New Rule: Congressmen Who Thought Iraq Had WMDs Can’t Talk About NSA Effectiveness

Senator Saxby Chambliss is either a blind war hawk or is deliberately misleading the public. Last week, after the National Security Agency had intercepted an al-Qaida conference call plotting attacks against U.S. embassies, Chambliss claimed it was proof that mass surveillance programs were effective. But the AP reports that the NSA’s controversial phone and Internet monitoring programs “played no part in detecting the initial tip.”

The press should have known — and reported on — the fact that Chambliss had a history of hawkish interpretations of intelligence reports after he voted for the Iraq War in 2002. Indeed, the most ardent defenders of the NSA are exactly those members of Congress who wrongly believed we needed to invade Iraq after believing that there was an imminent threat from Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Since the public can’t scrutinize classified documents, we have to trust that elected representatives are capable of critically evaluating intelligence reports. Anyone who voted for the Iraq War has lost the public’s trust and shouldn’t be allowed to comment on the NSA — without getting hammered by the press and party leaders.

It’s not just Republicans who voted for the Iraq War. “Please know that it is equally frustrating to me, as it is to you, that I cannot provide more detail on the value these programs provide,” said Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the NSA’s most ardent supporters. Feinstein argues that NSA surveillance prevented the Najibullah Zazi 2009 New York subway bombing, but public documents reveal that it was local law enforcement that got the first tip during the course of searching his co-conspirators’ computers. Feinstein was wrong about the impending threat of Saddam Hussein in 2002, so why should we believe her now?

Feinstein’s Senate Intelligence Committee colleague, Ron Wyden, who voted against the Iraq War, has seen the exact same intelligence reports on the NSA and concluded there is no evidence mass surveillance was critical to stopping attacks. “I’ve seen zero evidence it is needed,” he tweeted

In a public statement, Wyden further argued, “Saying that ‘these programs’ have disrupted ‘dozens of potential terrorist plots’ is misleading if the bulk phone records collection program is actually providing little or no unique value.”

Perhaps we should heed Wyden’s advice. Back in 2002, during the ramp-up to the Iraq War, he wrote:

“First, I am not convinced, regarding a clear and present threat, Saddam Hussein currently imposes a clear and present threat to the domestic security of the Nation. While my service on the Senate Intelligence Committee has left me convinced of Iraq’s support of terrorism, suspicious of its ties to al-Qaida, I have seen no evidence, acts, or involvement in the planning or execution of the vicious attacks of 9/11.”

Voting for or against the Iraq war should have permanent consequences for each member’s reputation, and the press needs to qualify the statements of our elected officials every time they speak on intelligence issues.

Yet, a member’s vote on the Iraq War isn’t completely sufficient for us to trust them, either. Representatives can be influenced as much by personal convictions as the political calculations of re-election.

As a result, two former judges of the court charged with approving NSA requests, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), have proposed a “public advocate” — a lawyer specially appointed to defend civil liberties. This independent advocate would be free of both the military hierarchy and the political machinations of Congress. We hope Congress will let this advocate speak to the American people and voice his own confidence in the value of our intelligence systems.

If both an advocate of the people and a critic of the Iraq War saw evidence that the NSA had, indeed, foiled attacks, citizens would have all the confidence they needed to make a more informed choice.

Until then, Feinstein and Chambliss need to step out of the limelight and let someone with credibility talk. And if they dare to keep on talking, the press shouldn’t let them get away with it.

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Harry Houdini, Lock Picking, And Entrepreneurship

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is a contributor to TechCrunch. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

It’s summer here in Silicon Valley, and for my column this month, I’ll try to finally polish and publish some of the old posts that have been collecting dust in my “drafts” folder. Usually, I try to make the column timely, but not this time. Almost two years ago now, my wife and I visited a museum in San Francisco to an exhibit called “Art of Magic,” honoring Harry Houdini. I dragged my wife to the museum to see this because I had been watching “Pawn Stars” (favorite show!) on the History Channel and was obsessed with the show. In one episode, a customer came in with original handcuffs and a straightjacket used by Houdini. The show’s characters all marveled at the legend of Houdini, the nostalgia, the myths. While all this information is available on Wikipedia, the art exhibit highlighted an interesting them: Houdini’s masterful command of new mediums and platforms to manipulate and leverage his audience’s deepest hopes and fears.

Reflecting on that experience, and as it’s the annual time for Defcon, where the art of lock-picking is a time-honored tradition, I wanted to cast Houdini in a different light and showcase how some of his techniques could, in fact, be leveraged by modern-day entrepreneurs. It may be a stretch, but please bear with me.

The common thread weaved through most of Houdini’s famous tricks seemed rooted in the juxtaposition of his audience’s fear of death versus their hope for liberation. The part of Houdini’s history that impresses me most is how and why some of his tricks became iconic signature moves. For instance, he rose to fame as the “Handcuff King,” setting up elaborate schemes to unchain himself from all sorts of iron shackles, but he didn’t just adopt handcuffs as some ruse — it turns out that, as a young boy growing up poor, he took a job as an apprentice with a local locksmith to earn extra money for his struggling family.

Houdini also became famous by taking himself handcuffed and dipping into water, invoking a fear of drowning — he had studied old waterboarding-like contraptions used to torture people in the middle ages, and new the audience would be captivated by the sight. Or, randomly, Houdini visited a psych ward early in his career and happened to see a few patients violently trying to free themselves from their straightjackets, and after practicing escaping from a similar jacket for nearly a decade, he finally unveiled his new trick, usually in public squares, hanging upside down, his head dangling above the crowds, freeing himself and stretching out his hands in victory.

I am still processing why Houdini is so fascinating to me. Pictures like these, where a crowd fixates on him with their undivided attention, are truly incredible. I think Houdini interests me because, as a performer, he captivated his audience and was so precise with his choreography, enabling him to tap into very deep parts of the human psyche with a scalpel’s precision. In a way, this is what the great entrepreneurs do. They are deeply motivated and practice for years. They are in tune with their customers hopes and fears. And, there’s a bit of magic in all of the myths they create. It’s why pictures of a young Steve Jobs sitting on a wood floor with one light stand and some books still continue to fly around the web and evoke both nostalgia and disbelief.

The reason I originally drafted this post is because, almost two years ago, after visiting this exhibit, I was hanging out with an investor and former founder/operator in the Valley who used to go to Defcon as a teenager and pick locks all the time. I told him about Houdini, and he shared stories about how lock-picking was one of the first types of hacks he did as he began to fiddle with computers over two decades ago. We traded a few emails that week and, in one exchange, he asked me what entrepreneurs and investors could learn about Houdini’s background, his rise, his creativity, and his stage presence. Because, in a way, to the crowd, great entrepreneurship looks like magic, a mix of light-bending and mirror tricks that together form a new reality. In this way, magic and making are more alike than they are different.

Here was my email response to the question:


The Power of Cumulative Effects: Houdini’s lock-picking as a boy, his experience in the psych ward and seeing the straightjackets, and his research around the magic and fear of drowning all led him to craft a product (his “act”) that combined all three to prey upon primal fears and hypnotize his audience. In retrospect, Houdini’s signature acts now seem obvious, but one has to wonder if he could have brought all the elements together without having those strong experiences earlier in his life.


Developing Expertise Through Focus: Houdini was a student of magic, amassing over 4,000 books on the subject, the largest ever collection of that genre in the world. It reminds me of when DJ Shadow was becoming famous, how he would scoop up and buy vinyl record collections and build a stockpile years ahead of his competition.


Idle Hands Are The Devil’s Play Things: Even as a child, Houdini could’ve futzed around, but given his family’s financial troubles, he remained active and enterprising, eventually landing an apprenticeship in a profession (locksmithing) that would lay the foundation for his signature moves. He kept moving, kept occupied, and kept in motion.


“Win The Crowd” – Houdini’s genius was in combining all the elements, physical and psychological, to put his audience into a trance, to fixate all of their attention on him. That is what the greats do, their work draws in all of our attention, and we stand in awe watching instead of doing. It is what separates the few greats from everyone else. Houdini was a master at winning the crowd over. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from a movie. In Gladiator, Proximus says to Maximus, “I was not the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom.”

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30 New Franchises

Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007. He works with companies like Lyft, Dwolla, Platfora, App.net and Quirky. Follow him on his blog or on Twitter @W_ScottWeiss.

There is a perfect storm of three distinct disruptive forces that has the potential to topple nearly every major enterprise software incumbent. And the traditional approach of dealing with technology shifts — through acquisition — looks like it’s headed toward failure. As such, there is an unprecedented opportunity to create many new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises that are on the right side of these forces and are willing to go the distance in the face of ridiculously high acquisition offers.

Let’s examine these forces individually.

Software as a service (SaaS): Seemingly a little long in the tooth as a disruptor, SaaS has finally gone mainstream in the Global 2000. The primary disruptive force of this technology is the speed of innovation. The feedback loop is especially powerful: As opposed to using focus groups and surveys to figure out how users are interacting with the product, SaaS companies can see what their customers are doing real-time by capturing and analyzing every click. They quickly extend their products through a “cell division” that continuously builds out and A/B tests the features that are getting the most engagement. On-premise and client (PC) software-based product cycles can’t possibly compete here as new releases are typically pushed 10 times faster at 45-60 days vs. 18-24 months.

There’s always one version/code base so it’s much easier to support, patch bugs, and roll out new features to all customers at once. The old joke of “How did God create the world in seven days? He didn’t have an installed base!” certainly applies – but SaaS also demands entirely new skills sets associated with running a 24×7 services business. Dev/Ops, customer care centers, network operations and delivering uptime via failover, mirroring and hot backups are all new and essential. It’s easy to see how the early SaaS pioneers gained so much ground with this innovation but even they are unprepared and poorly architected to take advantage of the additional disruptors that have hit more recently…

Cloud infrastructure: As I detailed in a prior post, “The Building is the New Server,” the humongous Internet powers, Facebook and Google, are literally breaking new ground in re-imagining the design, components and cost of running a hyper-scale data center. The cloud infrastructure they are pioneering has the primary disruptive force of massively driving down cost. Facebook, for instance, is experimenting on the bleeding edge of solving the new cost bottlenecks of power and cooling. I recently read that it actually rained inside one of their datacenters.

The cloud service providers (CSPs) are following their lead using commodity components, open source software, data center design and testing software defined storage and networking products to enjoy the same, devastating cost curve. The corporate datacenters (aka “private clouds”) will slowly disappear as Global 2000 companies migrate to these irresistible new cost curves. Don’t be fooled that security and reliability concerns will keep large enterprises away — as the CEO of IronPort, I watched in horror as large enterprises started pointing their treasured Mail Exchange (MX) records to cloud services like Postini – a much superior and vastly cheaper cloud based architecture versus our perimeter appliances. And email is the most sensitive and mission critical of applications…

Mobile: About two years ago, all of our consumer companies went through an “Oh shit!” moment with mobile. One year mobile was 10 percent of traffic and the next year, when everyone was expecting ~20 percent, it was 30 percent on its way to 50 percent. Facebook, for instance, famously bought Instagram for $1 billion and then continued their pursuit of talent to redesign for mobile. The new mobile operating systems and devices are proliferating an entirely new interaction and design paradigm that has the primary disruptive force of a reimagined user interface.

The innovative use of touch/gestures (e.g. pull down, swipe, pinch etc.) pioneered by the consumer applications will become de rigor for enterprise, as well. Although it’s still early, the mobile sensors (e.g. GPS, accelerometer, video etc.) will also become integral and spawn new innovations in the enterprise as they have enabled new consumer franchises like Lyft and Instagram.

The No. 1 problem facing so many of the startups I talk to is hiring the design talent (e.g. mobile app, front-end engineering and user interface) to take advantage of this trend. In addition to being in ridiculously high demand, most of these people are “arteests” who eschew just cash and stock as incentives because they want to work for a purpose and in an environment where design is an overarching priority/core competency – not something that is grafted on afterwards. These environments are hard to find.

So exactly why won’t these big incumbents make it to the other side? There are just too many things changing at once. Beyond the technology changes, there are structural impediments as well. The incumbent sales forces have become farmers instead of hunters. They still sell on relationships (e.g. A round of golf, anyone?) and bundling/discounting instead of product attributes. They sell to the CIO instead of the line of business buyer who is making the decision. The quotas and incentives are too different. The accounting systems don’t speak recurring billing and revenue. Ugh – it’s just too much change.

A handful of exits have been priced based on a NTM revenue average of 11X vs. around 4X for the rest of SaaS companies. Examples include Workday, Splunk, ServiceNow, Marketo and Tableau. Not to mention the SuccessFactors deal (done at 11X) has officially kicked off the next wave of consolidation. On the private side, companies like New Relic, AppDynamics and ZenDesk have seen private transaction multiples of between 9X and 11X.

There is outright panic going on right now at the large incumbents as they pay ridiculous premiums for the early SaaS companies. And so why won’t these acquisitions pan out? Most of the early SaaS companies weren’t architected to take advantage of the cloud infrastructure cost advantages and most completely missed the boat on mobile. It’s hard enough for new, cool enterprise startups to hire the necessary design talent, but the large incumbents really have no hope.

Next Up

As I’ve said, there is a perfect storm of three distinct disruptive forces brewing which has the potential to erupt into a new multi-billion-dollar wave of enterprise franchises. In particular, there will be at least 30 new enterprise franchises that will go the distance and resist high acquisition offers, as they either supply or ride this trio of disruptors to dominance.

Among others, the new suppliers are companies like Cumulus Networks, Okta, New Relic and Nimble Storage. The “riders” are awesome trifecta companies like Box, Evernote, Base, Expensify and Tidemark.

Where will these 30 New Franchises come from? A double investment cycle in SaaS, as the large incumbents buy the early SaaS pioneers and fumble them, will pave the way. Like Lenny from “Of Mice and Men,” they will smother these companies with too much negative attention, mismatched sales forces and misunderstood business models. Following a short vesting period, the product and management talent — who are used to working at a completely different pace — will ultimately leave the incumbent, resulting in a bevy of entrepreneurs that roll out to start even more of these franchises.

I can’t wait to meet them!

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E-Cig Companies Will Never Promise To Help You Quit Smoking

Two or three years ago, e-cigarattes were exotic. These strange sticks, their ends LED-lit and their owners expelling odorless smoke – “It’s vapor!” – would look as futuristic as a Replicant’s food injector. They gave the smoker nebulous powers, namely the ability to smoke on a plane, and they were expensive and hard to find.

Now, they’re everywhere. Even Leonardo DiCaprio was caught sucking on one on set. But are they safe? And what will they really do for the hard-core smoker?

Today the e-cigarette industry is worth around $3 billion globally, outpacing the entire stop-smoking industry including patches, gum, and other addiction killers.

Yet unlike smoking cessation products, which are sold over the counter in pharmacies, e-cigarette companies will never, ever make a claim that e-cigs will treat smoking addiction. In fact, these companies claim the opposite in their marketing materials, citing that they are not intended “to treat, prevent or cure any disease or condition.” This is the same language that appears on other dubious health concoctions

Even though it seems obvious that e-cigarettes are meant to help people tame their addiction to analog cigarettes — and there is even anecdotal evidence suggesting they are more effective than smoking cessation therapies — the claims made by these companies will partially determine the fate of the entire industry.

But before we get into the regulation of tomorrow, let’s look at the history of the tobacco industry.
A Brief History

In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was created under President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1938, the FDA passed the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, giving the federal government jurisdiction over products like foods, medicines, and other substances that could harm the public health.

For years, that didn’t include tobacco products. It was only in 2009, under President Barack Obama, that the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA) was put into place, giving the FDA the power to regulate the Tobacco Industry.

Before this, big tobacco was allowed to experiment with new products and market their wares however they pleased, with regulation coming from state governments. In the 1950s, the realities of smoking were just beginning to show their ugly head. We began to realize there was a clear connection between smoking cigarettes and developing cancer and other fatal illnesses.

So what did the industry do? They created something called “harm reduction products”, which were meant to be “safer” than your usual cigarette. In the beginning, this simply meant adding a filter. By the 80′s, companies were taking it a step further.

RJ Reynolds introduced a type of smokeless cigarette called Premier, which seemed to disgust everyone and eventually went off the market, only to resurface itself as the Eclipse. The American Cancer Society claimed that the Eclipse line, which went on sale in 2000, was not as safe as the marketing campaign suggested, as it still delivered carcinogens and other harmful substances.

In other words, harm reduction has long been a strategy for Big Tobacco to keep sales up in the face of… well, cancer. Keeping that in mind, it’s not too much of a surprise that harm reduction products have never really taken off. Until now.

E-Cigarettes and Harm Reduction

In public perception, smoking cessation products are the good guys. These are the products like Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette that are sold by pharmacies only, used for a temporary period, and regulated as treatment and/or therapy. I quit smoking for a while with the help of the patch, and got more congratulations during that period then I did graduating from NYU, winning State Championships in volleyball, or landing a job at TechCrunch.

Harm reduction products, on the other hand, seem like ploys. Many people hear “safer” and “cigarette” in the same sentence and assume it’s yet another trick to increase sales.

But e-cigarettes are different. The movement wasn’t led by Big Tobacco. The e-cigarette industry began to boom in 2007 led by hundreds of smaller companies. Eventually, Big Tobacco took notice. Unlike the patch, or the gums, e-cigarettes actually made a dent (a small, but noticeable one) in cigarette sales.

Rather than fight it, major tobacco companies are now investing in e-cigarette offerings. Lorillard, the maker of Newport, Maverick and Old Gold cigarettes acquired Blu eCigs for $135 million in April 2012. Reynolds American, which makes Camel, Pall Mall, Kool and others, is now selling its own Vuse e-cigarettes in select cities as a trial run. And Altria (formerly Phillip Morris), seller of Marlboros, now sells an e-cigarette line named MarkTen.

This has pushed distribution of e-cigarettes far beyond what small, independent companies could ever manage.

However, Big Tobacco’s involvement is a double-edged sword. While distribution is greatly increased, pushing these devices into the far reaches of the country, big tobacco also gives off the perception that these devices, like the products they’ve sold for centuries, will probably kill you.

“What are these products?” asks Dr. Michael Siegel, Professor at Boston University’s Public School of Health and supporter of e-cigs. “Are they harm reduction or are they smoking cessation? It’s a tough situation because, on the one hand, you have what it does and on the other you have the claims are that are allowable under the law. It’s a strange situation where they are being regulated as tobacco products. But they are not tobacco products. There’s no tobacco in them

Safety

To be clear, any product that delivers nicotine into the human body is automatically considered “unsafe.” That’s the nature of nicotine itself. It’s not meant to be in our bodies.

That said, smoking cessation products like Nicoderm and Nicorette are automatically forgiven. Their purpose is to wean you off the nicotine addiction, and then be discarded. No one quits smoking and says, I’m going to use the patch for the rest of my life. That’s not how it works. In fact, doctors who prescribe smoking cessation therapies have strict limits on how long they can continue to provide the patch, gums, etc.

E-cigarettes are different. These companies don’t want you to quit smoking entirely; they simply want you to switch from smoking to vaping. In fact, the business model is built around your return. The idea is that you pay a larger sum up-front, for the device and a first set of cartridges, making an investment in it, and then return to buy refills

In this way, e-cigarettes are simply a cigarette alternative, and not a therapy to help you quit.

But even though e-cigarettes deliver nicotine into the body, and for an extended period of time, many experts agree that they are much, much safer than combusting cigarettes.

Right now, however, clear cut information on their safety is limited. To start, there have been no finished clinical trials to measure the difference, and holding a clinical trial that is effective becomes difficult knowing that subjects would be exposed to a known carcinogen.

Moreover, the lack of regulation here allows e-cigarette companies to be lazy or negligent. The nicotine dosage may vary from one product to the next, or perhaps they’re using something other than propylene glycol (the standard liquid found in e-cigarettes). They might even have a shoddy battery or wiring that exhausts burning plastic along with the nicotine.

Many e-cigarettes are manufactured in Asia, sold at gas stations, and the consumer is none the wiser that these products haven’t been checked out by any governing body. In short, there is no oversight.

Thankfully, according to Dr. Siegel, e-cigarettes are “orders of magnitude safer” than combusting cigarettes.

“Even if e-cigarettes only cause a five to ten percent reduction in cigarette consumption, you have to understand that from a public health perspective, that is an enormously positive impact,” said Dr. Siegel.

On the other hand, it’s the lack of regulation that makes e-cigarettes potentially dangerous. So what can be done?

Regulation

This is where things get tricky.

The FDA is set to regulate the e-cigarette industry over the next year, at the latest. How they will regulate them is anyone’s guess.

There are three possible scenarios:

The first is that e-cigarettes will be regulated just like traditional cigarettes, with rules on how they can be marketed. This would still allow for distribution, letting e-cigs be sold anywhere traditional cigarettes are sold, but it would limit these companies’ ability to market themselves as a cigarette alternative, or at all.

The second option is that these products will be regulated in the same way as smoking cessation therapies. They would be sold only in pharmacies, over the counter. This would limit visibility and distribution enormously.

The third option is that the FDA will create brand new regulation for e-cigarettes, which would covers things like dosage, materials used, quality control testing, etc. but would still allow for broad distribution and marketing.

There is a raging debate right now over these options, or more pointedly, the time it will take to get to these options. Those that are pro-e-cigs want to ensure that the regulation is fair, and are willing to wait as long as they’re waiting for something close to option three.

Others believe that the e-cigarette companies are purposefully stalling, asking the FDA to wait for more hard evidence on the effects of e-cigarettes (especially compared to traditional cigarettes) in order to grow marketshare in an unregulated field. They see this as a huge risk considering that the e-cig industry is growing rapidly, and these unregulated products are in the hands of more and more unknowing consumers every day.

Bloomberg is even working to essentially ban e-cigarettes in New York.

Big Tobacco’s involvement in the matter only muddles things further. The industry doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to reducing public harm (or even admitting their products cause it in the first place), so in a way, Big Tobacco’s investment in the industry almost discredits e-cigarettes as just another marketing ploy.

On the other hand, Big Tobacco has the brawn to lobby the FDA in a way that these small manufacturers wouldn’t be able to do. Thanks to Big Tobacco, e-cigarette companies now have a voice in the pending regulation of their products.

The future of the industry is surely in question, but one thing is quite certain: this isn’t the last you’ll hear about e-cigarettes and the debate is heating (not burning) up.

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Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra is a powerful phone that’s too large for your hand

Mobile phones started off their life as rather large devices, but the industry worked hard to miniaturize them, and after years and years of progress, managed to produce tiny, powerful phones. Now, as smartphones take over the mobile device industry, their screens become larger, increasing the size of the devices once again. At the moment, this trend culminates in Sony’s newly announced Xperia Z Ultra, an enormous 6.4-inch smartphone.

It’s strange to think that the industry spent around a decade minimizing the size of mobile phones — even creating the flip phone so we could halve the space our phones occupy — only to be working diligently to increase the size of them once again. This time, at least, large, pretty screens are an arguably worthwhile reason to increase our phone size, and Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra certainly supports that notion with its 6.4-inch 1080p Triluminos (essentially Sony’s Retina, more or less) display. Though the Ultra is certifiably enormous for something marketed as a phone, it’s still quite thin at 6.5mm, but due to its sheer size, it still weighs a hefty 212 grams for a genre of device traditionally used with just one hand.

Regardless of how ineffective-for-a-portable-phone the size of the device might seem, it does stock some powerful components within its guttyworks, specifically Qualcomm’s 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800. Along with the top-of-the-line SoC, the Ultra comes with 16GB of on-board storage (11GB of which is available), but if that seems a bit low the phablet has a MicroSD slot that can house a 64GB card. The Ultra will be LTE capable — though which bands have not been disclosed as of yet — and will sport a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and an 8-megapixel rear facing camera that can take HDR images and video.

The screen, aside from being large and pretty, is also able to recognize more than just a capacitative stylus, as it will accept input from a pen with a tip larger than 1mm, or any graphite pencil — though you likely won’t want to be writing on your new phablet. The phone is also dust- and waterproof to a degree, with IP55 and IP58 ratings.

The original Xperia Z — the one that isn’t a result of mad phone science — suffered from poor battery life of only around three to four hours of use. The battery in that phone — which has a smaller 5-inch screen — has a capacity of 2,330 mAh. The Ultra upgrades the battery (as it probably should, due to the upgraded screen) capacity to 3,000 mAh, so hopefully the life has been extended along with it.

The Xperia Z Ultra will run the latest version of Android, 4.2 Jelly Bean, when it releases sometime toward the end of this year. Price and a more solid release date have not yet been announced, but the “phone” will initially release in white, purple, and black colors, so you can start planning your new, matching wardrobe right now.

Even though phablets seem ever-present, they’re more a niche market at the moment, barely taking any ground from hand-sized smartphones, as well as tablet-sized tablets. Regardless of the practicality of a 6.4-inch phone, Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra does have some impressive guts under the hood going for it. Whether it’s enough to hoist the phablet scene to the forefront, though, remains to be seen.

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$500 PS4 and PS Vita bundle would return PlayStation brand to dominance

Sony is betting big on cloud gaming for this upcoming console generation. From Gaikai streaming to internet-enabled remote play of PS4 games, Sony is primed to set the PS4 apart from the competition by utilizing the PlayStation Vita. While the Tokyo company’s mobile gaming sales haven’t been setting the world on fire, a rumored PS4 and Vita bundle could completely change the game.

Last year, Sony purchased David Perry’s Gaikai for $380 million. When the PS4 was announced back in February, Perry actually came out on stage, and laid out the plans for Gaikai integration going forward. While it’s not going to completely revolutionize gaming as we know it, Gaikai has the potential to help make the generational transition a lot smoother this time around. Since the PS3 uses the screwball Cell architecture, it’s a real hassle to port PS3 games directly to the Vita or PS4. With Gaikai, Sony has the potential to keep the whole back catalog in the cloud, and stream it to any internet-connected device.

One of the most exciting features launching alongside the PS4 is universal remote play. While the PS3 dabbled lightly with PSP and Vita remote play for a handful of titles, all PS4 games will work out of the box over local WiFi or the internet on the Vita. The possibility of pausing a PS4 game, and then finishing your session on your Vita while you wait at the doctor’s office is something to actually get excited about.

In the past few years, Sony has done a respectable job of offering “cross buy” games for the Vita and PS3. For example, if you buy a game like Guacamelee on the Vita, you’ll receive a copy of it on the PS3 as well. Even better, it comes with the ability to sync game saves. Provided that Sony keeps up the pace with this feature on the PS4, even customers with lackluster internet connections can take full advantage of both platforms without buying two versions of every game.

Even with all of these valuable additions, the PS Vita still starts at $249 — that’s a tough sell to many consumers who already plan on dropping $400 on a PS4 this year. What if the Vita came with the PS4, though? A recent rumor has surfaced claiming that Sony plans on shipping a PS4 and PS Vita bundle before the end of the year for a surprising $500 asking price. If this rumor turns out to be true, this one-two punch from Japan could leave Microsoft’s standard $500 Xbox One looking like highway robbery. Oddly enough, the Vita might be just what Sony needs to give the PS4 the extra push to make the PlayStation brand as dominant as it once was.

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The Pirate Bay Celebrates Its 10th Birthday By Launching A Tor-Based Anti-Censorship Browser

The Pirate Bay (TPB), the torrent site that really doesn’t need an introduction anymore, celebrates its 10th birthday today. To mark the day, TPB launched PirateBrowser, “a bundle package of the Tor client (Vidalia), Firefox Portable browser (with foxyproxy addon).”

The package, the group says, includes “some custom configs that allows you to circumvent censorship that certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland impose onto their citizens.”

If you’ve ever tried the Tor Browser Bundle from the Tor project, you’ll feel right at home with the PirateBrowser. It’s essentially the same package, but with the latest version of Firefox and a number of torrent sites pre-bookmarked for you.

Given that it is basically the Tor Browser Bundle, you could use it to access Silkroad and other hidden onion sites as well, but overall, it looks as if the PirateBrowser won’t offer the same kind of protections that the Tor projects bundle offers (and as we saw last week, that doesn’t always work, either). From what I can see, it won’t use the Tor network to access non-torrent sites that aren’t in its proxy settings, for example, so it’s not a replacement for a regular Tor setup.

TPB says as much on its download page, too (but it’s so far down the page, chances are most people will miss it): “While it uses Tor network, which is designed for anonymous surfing, this browser is intended just to circumvent censorship — to remove limits on accessing websites your government doesn’t want you to know about.

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Casio Updates G-Shock Bluetooth Line With Added Functionality

Don’t call it a smart watch. The Casio GB line appeared in 2011 with little fanfare – it was up against devices like the Pebble in the public imagination and so an underpowered smartwatch was of little interest. However, Casio has updated their Bluetooth line with the GB-6900B And GB-X6900B, improved versions of their iconic G-Shock watches that allow you to control your phone from your watch and, more important, control your watch from your phone.

For example, you can do the standard remote control actions on the watch including turning phone audio up and down and seeing snippets of text messages and emails. However, the new Casio Engine 2 movement also allows you to set watch features via an interface on the phone including alarms, stopwatch activation, and the like. Most interesting are the phone sensing features that allows you to find your phone if it is near the watch and to tap the watch to turn off an incoming call.

ABlogTowatch has a full rundown of features and notes that many of these are things you might actually use. While it doesn’t sense your heartbeat, blood pressure, and pants size it does do a few important things well and, more important, connects to your phone via low power Bluetooth profile 4.0. This makes it easier to justify connecting the watch to your phone simply because the battery will wear slower than traditional Bluetooth devices.

Again, the G-Shock isn’t for everybody. However, if you’re looking to geek out you could do worse for $200. The watches should be available here in a few months.

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Apple Will Reportedly Unveil The Next iPhone On September 10

It’s about time for a new iPhone, and with the rumors about an iPhone 5S and maybe even a cheaper version getting stronger, AllThingsD now reports that the next iPhone will launch on September 10. Apple introduced the iPhone 5 on September 12, 2012, so there is a good chance AllThingsD’s sources are correct, though we haven’t heard anything from our usual sources yet (and earlier rumors of a June launch definitely didn’t pan out).

Last time around, Apple started taking pre-orders two days after the launch event and the phone went on sale two-and-a-half weeks later.

As far as the iPhone 5S rumors go, most point to an incremental update with the usual speed improvements, thanks to a faster chip, a better camera with a dual LED flash and enhanced battery life. The only really exciting rumor so far is that Apple will introduce a built-in fingerprint reader for unlocking your phone. There are also persistent rumors of a cheaper iPhone 5 — maybe with a plastic back.

Otherwise, iOS 7 will likely be the most controversial feature of the new iPhone, given its radically new design. Unless Apple still has a few aces up its sleeve, iOS 7 isn’t likely to introduce any major new services besides iTunes Radio. While the first betas of iOS 7 were almost unusable, the latest versions are very stable and feel like they are almost ready for prime time.

Apple, of course, is also about to launch OS X Mavericks, but it would be unusual for the company to announce this during an iPhone launch keynote

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StartupEquality.org: Remove Restrictions On Gay Investors

Editor’s note: Dan Shapiro served as the CEO of Google Comparison Inc., Sparkbuy, and Ontela. He’s the author of a forthcoming O’Reilly book on startup CEOs and a lucky dad. Follow him on Twitter @danshapiro.

StartupEquality.org has a simple mission, which is to get same-sex couples the same rights to invest in startup companies as heterosexual couples.

My dad received his PhD from Yale for a number of reasons. One of those reasons was that, just a few years before he enrolled, the university removed its Jewish quota. In subsequent years, both of my parents saw the even more egregious restrictions on African-Americans begin to slowly, painfully unravel. Their generation saw a wave sweep from buses to schools to wedding chapels as our nation desegregated.

I never thought I would see anything like this in my lifetime. Seeing America start to untangle, over the course of a few decades, a giant hairball of laws and prejudices and assumptions that have plagued the lives of gay and lesbians has been a singularly amazing experience. States have begun to recognize loving couples. The Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. And I have been watching friends and family I have loved and respected all my life come out to share with me and the world who they really are and who they really love.

Over the last decade particularly, I’ve taken a measure of pride that my community of entrepreneurs and startup investors has been relatively immune to this discrimination. I’ve always believed that the world of technology startups has never erected artificial barriers to those who want to pursue the American dream.

But we’ve got a bug in the code, and it was two lawyers who found it.

My friends Joe Wallin and William Carleton sent me an email out of the blue one day. They told me that they found something amiss with the SEC rules about who is eligible to invest in startups. We all read the rules, and the problem doesn’t look deliberate. It’s just an artifact of changing times and changing rules. But it’s a bad artifact, and we’ve got to set it right.

SEC rules describe something called “accredited investor” status. If you’re not an accredited investor, you are effectively blocked from startup investments. (Under the JOBS Act, small investments may be possible without accreditation, but larger investments — the angels who enable ideas to take wing — will still be restricted.) As a result, these rules around accreditation define who is, and who is not, a part of the startup angel community.

To take an excerpt from these SEC rules: “‘Accredited investor’ shall mean . . . Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with that person’s spouse, exceeds $1,000,000.”
These gay and lesbian investors can’t use their partners’ assets or income to qualify as angels. Instead, they must qualify alone, under significantly more restrictive standards.

But we live in strange times. Couples who love each other, who’ve pledged their lives together, who’ve decided to join their resources together for an eternity, do so under more than one name: “marriage”; “civil union”; and “domestic partnership.” By only referring to spouses — which is defined to mean only married couples — the SEC disqualifies couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships in 15 states across the country. That means these gay and lesbian investors can’t use their partners’ assets or income to qualify as angels. Instead, they must qualify alone, under significantly more restrictive standards.

In the future I hope that, as a country, we set a single standard for what it means for couples to love each other, pledge their lives together, and join their resources. I hope that’s called marriage. But until we get there, the SEC needs to fix angel investing.

Startups are not just my industry but my passion. I’m proud of how startups have made this country better. Now it’s time for our country to make startups better. Please join me at StartupEquality.org in calling on the SEC to set this right. Let’s unlock dollars for small companies. Let’s welcome people of all backgrounds to the table. And let’s make startup investing available equally to all couples across America.

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