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Friday, 20 December 2019

The unbrandening

Do you remember as a kid going to the grocery store with your parents and being just totally overwhelmed by the bright, loud packaging of products on shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle?

I certainly do. Each product had a brand — you’d recognize the Kix by its bright red box and Tide by its loud orange bottle. Every package screamed its brand name at you.

Branded packaging as we know it hasn’t been around that long. While people have been packaging goods for millennia, trademarked printed boxes, tins and shrink-wrapped containers were only invented in the late 1800s — less than 150 years ago, beginning with Uneeda Biscuits around 1896.

When branded packaging was invented, and up until very recently, its purpose and value to nearly every industry made a ton of good sense. The average consumer would shop in a catalog, browsing ads and offerings, or in a store, perusing shelves of products. The more a product stood out and set itself apart, the more memorable it would be and the more likely it would be purchased. Good packaging made products easy to recommend and spread by sharing visually.

And then, the internet came along.

Our team recently launched our new studio product, Regular, a service directed at small businesses hitting their growth inflection point. As we began to design our own website and work on branding, we did a lot of research into branding trends for consumer packaged goods, and what we uncovered was surprising.

We found was that there is a surprising movement towards “unbranding” — specifically choosing not to create a strong association between a product and its maker. Instead of bright packaging, large logos and stamped products, many companies are now going the other direction by operating without logos and offering minimal (or no) packaging.

MUJI pens

Pens from MUJI (Photo: Michael/Flickr)

One of the earliest companies to adopt this mindset was Japanese home goods store MUJI, whose name literally means “No Brand” (it doesn’t get more literal than that). Most of its products come unpackaged with just a small price tag, or in minimal packaging with a single informational label (e.g., “lotion,” “body soap”) to identify its contents.

But MUJI has been since the 1980s, so why are we talking about this now?



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Panic's quirky Playdate handheld will be available for developers soon


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One in ten fibre to the node NBN connections is reporting faults

NBN has broken down the over 500,000 faults it received in 2018-19 fiscal year.

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Baidu ends huge subsidies on smart speakers amid price wars in China

It follows years of leading Chinese smart speaker brands cutting the retail price by sometimes one-third as a tactic to grow market share.

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F5 to acquire Shape Security for approximately $1 billion

The deal will combine Shape's anti-fraud capabilities with F5 Networks' multi-cloud application protection services.

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Wawa says POS malware incident impacts 'potentially all locations'

Wawa said the malware infection lasted between March and December 2019.

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The Witcher on Netflix: Henry Cavil on casting spells and casting horses - CNET

Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan and showrunner Lauren Hissrich reveal what makes the new TV series so magical.

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Many facial recognition tools convey racial bias, study finds - CNET

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Indulge your Pacific Rim robot fantasies with this movement-controlled battle mech - CNET

Get $100 off this one-of-a-kind battle bot that responds to a controller you can strap to your waist like a miniature mech suit.

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Beats Powerbeats Pro sale: Get them from Best Buy in time for Christmas for $119.99 - CNET

Apple's sport-minded true-wireless earphones are a steal at this price, but there's one small catch.

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Josh Blacker of Apple TV Plus show See talks Jason Momoa and fighting blind - CNET

The actor drew inspiration for his role from his brother-in-law, who is legally blind and a mountain climber.

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'I want my chemotherapy to help others touched by cancer'

BBC Click reporter LJ Rich, who is undergoing 10 sessions of treatment, shares her experiences.

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Flickr owner SmugMug says it needs more money to ‘keep the Flickr dream alive’

FRANCE-INTERNET-FLICKR Photo by Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

Photo hosting service SmugMug has penned an open letter asking fans of the photo site Flickr, which it acquired from Yahoo two years ago, to sign up for the platform’s Pro subscription to help “keep the Flickr dream alive.” The letter, authored by SmugMug founder and CEO Don MacAskill and obtained by The Verge, details Flickr’s ongoing financial woes and makes the case for Flickr Pro as a way to keep the service afloat.

The letter opens with a bit of self-deprecation, in which MacAskill calls Flickr “the world’s most-beloved, money-losing business.” But his plea for help is a serious one, and MacAskill says he’s not fishing for donations. He adds that eery Flickr Pro subscription “goes directly to keeping Flickr alive and creating great...

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Macworld's January Digital Magazine: Apple's new 16-inch MacBook Pro, reviewed

Every day, Macworld brings you the essential daily news and other info about all things Apple. But staying on top of that torrent of information can be a constant challenge. One solution: the Macworld digital magazine. 

In the January issue

January is (almost) here and we have our review of Apple’s new 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac laptop that gets it right. Plus, don’t miss our review of the new AirPods Pro, Apple’s premium wireless earbuds.

Also in this month’s issue:

• MacUser: The new MacBook Pro is nice, but it’s missing a few things I still want

• MacUser Reviews: Roxio Toast 18 Pro, NetNewsWire 5

To read this article in full, please click here



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Elon Musk tweets, deletes silly Cybertruck banana photo - CNET

It must have lost its a-peel.

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Hulu outage prevents videos from playing - CNET

You can browse the catalog of movies and shows, but you can't watch 'em.

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Get the excellent Eero 2019 3-piece mesh router for $190 with a free Echo Dot - CNET

Finally, you can cover every square inch of your home in Wi-Fi.

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Lyft's e-bikes are back after a fiery hiatus


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Malware at Wawa stores has been stealing credit card info since March


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Massive breach leaves 267 million Facebook users' data exposed

The leaked information included Facebook IDs, phone numbers, and real names.

What you need to know

  • A massive data breach affecting 267 million Facebook users was publicized this week.
  • The database was exposed on the internet and accessible without any authentication or password requirements.
  • It contained users' IDs, phone numbers, and real names.

While Facebook's busy making its own OS, millions of the company's users' data has been leaked, thanks to one of the largest data breaches in the company's history.

Cybersecurity firm Comparitech and researcher Bob Diachenko say they've found a database containing the Facebook IDs, phone numbers, and names of 267 million users on the web. The database, they claim, was entirely exposed on the internet and did not require a password or any other form of authentication to access.

They posit that the origins of the database probably lie in Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam or an illegal data scraping operation. While Diachenko immediately notified the ISP hosting the data, he warns that it was available for two weeks before it was removed. It was also available as a download on a hacker forum.

Facebook, which previously suffered from data breaches affecting 30 million and 419 million users in 2018 and 2019, respectively, responded to the incident as follows:

We are looking into this issue, but believe this is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people's information.

As Comparitech points out, this is likely in reference to change Facebook made to its API that previously allowed app developers access to users' phone numbers.

The data could eventually be used for mass phishing campaigns due to its inclusion of phone numbers, so users would be well advised to be suspicious of any text messages or emails asking for your password or other sensitive information. Comparitech also suggests changing all the fields in Facebook's privacy settings to "Only friends" or "Only me" and disabling the ability of search engines to link to your profile in order to prevent your data from being scraped by bots.

Facebook was the most downloaded app of the decade



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Facebook is reportedly developing its own operating system

Development is being led by a former Microsoft veteran.

What you need to know

  • Facebook is reportedly working on its own OS.
  • The company is reportedly aiming for an Apple-esque hardware strategy, with complete control over its hardware and software.
  • A former Microsoft veteran is leading the OS' development.

Facebook may be looking to reignite the OS wars in a big way: by creating its own operating system to take on Google and Apple. The Information reports that the company's ambitions go far beyond just creating a new smart display or releasing a payment platform for its apps. If its desire to control the future of currencies (if things go its way) and transport us from this reality to a virtual one wasn't enough of an indication of Mark Zuckerberg's grand ambitions, The Information says the company is looking to create its own operating system, and possibly pursue an Apple-esque model for first-party hardware in the future.

We've already known for a while that Facebook is pursuing the ability to design its own silicon, but products like the Facebook Portal still run a modified version of Android. As the company's Andrew Bosworth claims, that's simply not acceptable:

We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us. We don't think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that's the case. And so we're gonna do it ourselves.

The OS is currently being developed by Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft employee involved in the creation of Windows NT. While Facebook didn't confirm the report, one of the leads on Facebook's AR and VR platforms, Ficus Kirkpatrick, told The Verge that it's "possible" future Facebook hardware might not rely on Google's software.

Beyond that, Facebook is also working on new AR glasses set to arrive by 2023 and a new voice assistant for its Portal and Oculus products — presumably, it'll also run on the AR glasses, currently known as Orion. Even more ambitious? The company's research into a brain control interface that might let you control the headset with your thoughts alone. If it all pans out, Facebook may soon become far more than just 'the social media company.'

Facebook was the most downloaded app of the decade



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Best Buy is having a flash sale on Xbox bundles, JBL speakers, and more

Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

Best Buy is having a flash sale from 7PM ET on December 19th to 1AM ET on December 20th. There’s a range of deals, but we’ve collected the ones that stood out to us here. Most of these items are expected to ship in time for Christmas.

Best Buy is discounting several models of wireless JBL speakers. These speakers connect via Bluetooth, so they’ll work for different devices.

Image: JBL
JBL Charge 4
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge

There are also discounted Xbox One X...

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