Daily Archives: April 1, 2024

Aston Martin Show the way forward: Don’t trigger the piss off factor with your touchscreens

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To decide how to best implement their cars’ touchscreens, Aston designers went out and sampled a range of vehicles, using their controls and noting the steps necessary to activate certain functions. Any feature expected to be immediately available that wasn’t triggered the “piss-off factor.”

The new Vantage is a good example of Aston’s design philosophy. It has a touchscreen, but it’s accompanied by many physical buttons, switches, and knobs. Nurnberger told CarExpert that Aston considered moving the seat controls into the touchscreen, but owners said they like to adjust their seat on the move depending on how they’re driving, and touchscreen-based settings are cumbersome and unsafe to use on the fly. The same thinking applies to volume and HVAC-related inputs.

“That’s the thing about the piss-off factor. When you want it, you want it instantly,” said Nurnberger. “If you want to turn the volume up and down, temperature absolutely—the minute you’ve got to go into a screen and tap for temperature, you’ve lost the customer. You’ve lost the experience.”

Aston is echoing what so many of us have already been saying. I think we can all agree that more button-heavy interiors are preferred. Touchscreens require more mental effort to use while simultaneously offering zero tactile feedback—frustrating at best and downright dangerous at worst. The automaker’s approach is a simple and sensible one that the entire industry should follow, especially brands that sell cars most of us can actually afford: if it pisses people off, don’t do it.

Source: Aston Martin Created a Metric for Touchscreen-Induced Anger

63 hour GPS jamming attack over Baltics affects 1600 aircraft over Europe

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[…]

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Europe has experienced an uptick in the number of large-scale disruptions of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The disruption has been felt near the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and near the Baltic Sea and Arctic. Since December 2023, for instance, the Baltic region has experienced fairly consistent GPS jamming. That roughly coincided with Russian media reports that the Russian navy’s Baltic Fleet based in Kaliningrad – a Russian enclave located between Lithuania and Poland – was conducting electronic warfare exercises.

Such interference can include jamming of satellite signals to block service. It can also include “spoofing” of signals – a technique that can be used to make aircraft GPS receivers appear to be in completely different locations, says Zach Clements at the University of Texas at Austin. His analysis has shown that the Christmas-time GPS interference in Europe included multiple incidents of GPS jamming, along with a spoofing attack originating from inside Russia.

[…]

The newest record-breaking run of jamming in the Baltic region started on the evening of 22 March and lasted 63 hours and 40 minutes – until the afternoon of 25 March, according to an open-source intelligence analyst who uses the social media account Runradion. The attack included 24 hours of interference patterns spread across parts of Sweden, Germany and Poland, before a switch to more focused interference primarily covering Poland, which lasted for about 40 hours.

More than 1600 aircraft were affected by this record-breaking period of disruption, according to another analyst using the pseudonym Markus Jonsson. In an earlier incident on 13 March, a Royal Air Force aircraft carrying UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps experienced GPS signal interference on both legs of a journey between the UK and Poland as the aircraft flew near Kaliningrad.

[…]

Improved awareness among airline crews when entering areas with known jamming or spoofing activities has helped reduce the risk, says a spokesperson from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. The agency has also been working on strengthening GPS alternatives using ground-based or on-board inertial guidance systems.

Source: Unprecedented GPS jamming attack affects 1600 aircraft over Europe | New Scientist

No Man’s Sky gets unique computer-generated space stations and ship customisation

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No Man’s Sky is still getting major updates. Developer Hello Games’ “Orbital” update, due Wednesday, adds procedurally generated space stations (so they’ll be different every time), a ship editor and a Guild system to the nearly eight-year-old space exploration sim.

Up until now, space stations have been one of the few parts of No Man’s Sky that weren’t created and randomized by algorithms as something truly unique. That changes with today’s update, which uses game engine upgrades to “create vast interior spaces and exterior spaces, with improved reflection and metallic surfaces.”

The stations’ broader scale will be evident from the outside, while their interiors will include new shops, gameplay and things to do. Hello Games describes them as being “uniquely customized” based on their virtual inhabitants’ system, race and locale.

Interior of new procedurally generated space stations in the game No Man's Sky. Three characters stand in action poses in the foreground of a space hangar as ships whizz by.
Hello Games

Inside the stations, you’ll find the new ship editor. Hello Games says it previously withheld ship customization to maintain the title’s focus on exploration. (If players could build any ship they wanted at any time, it could ruin some of the fun of scouting out existing ones to buy in-game.) In that spirit, you’ll still need to collect, trade and salvage the parts to build yours how you like it.

[…]

Source: Eight years after launch, No Man’s Sky gets computer-generated space stations that are different each time

Completely awesome!

Twitch bans streams overlaid on boobs and butts – because Americans are petrified of sex

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[…]

Twitch is putting a stop to its streamers’ shenanigans, though, and will officially prohibit “content that focuses on clothed intimate body parts such as the buttocks, groin, or breasts for extended periods of time” starting on March 29.

In a writeup on the trend, Kotaku explained that it all started when controversial streamer Morgpie projected her Fortnite gaming session on a closeup of her behind. After that, other streamers followed suit, overlaying their games on body parts both real and fictional, like anime thighs or anime boobs breasting boobily on screen while they’re playing. Now, boobs and butts streaming is out.

[…]

unclothed versions are also prohibited, as per Twitch’s policy that doesn’t allow users to broadcast or upload “content that contains depictions of real or fictional nudity, regardless of the medium used to create it.”

[…]

Source: Twitch bans streams overlaid on boobs and butts

Posted in Sex

Song lyrics really are getting simpler, more repetitive

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You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming simpler and more repetitive, according to a study published on Thursday.

Lyrics have also become angrier and more self-obsessed over the last 40 years, the study found, reinforcing the opinions of cranky aging music fans everywhere.

A team of European researchers analyzed the words in more than 12,000 English-language songs across the genres of rap, country, pop, R&B and from 1980 to 2020.

[…]

For the study in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers looked at the emotions expressed in lyrics, how many different and complicated words were used, and how often they were repeated.

[…]

The results also confirmed previous research which had shown a decrease in positive, joyful lyrics over time and a rise in those that express anger, disgust or sadness.

Lyrics have also become much more self-obsessed, with words such as “me” or “mine” becoming much more popular.

‘Easier to memorize’

The number of repeated lines rose most in rap over the decades, Zangerle said—adding that it obviously had the most lines to begin with.

“Rap music has become more angry than the other genres,” she added.

The researchers also investigated which songs the fans of different genres looked up on the lyric website Genius.

Unlike other genres, rock fans most often looked up lyrics from older songs, rather than new ones.

Rock has tumbled down the charts in recent decades, and this could suggest fans are increasingly looking back to the genre’s heyday, rather than its present.

Another way that music has changed is that “the first 10-15 seconds are highly decisive for whether we skip the song or not,” Zangerle said.

Previous research has also suggested that people tend to listen to music more in the background these days, she added.

Put simply, songs with more choruses that repeat basic appear to be more popular.

“Lyrics should stick easier nowadays, simply because they are easier to memorize,” Zangerle said.

“This is also something that I experience when I listen to the radio.”

More information: Eva Zangerle, Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55742-x. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-55742-x

Source: Song lyrics are getting simpler, more repetitive: Study

Posted in Art

In-app browsers still a privacy, security, and choice issue

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[…] Open Web Advocacy (OWA), a group that supports open web standards and fair competition, said in a post on Tuesday that representatives “recently met with both the [EU’s] Digital Markets Act team and the UK’s Market Investigation Reference into Cloud Gaming and Browsers team to discuss how tech giants are subverting users’ choice of default browser via in-app browsers and the harm this causes.”

OWA argues that in-app browsers, without notice or consent, “ignore your choice of default browser and instead automatically and silently replace your default browser with their own in-app browser.”

The group’s goal isn’t to ban the technology, which has legitimate uses. Rather it’s to prevent in-app browsers from being used to thwart competition and flout user choice.

In-app browsers are like standalone web browsers without the interface – they rely on the native app for the interface. They can be embedded in native platform apps to load and render web content within the app, instead of outside the app in the designated default browser.

[…]

The problem with in-app browsers is that they play by a different set of rules from standalone browsers. As noted by OWA in its 62-page submission [PDF] to regulators:

  • They override the user’s choice of default browser
  • They raise tangible security and privacy harms
  • They stop the user from using their ad-blockers and tracker blockers
  • Their default browsers privacy and security settings are not shared
  • They are typically missing web features
  • They typically have many unique bugs and issues
  • The user’s session state is not shared so they are booted out of websites they have logged into in their default browser
  • They provide little benefit to users
  • They create significant work and often break third-party websites
  • They don’t compete as browsers
  • They confuse users and today function as dark patterns

Since around 2016, software engineers involved in web application development started voicing concerns about in-app browsers at some of the companies using them. But it wasn’t until around 2019 when Google engineer Thomas Steiner published a blog post about Facebook’s use of in-app browsers in its iOS and Android apps that the privacy and choice impact of in-app browsers began to register with a wider audience.

Steiner observed: “WebViews can also be used for effectively conducting intended man-in-the-middle attacks, since the IAB [in-app browser] developer can arbitrarily inject JavaScript code and also intercept network traffic.” He added: “Most of the time, this feature is used for good.”

[…]

In August 2022, developer Felix Krause published a blog post titled “Instagram and Facebook can track anything you do on any website in their in-app browser.” A week later, he expanded his analysis of in-app browsers to note how TikTok’s iOS app injects JavaScript to subscribe to “every keystroke (text inputs) happening on third party websites rendered inside the TikTok app”

[…]

Even assuming one accepts Meta’s and TikTok’s claims that they’ve not misused the extraordinary access granted by in-app browsers – a difficult ask in light of allegations raised in ongoing Meta litigation – the issue remains that companies implementing in-app browsers may be overriding the choices of users regarding their browser and whatever extensions they have installed.

However, Meta does provide a way to opt out of having its in-app browser open links clicked in its Facebook and Instagram apps.

[…]

As for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK watchdog appears to be willing to consider allowing developer choice to supersede user choice, or at least that was the case two years ago. In its 2022 response to the CMA’s Interim Report, Google observed [PDF] that the competition agency itself had conceded that in an Android native app, the choice of browser belongs to the app developer rather than to Google.

“The Interim Report raises concerns about in-app browsers overriding users’ chosen default browsers,” Google said in its response. “However, as the CMA rightly notes, the decision on whether a native app launches an in-app browser, and if so, which browser, lies with the respective app developer, not Google. Having control over whether or not an in-app browser is launched allows app developers to customize their user interfaces, which can in turn improve the experience for users. There is therefore, to some extent, a trade-off between offering developers choice and offering end users choice.”

Source: In-app browsers still a privacy, security, and choice issue • The Register

However, in-app browsers are a horrible security breach and the choice should belong to the user – not Google, not an app developer.

Soofa Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By, sell it on

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Digital kiosks from Soofa seem harmless, giving you bits of information alongside some ads. However, these kiosks popping up throughout the United States take your phone’s information and location data whenever you walk near them, and sell them to local governments and advertisers, first reported by NBC Boston Monday.

“At Soofa, we developed the first pedestrian impressions sensor that measures accurate foot traffic in real-time,” says a page on the company’s website. “Soofa advertisers can check their analytics dashboard anytime to see how their campaigns are tracking towards impressions goals.”

While data tracking is commonplace online, it’s becoming more pervasive in the real world. Whenever you walk past a Soofa kiosk, it collects your phone’s unique identifier (MAC address), manufacturer, and signal strength. This allows it to track anyone who walks within a certain, unspecified range. It then creates a dashboard to share with advertisers and local governments to display analytics about how many people are walking and engaging with its billboards.

This can offer local cities new ways to understand how people use public spaces, and how many people are reading notices posted on these digital kiosks. However, it also gives local governments detailed information on how people move throughout society and raises a question of how this data is being used.

[…]

A Soofa spokesperson said it does not share data with any 3rd parties in an email to Gizmodo, and it only offers the dashboard to an organization that bought the kiosk. The company also claims to anonymize your MAC address by the time it gets to advertisers and local governments.

However, Soofa also tells advertisers how to effectively use your location data on its website. It notes that advertisers can track when you’ve been near a physical billboard or kiosk in the real world based on location data. Then, using cookies, the advertisers can send you more digital ads later on. While Soofa didn’t invent this technique, it certainly seems to be promoting it.

[…]

Source: These Digital Kiosks Snatch Your Phone’s Data When You Walk By

Mass claim CUIC against virus scanner (but really tracking sypware) Avast

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Privacy First has teamed up with Austrian NOYB (the organisation of privacy activist Max Schrems) to form the new mass claim organisation CUIC founded. CUIC stands for Consumers United in Court, also pronounceable as ‘CU in Court’ (see you in court).

[…]

Millions spied on by virus scanner

CUIC today filed subpoenas against software company Avast that made virus scanners that illegally collected the browsing behaviour of millions of people on computer, tablet or phone, including in the Netherlands. This data was then resold to other companies through an Avast subsidiary for millions of euros. This included data about users’ health, locations visited, political affiliation, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or economic situation. This information was linked to each specific user through unique user IDs. In a press release articulates CUIC president Wilmar Hendriks today as follows: “People thought they were safe with a virus scanner, but its very creator tracked everything they did on their computers. Avast sold this information to third parties for big money. They even advertised the goldmine of data they had captured. Companies like Avast should not be allowed to get away with this. That is why we are bringing this lawsuit. Those who won’t hear should feel.”

Fines

Back in March 2023, the Czech privacy regulator (UOOU) concluded that Avast violated the AVG and fined the company approximately €13.7 million. The US federal consumer authority, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), also recently ordered Avast to pay USD16.5 million in compensation to users and ordered it to stop selling or making collected data available to third parties, delete that collected data and implement a comprehensive privacy programme.

The lawsuit for which CUIC today sued Avast should lead to compensation for users in the Netherlands

[…]

Source: Mass claim CUIC against virus scanner Avast launched – Privacy First

Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab – Redis is the latest

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Essentially, all software is built using open source. By Synopsys’ count, 96% of all codebases contain open-source software.

Lately, though, there’s been a very disturbing trend. A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then — and only then — switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions. I’m sick of it.

The latest IT melodrama baddie is Redis. Its program, which goes by the same name, is an extremely popular in-memory database. (Unless you’re a developer, chances are you’ve never heard of it.) One recent valuation shows Redis to be worth about $2 billion — even without an AI play! That, anyone can understand.

What did it do? To quote Redis: “Beginning today, all future versions of Redis will be released with source-available licenses. Starting with Redis 7.4, Redis will be dual-licensed under the Redis Source Available License (RSALv2) and Server Side Public License (SSPLv1). Consequently, Redis will no longer be distributed under the three-clause Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD).”

For those of you who aren’t open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis’ code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can’t export, borrow from, or touch it.

Redis pulled this same kind of trick in 2018 with some of its subsidiary code. Now it’s done so with the company’s crown jewels.

Redis is far from the only company to make such a move. Last year,  HashiCorp dumped its main program Terraform’s Mozilla Public License (MPL) for the Business Source License (BSL) 1.1. Here, the name of the new license game is to prevent anyone from competing with Terraform.

Would it surprise you to learn that not long after this, HashiCorp started shopping itself around for a buyer? It didn’t surprise me.

Before this latest round of license changes, MongoDB and Elastic made similar shifts. Again, you might never have heard of these companies or their programs, but each is worth, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, while you might not know it, if your company uses cloud services behind the scenes, chances are you’re using one or more of their programs

[…]

Software companies are ticked off. At least two Linux distros, Fedora and openSUSE, are considering getting rid of the Redis program. If they do, you can expect their big commercial brothers, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) to follow suit.

Who’s really furious about this, though, are developers. It’s their work, after all, that’s disappearing into semi-proprietary vaults, never to be touched by them again.

So, as they’ve done before and they’ll do again, at least two sets of programmers are forking it. First off the mark was Drew DeVault, founder and CEO of SourceHut, with Redict. He was quickly followed by Madelyn Olson, principal engineer at Amazon ElastiCache, itself an open-source fork of Elastic. However, as Olson observed, this as-yet-unnamed Redis fork is not an AWS project. AWS is working on its own response.

Source: Software vendors dump open source, go for the cash grab | Computerworld

Why is this a problem? Using open source also means you get free contributions whilst creating the code – that could be programming done for free, but also quality assurance done for free. So basically you take other people’s work and steal it to sell as your own.

Part of the problem is caused by the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) die-hard fundamentalists, a bunch of tenured university based software developers on a payroll, who absolutely refuse to allow other FOSS developers – who may not have a payroll – to make any money whatsoever on a FOSS license. This is a problem I have been addressing for years and which has gained quite a lot of traction since then.

 

Amazon fined almost $8M in Poland over dark patterns

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Poland’s competition and consumer protection watchdog has fined Amazon’s European subsidiary around $8 million (31.9 million Zlotys) for “dark patterns” that messed around internet shoppers.

The preliminary ruling applies to Amazon EU SARL, which oversees Amazon’s Polish e-commerce site, Amazon.pl, out of Luxembourg. Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection said the decision, subject to appeal, reflected misleading practices related to product availability, delivery dates, and drop-off time guarantees.

According to the ruling, Amazon’s Polish operation repeatedly canceled customer orders for e-book readers and other gear. The online souk believed it was within its rights to do so because it considers its sales contract and delivery obligations are active only after an item has shipped, rather than when the customer purchases it.

But these abrupt cancellations left punters who thought they’d successfully paid for stuff and were awaiting delivery disappointed, sparking complaints to the watchdog, which has seemingly upheld the claims.

Not only that, the regulator was unimpressed that the language on Amazon’s website warning this could happen is difficult to read – “it is written in gray font on a white background, at the very bottom of the page.”

[…]

Source: Amazon fined almost $8M in Poland over ‘dark patterns’ • The Register

OpenAI reveals tool to re-create human voices

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OpenAI said on Friday it’s allowed a small number of businesses to test a new tool that can re-create a person’s voice from just a 15-second recording.

Why it matters: The company said it is taking “a cautious and informed approach” to releasing the program, called Voice Engine, more broadly given the high risk of abuse presented by synthetic voice generators.

How it works: Based on the 15-second recording, the program can create a “emotive and realistic” natural-sounding voice that closely resembles the original speaker.

  • This synthetic voice can then be used to read text inputs, even if the text isn’t in the original speaker’s native language.

Case in point: In one example offered by the company, an English speaker’s voice was translated into Spanish, Mandarin, German, French and Japanese while preserving the speaker’s native accent.

  • OpenAI said Voice Engine has so far been used to provide reading assistance to nonreaders, to translate content, and to help people who are nonverbal.

[…]

Source: OpenAI reveals tool to re-create human voices

Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet

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The fundamental flaw with the age verification bills and laws passing rapidly across the country is the delusional, unfounded belief that putting hurdles between people and pornography is going to actually prevent them from viewing porn. What will happen, and is already happening, is that people–including minors–will go to unmoderated, actively harmful alternatives that don’t require handing over a government-issued ID to see people have sex. Meanwhile, performers and companies that are trying to do the right thing will suffer.

[…]

Source: Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet

The legislators passing these bills are doing so under the guise of protecting children, but what’s actually happening is a widespread rewiring of the scaffolding of the internet. They ignore long-established legal precedent that has said for years that age verification is unconstitutional, eventually and inevitably reducing everything we see online without impossible privacy hurdles and compromises to that which is not “harmful to minors.” The people who live in these states, including the minors the law is allegedly trying to protect, are worse off because of it. So is the rest of the internet.
Yet new legislation is advancing in Kentucky and Nebraska, while the state of Kansas just passed a law which even requires age-verification for viewing “acts of homosexuality,” according to a report: Websites can be fined up to $10,000 for each instance a minor accesses their content, and parents are allowed to sue for damages of at least $50,000. This means that the state can “require age verification to access LGBTQ content,” according to attorney Alejandra Caraballo, who said on Threads that “Kansas residents may soon need their state IDs” to access material that simply “depicts LGBTQ people.”
One newspaper opinion piece argues there’s an easier solution: don’t buy your children a smartphone: Or we could purchase any of the various software packages that block social media and obscene content from their devices. Or we could allow them to use social media, but limit their screen time. Or we could educate them about the issues that social media causes and simply trust them to make good choices. All of these options would have been denied to us if we lived in a state that passed a strict age verification law. Not only do age verification laws reduce parental freedom, but they also create myriad privacy risks. Requiring platforms to collect government IDs and face scans opens the door to potential exploitation by hackers and enemy governments. The very information intended to protect children could end up in the wrong hands, compromising the privacy and security of millions of users…

Ultimately, age verification laws are a misguided attempt to address the complex issue of underage social media use. Instead of placing undue burdens on users and limiting parental liberty, lawmakers should look for alternative strategies that respect privacy rights while promoting online safety.
This week a trade association for the adult entertainment industry announced plans to petition America’s Supreme Court to intervene.

Source: Slashdot

This is one of the many problems caused by an America that is suddenly so very afraid of sex, death and politics.

Lamborghini Is the Latest to Fall Victim to the Flat Logo Trend. Kills one of the most recognisable logos in the world

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Would it surprise you to know that there are still some automotive brands out there that haven’t drained the texture and depth out of their famous logos yet? Lamborghini was actually one of those storied marques that hadn’t responded to the so-called digital revolution up until now and, I think at this point, you would’ve just chalked it up to Sant’Agata not really caring about stuff like that, because they’re freaking Lamborghini. But it’s Thursday, March 28, 2024, and the originator of Italian wedges on wheels has a “new” logo that’s a lot like their old one, only flat and with a typeface best described as looking like it was lifted from Google’s free collection.

This is Lambo’s latest logo, and I’ll tell you where my mind went straight away: the Brooklyn Nets! It looks like the shield for the basketball team Jay-Z used to have a stake in, especially in that black-and-white getup. The brand says that additionally, for the first time in its history, its raging bull will be separated from those borders in some uses, particularly on “digital touchpoints.” No example of that’s been provided yet, but you can imagine what that’ll look like.

Lamborghini News photo
Lamborghini News photo
Lamborghini News photo

Lamborghini’s new logo as well as marketing mockups showing off its usage, along with some of the brand’s new typography. Interestingly, the script name often seen in badging is nowhere to be found. Lamborghini

Lamborghini’s announcement of the change also mentions a new custom typeface “that echoes the unmistakable lines and angularity of the cars.” I don’t know what that means, especially because the mockups the company’s shared with us have a variety of typefaces, and there’s no obvious way to know which, precisely, the press release is referring to. The one on the logo does look a lot like Google’s Roboto to me at first glance—which happens to be used on Lambo’s media portal—but it isn’t. In any case, it feels like a step back in terms of individuality, but that’s why these adjustments happen, after all. Even Lamborghini is concerned about falling behind the times.

Can you tell I’m just not feeling it? The whole “flat design” thing has been kicking around since like 2013, and some automakers, ever on the cutting edge of visual art, are only catching up to it now. The monochromatic look is often justified for its readability particularly on screens, but was anyone really having a hard time identifying Lambo’s shield and bull before? The way pretty much every brand has gone about this is to take their existing insignias and uncheck the blending options box on Photoshop, and listen, it just never results in anything interesting.

If you’ve gotta go flat, you should move to something that looks interesting and complete, flat. That’s what Honda’s done with the new treatment for its 0 Series EVs seen below, and I think it’s genius. The slashed zero looks like something I’d see in some kind of subtly unsettling futuristic Japanese story-driven action game, and the fact it also works as a skewed “H” is just so dang clever. Paul Rand’s Ford logo is another example of flatness with purpose, as it still looks progressive almost 60 years on.

Honda's clever logo for its upcoming 0 Series EVs.

Honda’s clever logo for its upcoming 0 Series EVs. Honda

What Lamborghini’s done here is far from the worst automotive logo redesign I’ve seen yet; that distinction would have to go to Peugeot or Citroën, which not only went for something unremarkable but obviously tried way too hard to come across as futuristic and aggressive. The only thing worse than being boring is lame. Lamborghini was never going to reach as far, because it doesn’t have to. But like Ferrari, it should know by now that the hardest power move you can make as an iconic brand is to never change, especially when everyone else does.

Source: Lamborghini Is the Latest to Fall Victim to the Flat Logo Trend

So it looks like the company, which has a pretty awesome design aesthetic , has found someone’s son’s marketing company, and spent a huge amount of money on a counter productive and very poorly executed brand campaign. So it’s not only insulting that they damaged the logo, but they did so inconsistently and badly. And the most important questions: why? what do they hope to achieve by changing? have not been asked.

Posted in Art