Linked List: February 27, 2014

Thursday, 27 February 2014

Yahoo Webcam Images From Millions of Users Intercepted by GCHQ ★

Spencer Ackerman and James Ball, reporting for The Guardian:

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery — including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications — from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

There’s no other way to describe this than Orwellian. Government agencies spying on and collecting images of innocent citizens. Outrageous.

Tablets, PCs, and Office ★

Benedict Evans, in a piece that pairs well with the previous item:

This brings us back to the mouse and keyboard that you ‘need for real work’, as the phrase goes. Yes, you really do need them to make a financial model. And you need them to make an operating metrics summary — in Excel and Powerpoint. But is that, really, what you need to be doing to achieve the underlying business purpose? Very few people’s job is literally ‘make Excel files’. And what if you spend the other 90% of your time on the road meeting clients and replying to emails? Do you need a laptop, or a tablet? Do you need a tablet as well as a smartphone? Or a laptop, or phablet? Or both?

Joanna Stern on Tablets as Laptop Replacements ★

Joanna Stern, writing for the WSJ:

My iPad is with me every night when I doze off to sleep, it entertains me on long flights and keeps me informed during my morning commute. But when it comes to real work, the tablet fails me.

If I’m writing long emails or working on office documents, I want a larger screen, a roomy keyboard and the ability to easily juggle programs. The iPad doesn’t cut it, though there are tablets that are literally standing up to the productivity challenge.

The thinking woman’s take on consumption-vs.-work — she spent time trying to use four tablets (iPad Air, Galaxy Note Pro, Surface 2, and Lumia 2520) as full-time laptop replacements.

Netflix, Comcast, and Apple TV ★

Dan Rayburn, in a Comcast/Netflix piece for Streaming Media Blog:

In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn’t having quality problems. The reason for this is that Netflix is using Level 3 and Limelight to stream their content specifically to the Apple TV device. What this shows is that Netflix is the one that decides and controls how they get their content to each device and whether they do it via their own servers or a third party. Netflix decides which third party CDNs to use and when Netflix uses their own CDN, they decide whom to buy transit from, with what capacity, in what locations and how many connections they buy, from the transit provider. Netflix is the one in control of this, not Comcast or any ISP.

Interesting; I live in Kabletown and watch almost all my Netflix via Apple TV, so this explains why I never encountered a problem.

Warner Bros. Logo Design Evolution ★

So great.

(I love that Argo used the Saul Bass logo, which was period correct for 1980.)

On Prompting for App Reviews in Release Notes: It Works ★

Supertop:

Asking politely at the end of your release notes is an effective way to encourage users to leave you a review without compromising the user experience within your app.

Project Ara: Inside Google’s Modular Smartphone ★

Harry McCracken:

For instance, when Samsung announced the Galaxy S5 this week, its headline improvements included a better camera, a fingerprint scanner and a heart-rate monitor. In a world of modular phones, you might be able to pick any or all of those features and add them to the phone you already have. You’d even be able to pick among multiple cameras, or choose quirky features not meant for the masses. (Eremenko’s playful example: an on-phone incense burner.)

I’ll believe it when I see it, where by “it” I mean “a compelling commercial product based on this”.

Sure, Samsung put a fingerprint sensor in the Galaxy S5. But look at how Apple did it: with an integrated secure enclave that required a custom designed A7 SoC. How does this have any more mass market appeal than building one’s own PC? And with mobile devices, size and weight matter more than ever, and reductions in size and weight can only come through integration.

Apple Releases iOS Security White Paper ★

The very first sentence:

Apple designed the iOS platform with security at its core.

Makes for an interesting contrast with the previous item.

Malware Is Freedom ★

Sundar Pichai, speaking at Mobile World Congress:

We cannot guarantee that Android is designed to be safe, the format was designed to give more freedom. When people talk about 90% of malware for Android, they must of course take into account the fact that it is the most popular operating system in the world. If I had a company dedicated to malware, I would also be addressing my attacks on Android.

The old Windows line of defense: Android is so popular of course it has all the malware. For some reason, though, that’s the only sort of software where Android leads iOS in third-party developer support.

(Also: Android doesn’t account for 90 percent of mobile malware. It’s 98 percent. Update: According to this report from Kapersky Lab, “A total of 99.9% of new mobile threat detections target the Android platform.”)

Update: More context on Pichai’s remarks, including several statements in which he claims, apparently with a straight face, that Android is in fact “far more secure”.

Glassdoor Reviews of Working for Samsung in San Jose ★

Sounds like a fun place to work.