing chief, found there?s ?sufficient information available, based on testing to date, to conclude? the Littoral Combat Ship ?would not be operationally effective? or maintainable if deployed in combat with the current mine-sweeping modules, Marine Corps Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, Gilmore?s spokesman, said in an e-mail describing the study?s unclassified conclusions.
The system?s ?reliability remains far below what is needed to support? the mine-hunting mission, Rankine-Galloway said. It?s unclear whether the drone ?will ever achieve its reliability goals? of operating 75 hours between major failures, ?but given the history of the program, it may require more design changes than the Navy has been considering,? Rankine-Galloway said.
The Navy?s program to date ?has not substantially grown the reliability,? he said. The conclusion was based on data showing not only that critical mine-hunting systems were unreliable but also that the drone was vulnerable to mines and possessed limited communications capability.
Airborne System
Further, the Littoral Combat Ship?s separate, airborne-based AN/ASQ-235 mine neutralization system currently can?t disable ?most of the mines contained in the Navy?s own real-world threat scenarios,? Rankine-Galloway said. The system, which would be deployed on MH-60S helicopters, is intended to destroy the mines found by the drones.
Kent, the Navy spokeswoman, said the mine-hunting system ?has demonstrated the ability to meet operational requirements.? Still, ?reliability performance has not been acceptable during the most recent? evaluation.
Since September 2014, the drone has experienced 24 ?operational mission failures? blamed on poor workmanship, design deficiencies, wear and tear or training procedures, Kendall was told Nov. 3 in a memo from David C. Brown, his deputy for development testing.
?Considering the focused effort put into improving? the drone?s reliability since 2010, the latest poor performance ?puts into question whether the current? design ?will ever meet the Navy?s reliability requirement,? Brown wrote.
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Thursday, December 8, 2016
The Church Collection Plate Goes Digital BusinessWeek
The Church Collection Plate Goes Digital BusinessWeek
There really is an app for everything
Dylan Ciamacco, 25, first went to the Los Angeles outpost of international megachurch C3 as a teen. His mom thought a lot of the young people there?in skinny jeans, chunky sweaters, and leather jackets?dressed like him. He?d emerged recently from a ?sick? (as in awesome) atheist phase, he says, mocking himself, and was looking to go back to church.
A typical service, Ciamacco says, opens with a band that would fit in at the Coachella festival, were it not for the Jesus lyrics: ?What a savior, my Redeemer/Friend of sinners, one like me.? (In one podcast, a pastor, sermonizing about society?s obsession with markers of achievement, uses an Internet-approved term of endearment to channel his audience, asking, ?When am I going to get my own bae??) At the end, a member of the ?worship team? will call on parishioners to tithe and pass the collection plate. But not all people reach into their wallet. Many take out their phone instead.
Ciamacco gives each week, using the Tithe.ly app. It takes fewer than five taps, and built-in geolocation means he can contribute at any of the 1,000 churches that subscribe?a feature that?s especially useful around holidays like Easter, when many people travel. Tithe.ly lets worshipers set up automatic recurring payments, but because Ciamacco?s paycheck fluctuates with his work as a freelance video producer, he tithes on demand?usually about 10 percent of whatever he?s brought in.
?We see people giving all times of day and night?
Although churches are saying a collective hallelujah that a new generation of devotees is filling pews, a youthful congregation has its limitations. Twentysomethings might find religion, but not a lot of them have found that six-figure job. They don?t carry cash?and what, exactly, is a personal check? Still, about a quarter of them use mobile payment apps such as PayPal and Venmo regularly, according to a recent Accenture survey. And enormously popular services such as Seamless, Uber, and amazon,com have normalized one-tap payments?91 percent of millennials use their phone to buy something at least once a month, market-research firm Statista says.
Tithe.ly is one of a handful of apps leveraging that spending behavior for the good of the church. Pushpay, which about 3,000 congregations employ, works similarly; worshipers decide whether to donate to a general budget or a specific program the institution designates. Another, EasyTithe, features a text-to-give option. It also provides technology for a Square-like credit card reader to await the faithful in church lobbies. Regardless of which app a congregation chooses, the point is convenience. ?We call it frictionless giving,? says Dean Sweetman, Tithe.ly?s co-founder and a former minister at C3 Atlanta. He designed the app with C3?s wallet-light clientele in mind: ?We see people giving all times of day and night. Nothing stands in the way.?
Apparently not. Churches using tithing apps report they see more donations, more often, from more people. (Subscribing establishments either pay a monthly fee or allow the app to collect a cut of each gift. Tithe.ly lets donators cover this; Pushpay promises churches a 5 percent spike in donations or their money back.) But getting parishes with pastors and members older than 40 to sign on has been more Job-like. Tradition is hard to overcome. ?In some churches, if you let the plate go by and you don?t put something in, you feel a little guilty,? says Brad Hill, who works in platform services at EasyTithe. To combat that, some congregations print out cards that say, ?I gave online.?
Ciamacco?s friend James Crocker, also 25, says it?s much more awkward to donate the old way: ?Putting your personal credit card details on a piece of paper and leaving it there? For millennials, there?s no way.? Ciamacco agrees, if for different reasons. ?I was so anti writing my name on an envelope?it was a holier-than-thou thing,? he says. ?When Tithe.ly came out, I was like, ?Hell, yeah.???
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Sunday, November 27, 2016
The App That Helps Divorced Parents Fight About Money BusinessWeek
The App That Helps Divorced Parents Fight About Money BusinessWeek
SupportPay wants to be part of your life, even if your ex doesnt.
Sheri Atwood is the rare Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose pitch includes intimate details about her family?namely, how it was broken up. Twice.
?My parents had a horrific divorce,? says the 36-year-old former Symantec Corp. executive. ?It felt like the only time they communicated was in court?and when it had to do with money.?
Atwood.
Her own divorce years later, and the fact money became a constant refrain in its aftermath, gave her the idea for SupportPay. The app helps parents split the costs of raising children and review expenses productively when they disagree, rather than, say, having it out on the front lawn.
Divorced right after her 12-year-old daughter was born, Atwood recalls being surprised by how even minor money matters could fray dealings with her ex-husband. Her daughter?s school levies fines on parents whose kids arent picked up on time?$5 for every five minutes after 6 p.m. and an additional $5 for every tardy minute after 6:15 p.m. While tuition is her responsibility, school pick-ups are his. The cost of too many late arrivals, like other incidentals, could quickly become infuriating, she says.
With SupportPay, parents can upload a receipt, send the ex a bill, and ?never have a conversation,? Atwood says. The app is designed to forestall the resentment that can quietly build between divorced parents who might otherwise be on the same page, at least as far as the kids are concerned.
Child-support agreements typically require one parent to pay the other a set amount?often twice a month?for such basics as food, clothing, and shelter. SupportPay can automatically manage those payments through PayPal. Legal agreements usually require parents to split further costs, from extracurricular activities and child care to medical expenses, as they arise. These can create the most conflict: Does little Liam really need a math tutor? Is his soccer summer camp worth $700 a week?
While a judge has final say, the app is designed to prevent such squabbles from going that far. It lets parents dispute expenses before paying them, although they have to provide reasons and propose alternatives. Olivia Haugher, a mother of three who uses SupportPay, says her ex-husband makes use of the dispute function, though the issue ?usually does get resolved.? She contends that he objected to a bill for their 17-year-old son?s school trip to Costa Rica. They had agreed to split the cost, but it ended up totaling more than she had calculated. Once she used the app to explain the reasons?her son needed spending money and a stipend for his sponsor family?her ex sent the money.
The app stops such fights from happening near the kids, Haugher said?and ends the frustration when someone forgets their checkbook or misses an e-mail. ?It basically has helped us communicate better,? she says. And because she can send receipts and other detailed information through the app, ?he gets to see how expensive the kids are.
The SupportPay app
When parents don?t pay child support, ?it?s usually not about money,? says Ryan Falvey, managing director at the Center for Financial Services Innovation. Last year, the Chicago-based nonprofit named SupportPay winner of a competition among digital services that help low- and middle-income families better manage finances. When it comes to child support, Falvey says parents often just want to know where the money is going, in order to make sure it?s going to their kids. ?This might be where technology can solve things in a big way, just by connecting people to information,? he says.
Launched two years ago, SupportPay had 36,000 parent users in January, up from 12,000 in March 2015. It?s currently the only product of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ittavi Inc., which has nine full-time employees and four contractors. The company, which expects former couples to send $900 million through the platform this year, was started with $3 million in seed money from venture capital firms that include Draper Associates, Salesforce, Aspect Ventures, and Fenway Summer Ventures. Its currently raising as much as $5 million in series A funding aimed at sustaining the company until it?s profitable, said Atwood, who is chief executive officer.
Use of SupportPay was free until September, when the company started charging. Some 23 percent of users chose to pay for premium versions starting at $120 a year, the company says. Paying that much allows them to dispute an exs expenses and store records over the long term. Another $36 a year gets users the ?legal? version, which lets them make records available to divorce attorneys or mediators. A ?lite? version, which keeps only six months of records, is still free.
Records are crucial if divorced couples end up back in court. Payers of child support must be able to prove theyve made every required payment, or judges can demand they catch up or even garnish their wages, says Derek Austin, a divorce attorney with Austin & Plate P.C. in San Jose, Calif., who has advised SupportPay.
SupportPay is hoping to become part of the divorce court infrastructure, getting itself included as part of child-support agreements. To that end, the company has built a ?family law network? of more than 3,200 divorce attorneys, mediators, judges, and financial advisers, up from about 500 in March. Austin touts the app as a less-harsh alternative to wage garnishment, but one that still ensures the money will arrive on time. ?When people have had a relationship and don?t any longer, paying money can be very hard to do,? Austin says. ?I use it as a tool to manage relationships.?
For many divorced couples, however, SupportPay is less a way to resolve disputes than a tool to organize lives complicated by a failed marriage. Andrew Williams, a father of four from Modesto, Calif., gets along well with his ex-wife but uses SupportPay to store and organize everything they share, including their divorce agreement and their children?s report cards and school bills. ?Now everything is centralized,? he says. ?There is no worry about losing a file,? as could have happened when his former spouse?s computer crashed recently.
Atwood says SupportPay is designed so parents can share as much or as little as they want with their exes. One planned enhancement would offer an easier way for parents to save together, connecting financial accounts to SupportPay while sharing only certain details. ?How do you save for college together when you don?t like each other?? Atwood asks.
Williams says he plans to remain a SupportPay customer even after July, when his youngest son turns 18 and child-support payments end. He and his ex will still be sharing the cost of the family dogs?a nine-year-old Pug and a five-year-old German Shepherd, both of which live with him.
For now, he says, ?I?m paying her child support, and she?s paying dog support."
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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
The 2016 Cadillac CTS V Is the Best Sedan America Can Offer BusinessWeek
The 2016 Cadillac CTS V Is the Best Sedan America Can Offer BusinessWeek
When was the last time you heard an engine and knew it was a Cadillac coming down the road?
Not lately, I?d imagine. The Escalade and ATS aren?t exactly the roaring type.
The 2016 Cadillac CTS-V sedan, on the other hand, is. Coming up the driveway or around a bend, that supercharged 6.2-liter V8 sounds like a grizzly bear.
It shouldn?t be too surprising. The third-generation CTS-V shares the same angry engine as the Corvette Z06. It gets 640 horsepower on its 8-speed, automatic, rear-wheel driver, with a 60-mile-per-hour sprint time of 3.6 seconds and an honest-to-goodness top speed of 200mph.
Pushing up the highway last week outside New York, the CTS-V ravaged the road wherever I pointed it. Push the gas and it?ll bound forward, all four corners at once, and devour asphalt as if it?s storing protein for a long winter ahead. It feels big and square to drive; this is no sport coupe. The rear-wheel drive feels powerful, if a little heavy, in a way that could soon define a nouveau Detroit opulence. This would be a good thing.
In fact, those stats put the CTS-V on par with the best sedans from Europe?the $94,100 BMW M5, the $101, 700 Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, the $141,300 Porsche Panamera Turbo. While it neither performs as excellently as the Panamera nor looks as elegant as the Benz, it belongs right in the thick of the group as the best sedan America can offer.
What You Can Get
The CTS-V is the high-performance version of the CTS sedan, Cadillac?s foray into the luxury sedan market that has been dominated by the Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, and, to a lesser extent, Lexus and Jaguar. There were two additional body styles besides the sedan?a coupe and a wagon, currently unavailable?and the three constitute Cadillac?s current best hope at full brand revitalization after years of stagnation. (Its formerly-of-Audi boss and upcoming XT5 will have a lot to do with it, too.)
Plenty has been said about the CTS-V?s abilities on the track. (Yes it has launch control; no, it doesn?t have an option for manual transmission.) The steering could be a little more responsive, but the performance traction management, magnetic ride control, limited-slip differential, and massive Brembo brakes manage the car with ease. You?re not going to do any acrobatics with this car (symbolically speaking, that is), but it is straightforward and eager, with body roll almost nil. There is no guile under this hood.
The real question is whether you?re going to want to drive it around town. Are you under the age of 40? If you are, Cadillac is hoping?betting?the answer is yes.
The Looks and the Price
The sticker price will be the first obstacle you?ll face: MSRP on the 2016 model is $84,000, but that number will quickly jump to $90,000-plus once you add certain essentials ($2,300 performance seats, $900 19-inch wheels, $595 red brake calipers). Are you okay with that? It still costs less than its German competitors, but it?s by far the most expensive car Caddy sells. Its entry price beats even the Escalade and is surpassed only by the Platinum edition of that SUV.
Next up is the face. How do you feel about angles? The CTS-V has high-intensity headlamps shaped like long triangles at front; the rear is characterized by a small sport spoiler tilted up at a 45-degree angle and a bottom fender pointing slightly out in the center, like an arrow or the roof of a house. The Cadillac badge just above it has been blown up, sans wreath, more than in previous years?quite the enormous bit of Americana.
Look at the car straight-on, and you?ll see a narrow lattice front grille and long, horizontal air slats that sit between lines bulging up in the carbon fiber hood to accommodate the engine underneath. They form the shape of an H before shooting back past the dorsal fin toward the rear of the car. Steel quad tailpipes at the very back hint at the beautiful sound potential within. (While the angular side mirrors complement the effect, they don?t afford enough visibility.) The look is edgy like a razor, rather than curved, as with the more feline Panamera. CTS-V looks pleasingly modern and unique. You won?t mistake this for anything but a Cadillac. I like it.
Inside the Machine
Inside the car is a different matter. The 8-inch touchscreen and interchangeable instrument cluster certainly look cool, but there?s nothing like repeatedly pushing the inept ?touch? screen buttons on the center console?which demand increasingly more frantic bumps in order to take any action?to make you feel insane. Trying to adjust something so simple as the volume proves distracting at best and dangerous at worst. The standard-issue heads-up display, heated mirrors, and auto-dimming mirrors provide some small solace, as do the curbside and rear-view cameras that help with parking.
You?ll find that Bluetooth, Bose surround sound, wireless charging, dual-zone climate settings, passive entry, and remote vehicle start are all standard, as they should be for a car in this price range. Cadillac also includes 20-way heated and ventilated seats in the front, though it would be better if they were totally leather, not just ?trimmed.? I am not a fan of ?suede? microfiber inserts along the seats and headliner; they feel soft, as if they should be in something a little more sedate, not something with such a serious, aggressive exterior. Other interior dichotomies include the sport alloy pedals that look race-worthy and come standard and the suede microfiber-covered steering wheel and shifter that cost $300 extra and seem out of place.
Still with me? Good. Here?s a further obstacle for you, one that has more to do with convenience than with cash. The car gets 14 miles per gallon in the city. Aside from the cost to your wallet (including the $1,000 federal gas-guzzler toll) and to the environment, that means you?ll be taking frequent stops to replenish fuel. I hate having to stop for gas?just get me in the car, and let?s go?and I suspect you feel the same. This is 2016, very nearly.
There is no excuse for producing such a thirsty turkey
How to Use It
I will note that while that a 14mpg rating lags behind the E63 AMG and even the $79,400 Corvette, it does no worse than the M5 and Panamera Turbo, and it beats the $89,000 Dodge Viper by 2mpg. It certainly beats anything even nearly comparable from the U.S. in terms of performance and practicality.
This is a real American sport sedan that will work admirably as a daily driver while more than keeping up with the Euro whips on the track. And so far, so good: Steve Martin, head of product communications at Cadillac, told me recently that sales of the CTS-V this year have ?far exceeded? initial expectations and that ?every single? one the company is building right now has someone?s name on it.
?It doesn?t look like that will change any time soon,? he said.
Indeed. If you can stomach the interior inconveniences and you want to get in early on something verging on American greatness, this is the one for you.
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