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I Restarted the Bredemarket Podcast…For Now

Almost a year ago I retreated from many of Bredemarket’s social channels, but I’ve slowly added some of them back.

Even the podcast.

For those of you who don’t remember the Bredemarket podcast, it consisted of short episodes (usually 1-2 minutes). When Spotify (the successor to Anchor) announced the elimination of its podcast creation capability, I wondered if it was worth it to continue with the podcast any more. Especially without the cool Jupiter sound effect.

Well, I just published a new episode with that outstanding podcast creation software package Voice Memos.

Here’s the latest episode (Spotify; it should be rolling out to other podcast platforms).

https://open.spotify.com/episode/62N3mcsezQlv5KHiJxUFz4?si=n4pDewegSzesnrz-3pIaZw

Apple Watch is a Passive Verb

(Imagen 3)

When Woz was building computers 50 years ago, he didn’t realize his successors would build medical devices that would receive FDA approval.

I touched on this earlier in my Thursday post about H.R. 238 and its proposal to use AI tools to write prescriptions.

But just in passing. Here’s a deeper, um, dive from May 2024.

“The FDA created the Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program to reduce uncertainty in device development.…Through MDDT, the FDA has created a portfolio of qualified tools that sponsors know the agency will accept without needing to reconfirm their suitability for use in a study.”

And now the Apple Watch is one of those qualified tools.

“Apple applied to get its AFib history feature qualified as a MDDT in December (2023). It is the first digital health technology qualified under the program.”

The advantage of using an Apple Watch to gather this data?

“Officials said the wearable can help address the challenges ‘by allowing for passive, opportunistic AFib burden estimation in a wearable form that is already familiar to Apple Watch users.’”

Medical measurements are often skewed by stress from the health experience itself. But if you’re already wearing an Apple Watch, and you always wear an Apple Watch, the passive nature of AFib data collection means you don’t even know you’re being measured.

Update on the Apple Vision Pro

(Image from Apple)

For Bredemarket’s first blog post in 2025, I’m updating a blog post from 2023 with updated information from Duncan Riley of SiliconANGLE.

“Apple Inc. may have ceased production of its first-generation Vision Pro headset after the product, which came to market in 2024, turned out to be a massive flop for the company.”

Riley cites a MacRumors post as his source. Why stop?

“Apple now has a sufficient number of Vision Pro units in its inventory to meet demand for the device’s remaining lifespan through to 2025.”

You may recall that I characterized the Apple Vision Pro as a technological biometric advance. But the difficulty and the expense of capturing irises has apparently prevented Vision Pro from achieving world domination.

Back to face, finger, and voice—with some exceptions.

Getting Around the Warring Standards (Lightning vs. USB-C)

I’ve talked about standards to death, but what do you do when there are two standards? Do you support standard 1, or standard 2?

Yes.

If you need to charge both USB-C and Lightning mobile devices, Native Union has the cable for you.

The ultimate cable you’ve been searching for is finally here. Solve all your power needs with a faster, more sustainable, more durable cable. Designed for superior convenience and versatility, this unique 2-in-1 connector houses both USB-C and Lightning connectors in a single head and is strong enough to withstand the most active all-day, all-device use.

Belt Cable Duo (USB-C to USB-C & Lightning). From Native Union website.

As you can see from the image above (upper left corner), you can choose either the Lightning adapter or the USB-C adapter.

Sounds great…

…except that Apple is slowly discontinuing use of Lightning, to comply with European Union regulations in 2022. The 2023 iPhone 15 doesn’t offer Lightning at all, and over the next several years Lightning will go away as older Apple devices become obsolete.

But for now it’s a good cable.

Dr. Jones MD, NPE

I have a telehealth appointment next week with a medical professional whom I have previously met. And I assume she will participate in the telehealth appointment.

In the future, of course, she may not.

Way back in April 2013, I wrote a tymshft piece entitled “You will still take a cab to the doctor’s office. For a while.” It speculated about a future 2023 medical appointment in which the patient took a driverless cab to a medical facility. In the office, the patient was examined by remote staff…or so she thought.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve gotten used to the procedure,” replied the friendly voice. “I hope you like me!”

“I do,” said Edith. “You’ve been very helpful. But I’ve always wondered exactly WHERE you were. If you were in Los Angeles, or in Mississippi, or perhaps in India or China, or perhaps even in one of the low-cost places such as Chad. If you don’t mind my asking, exactly where ARE you?”

“I don’t mind answering the question,” replied the friendly voice, “and I hope you don’t take my response the wrong way, but I’m not really a person as you understand the term. I’m actually an application within the software package that runs the medical center. But my programmers want me to tell you that they’re really happy to serve you, and that Stanford sucks.” The voice paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, Edith. You have to forgive the programmers – they’re Berkeley grads.”

“Oh,” said Edith after a moment. “This is something new. I’m used to it in banking, but I didn’t realize that a computer program could run an entire medical center. Well…who picks up the trash?”

“That’s an extra question! Just kidding,” replied the friendly voice. “Much of the trash pickup is automated, but we do have a person to supervise the operation. Ron Hussein. You actually know him – he was your cab driver in 2018 when you came here.”

Re-reading this 2013 piece, I was amused at three things I got wrong.

First, Google, Facebook, and Apple did NOT merge to form Gaceapple, “the important merger that saved the tech industry in the United States from extinction.” American tech firms are still powerful…for now.
Second, my assumption of cab companies adopting driverless cars assumed the continued existence of cab companies. Ride share services have reduced the presence of traditional companies dramatically.
Third, my assumption that medical firms would sink untold sums of money into centralized automated medical examination rooms could be questioned…especially for routine appointments like Edith’s. Why not just let Edith’s smartphone—perhaps with a single attachment—gather the data?

Of course, there are medical ethics questions that underlie this entire discussion of remote telehealth and the use of non-person entities (NPEs). And we are struggling with those right now.

Image of Dr. Jones MD, NPE from Google Gemini.

Contraction

While the words “consolidation” and “contraction” have a similar sound and are often linked, they are actually two separate conditions, as you can see in the identity/biometric industry.

Consolidation occurs when separate entities become one. Ping Identity and ForgeRock (Ping Identity). Sagem Morpho and Motorola’s Biometric Business Unit (MorphoTrak). Digital Biometrics and Identix and Viisage and Visionics and Iridian and ComnetiX and don’t forget the ID part of Digimarc and many others (L-1 Identity Solutions).
Contraction occurs when an existing entity becomes smaller. Hikvision’s reported layoff of 1,000 employees is a recent and relevant example.

“Ah, but Hikvision is a special case,” you may be saying. “They’re linked to human rights abuses and sanctioned by Western governments. Many identity/biometric players are not sanctioned.”

But I’m not hearing loud celebrations from these other firms.

I’ve privately heard three separate stories, one of which I just heard on Monday, involving major identity/biometric companies. All three stories involve firms that are not sanctioned. In all three cases the firms perform major business with Western governments. And all three stories involve contraction which would have been unthinkable a mere five years ago.

Not too long ago I compiled a list of four significant events that positively impacted the identity/biometric industry. That list included 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombings, Apple’s Touch ID, and COVID.

I’m starting to wonder whether that last event was, in the long term, a net positive or a net negative.

(Tumbleweed image public domain)

Electric Feel

Installation of iOS 18 has increased my phone’s battery life. But not for the reasons you may think.

To install iOS 18 on my older 64GB IPhone I had to offload or outright remove many apps, including most of my game apps.

One of those game apps was Niantic’s most recent location-based app, Peridot. Like many other Niantic games, Peridot encourages outdoor activity—and heavy smartphone use while playing the game.

Today was the first day that I took my usual Saturday morning walk WITHOUT Peridot on my phone. Ordinarily, my phone desperately needs a charge at the end of my walk. Today, despite filming a number of video clips for a personal October video, I returned home with over 75% battery remaining.

But with a paucity of virtual sandwiches, flowers, and tomatoes.

Ofcom and the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership

The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) consists of “leading technology companies,” including Apple, Google, Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Microsoft (and its LinkedIn subsidiary), TikTok, and others.

The DTSP obviously has its views on Ofcom’s enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act.

Which, as Biometric Update notes, boils down to “the industry can regulate itself.”

Here’s how the DTSP stated this in its submission to Ofcom:

DTSP appreciates and shares Ofcom’s view that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to trust and safety and to protecting people online. We agree that size is not the only factor that should be considered, and our assessment methodology, the Safe Framework, uses a tailoring framework that combines objective measures of organizational size and scale for the product or service in scope of assessment, as well as risk factors.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

We’ll get to the “Safe Framework” later. DTSP continues:

Overly prescriptive codes may have unintended effects: Although there is significant overlap between the content of the DTSP Best Practices Framework and the proposed Illegal Content Codes of Practice, the level of prescription in the codes, their status as a safe harbor, and the burden of documenting alternative approaches will discourage services from using other measures that might be more effective. Our framework allows companies to use whatever combination of practices most effectively fulfills their overarching commitments to product development, governance, enforcement, improvement, and transparency. This helps ensure that our practices can evolve in the face of new risks and new technologies.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

But remember that the UK’s neighbors in the EU recently prescribed that USB-3 cables are the way to go. This not only forced DTSP member Apple to abandon the Lightning cable worldwide, but it affects Google and others because there will be no efforts to come up with better cables. Who wants to fight the bureaucratic battle with Brussels? Or alternatively we will have the advanced “world” versions of cables and the deprecated “EU” standards-compliant cables.

So forget Ofcom’s so-called overbearing approach and just adopt the Safe Framework. Big tech will take care of everything, including all those age assurance issues.

From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

DTSP’s September 2023 paper on age assurance documents a “not overly prescriptive” approach, with a lot of “it depends” discussion.

Incorporating each characteristic comes with trade-offs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Highly accurate age assurance methods may depend on collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID. Some methods that may be economical may have the consequence of creating inequities among the user base. And each service and even feature may present a different risk profile for younger users; for example, features that are designed to facilitate users meeting in real life pose a very different set of risks than services that provide access to different types of content….

Instead of a single approach, we acknowledge that appropriate age assurance will vary among services, based on an assessment of the risks and benefits of a given context. A single service may also use different
approaches for different aspects or features of the service, taking a multi-layered approach.
From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

So will Ofcom heed the DTSP’s advice and say “Never mind. You figure it out”?

Um, maybe not.

The 21st Century’s Four Revolutionary Biometric Events

I define a revolutionary biometric event as something that COMPLETELY TRANSFORMS the biometric industry.

For me, the four events that have revolutionized biometrics in this century (so far) include:

The September 2001 use of commercial planes in a terrorist attack.
The April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
The September 2013 introduction of Touch ID on the Apple iPhone.

From Apple, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201371

The 2020 (and beyond) COVID-19 pandemic.

If you want to learn WHY I regard these four events as revolutionary, and why I DON’T regard the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro as revolutionary, see my June 2023 post.

Android mobile driver’s licenses? It’s complicated.

At least in the United States, the mobile driver’s license world is fragmented.

Because driver’s license issuance in the U.S. is a state and not a federal responsibility, each state has to develop its own mobile driver’s license implementation. Subject to federal and international standards, of course.

To date there have been two parties helping the states with this:

mDL vendors such as Envoc and IDEMIA, who work with the states to create mDLs.
Operating system vendors such as Apple and Google, who work with the states to incorporate mDLs in smartphone wallets.

But because the Android ecosystem is more fragmented than the iOS ecosystem, we now have a third party that is involved in mDLs. In addition to mDL vendors and operating system vendors, we also have really large smartphone providers.

From https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-idemia-bring-mobile-drivers-licenses-samsung-wallet-arizona-iowa-first-states-rollout/

Enter Samsung:

Samsung Electronics America today announced it is bringing mobile driver’s licenses and state IDs to Samsung Wallet. Arizona and Iowa will be the first states to offer a mobile version of its driver’s license to their residents. The update expands the Samsung Wallet experience by adding a convenient and secure way to use state-issued IDs and driver’s licenses
From https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-idemia-bring-mobile-drivers-licenses-samsung-wallet-arizona-iowa-first-states-rollout/

(For those who have seen prior references to Samsung in the Bredemarket blog, rest assured that this information is public and Samsung won’t get harmed if you feed it to ChatGPT or Bard or whoever.)

In this particular case Samsung is workin g with IDEMIA (the mDL provider for Arizona and Iowa), but Samsung announced that it is working with other states and with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

While there are underlying standards (most notably ISO/IEC 18013-5, previously discussed here) that govern the implementation of mobile driver’s licenses, there is still a dizzying array of options.

From https://www.yourtango.com/201168184/facebook-relationship-status-what-does-its-complicated-mean

On a personal note, I’m still working on validating my driver’s license for California’s pilot mDL program. It probably didn’t help that I renewed my physical driver’s license right in the middle of the mDL validation process.