Linked List: August 4, 2016

Thursday, 4 August 2016

Facebook to Reduce Rank of Clickbait Headlines in News Feed ★

Facebook:

We’ve heard from people that they specifically want to see fewer stories with clickbait headlines or link titles. These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer. For example: “When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS… I Was SHOCKED!”; “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe”; or “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.”

To address this feedback from our community, we’re making an update to News Feed ranking to further reduce clickbait headlines in the coming weeks. With this update, people will see fewer clickbait stories and more of the stories they want to see higher up in their feeds.

I’ll bet this will decrease engagement in the short term. But it’s the right thing to do in the long run. It’s fundamentally a boy-who-cried-“wolf” scam.

ESPN.com Has Finally Replaced espn.go.com ★

Joshua Benton, writing for NiemanLab:

It isn’t quite our-long-national-nightmare-is-over level, but one of the significant daily reminders of the early web just disappeared. ESPN’s website, which had been hosted at espn.go.com since 1998, is finally now just at espn.com.

This is the sort of thing where finally is truly apt in the headline.

Update: Disney itself now uses disney.com, but abc.com still redirects to abc.go.com.

Rich Mogull on Apple’s Security Bounty Program ★

Rich Mogull:

A bug bounty program, like any corporate program, should be about achieving specific objectives. In some situations finding as many bugs as possible makes sense, but not always, and certainly not necessarily for a company like Apple.

Apple’s program sets clear objectives. Find exploitable bugs in key areas they consider a priority. Since proving exploitability with a repeatable proof of concept is far more labor intensive than merely finding a vulnerability, pay the researchers a fair value for their work. In the process, learn how to tune a bug bounty program and derive the most value out of it. High quality exploits discovered and engineered by researchers and developers Apple believes have the skills and motivations they feel will most help advance product security.

It’s the Apple way. Focus on quality, not quantity. Start carefully, on their own schedule, and iterate over time. If you know Apple, this is no different than how they release manage nearly all of their products and services.

Also:

Sources at Apple mentioned that if someone outside the program discovered an exploit in one of these classes, they could then be added to the program. It isn’t completely closed.

I was told the same thing.

Apple Announces Security Bounty Program ★

Russell Brandon, reporting for The Verge:

The new program will begin as invite-only, including only a few dozen researchers. Still, Apple says the program will become more open as it grows, and if a non-member approaches Apple with a significant bug, they’ll be invited into the program to work it through. The invite system is unusual for a bounty program, but Apple explained it as necessary to weed out spurious submissions and make sure trusted researchers had adequate support from the company.

For now, the new program is also limited to five distinct categories of bugs. The most valuable category — worth up to $200,000 — is vulnerabilities that compromise the secure boot firmware components, cutting at the heart of Apple’s hardware protections. Notably, those vulnerabilities are also particularly useful for jailbreaks. Smaller rewards are available for the extraction of data from the Secure Enclave, extraction of arbitrary code, escaping a sandboxed process, and obtaining unauthorized access to iCloud account data.

The bounty program was announced by Apple head of security engineering, Ivan Krstic, during his presentation today at Black Hat in Las Vegas. Both the bounty program and the mere fact that Krstic was speaking at Black Hat are signs of Apple’s thawing relationship with the security industry.

Peter Kafka: ‘Apple’s New TV Plan Is a TV Guide’ ★

Peter Kafka, writing for Recode:

Apple has started talking to TV programmers and other video companies about creating a digital TV guide that would work on both Apple TV boxes and other Apple devices, like iPhones. The idea is to let users see what kind of programming is available in video apps made by the likes of HBO, Netflix and ESPN, without having to open up each app individually, and to play shows and movies with a single click.

That is: Apple’s guide would tell you what’s on TV. Except now TV is apps. [...]

But TV industry executives I’ve talked to view Apple’s plans as a mixed bag. They like the idea of making their individual shows easier to find, but they worry that moving consumers’ focus from their individual apps to a universal guide will reduce their power to promote their other shows.

The mindset of many TV executives is centered entirely around the special snowflake that is the channel they work for. In the real world, actual people just want to watch entertaining shows.

Joanna Stern on the Chip Card Shitshow Here in the U.S. ★

Joanna Stern:

After pulling out the stopwatch for over 50 transactions at various retailers in recent days, I can confirm that it takes twice as long to pay with a chip card than with a card swipe or mobile payment — on average, 13 seconds versus 6 seconds.

Think about it this way: If you made two purchases every day for a year with a chip card instead of a swipe or smartphone, you’d spend 85 extra minutes at the checkout counter. That’s nearly an hour and a half of your time, to give someone your money.

And that doesn’t count the time playing swipe-or-chip roulette. Consider yourself lucky when you encounter a “NO CHIP!” sign or a duct-tape blockade over the slot.

Nice follow-up to last week’s episode of The Talk Show. And I love the embedded audio in her lede — words alone cannot describe just how bad that sound is for a successful transaction.

Samsung Uses Apple Watch Design Figures in Patent Filing ★

Patently Apple:

In a patent application that surfaced today at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office titled “Wearable Device,” they discuss their new “exchangeable” strap mechanisms. What struck me was that a great number of their form factor patent figures were actually Apple Watch designs showing that indeed they set out to copy Apple’s design — even if they changed the method enough not to get sued. But it’s clear that the Samsung engineers were either inspired by Apple’s ingenuity or that their bosses handed them pictures of what they wanted their engineers to copy. It’s undeniable as you’ll see in the 12 patent figures presented below.

The illustrations aren’t just similar to Apple Watch. They’re exact illustrations of Apple Watch and several of its distinctive bands. In a Samsung patent filing. See for yourself. You can’t make this stuff up.

(Via Abdel Ibrahim at WatchAware.)

111 Designers File Amicus Brief Supporting Apple Against Samsung ★

Andrew Chung, reporting for Reuters:

Apple Inc. deserved the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. paid for infringing patented designs of the iPhone, because the product’s distinctive look drives people to purchase it, a group of design industry professionals told the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.

Setting up a clash with a number of Silicon Valley companies that have come out on the side of Samsung, more than 100 designers and educators signed on to a new court brief supporting Apple.

They include famous fashion names Calvin Klein, Paul Smith and Alexander Wang, the industrial design director at Parsons School of Design, the design director for Bentley Motors, and Tony Chambers, the editor-in-chief of Wallpaper magazine.

The actual brief is a cogent read.

Philadelphia to Its Residents: Don’t Swim in Dumpsters ★

Another local note. From a public service announcement from the Philadelphia mayor’s office:

In view of the City’s commitment to public health, safety and basic common sense, we will not issue permits for block party dumpster pools. And while you would think this decision would not require an explanation, three days of press requests have proven otherwise. [...]

We are not screwing around, Philly. The Streets Department will not issue any future block party permits to the 2400 block of Cedar, and officials have contacted the dumpster rental company regarding its failures to obtain the proper closure permits and to take mandatory measures to protect the street during placement of the dumpster.

Bill Lyon Throws Out First Pitch at Phillies Game ★

Tommy Rowan, writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Bill Lyon took a few steps off the pitcher’s mound at Citizens Bank Park Wednesday night, wound up his left arm, and tossed the ceremonial first pitch before the Phillies squared off against the the San Francisco Giants.

Lyon threw a strike to the Phillie Phanatic, and nary a boo was heard throughout the stadium.

It didn’t matter where the ball landed on this night — Alzheimer’s Association Night at the South Philadelphia ballpark — in which the city paid tribute to the 78-year-old former Inquirer sports columnist.

I read Lyon’s column in The Inquirer religiously. I wanted to do what he did. He wrote with style, and a distinctive voice. He held no punches. Actually, scratch that past tense. He still writes with style and a distinctive voice, and holds no punches. Now, though, instead of sports, he’s documenting his own battle with Alzheimer’s.

Another Communications Executive Leaves Twitter ★

Kurt Wagner, reporting for Recode:

This is yet another blow for Twitter, which is trying to take back its own narrative in an effort to boost its slumping stock price. The company’s VP of Communications, Natalie Kerris, left Twitter unexpectedly earlier this week, and at least two other members of the company’s tiny communications team have left in the past six weeks.

Prosser, in particular, had a lot of key responsibilities on the team. As head of corporate comms, he handled press for most of Twitter’s executive turnovers (and there have been plenty). That meant he was also dealing with company earnings every quarter (also a pretty tough assignment). As a result, Business Insider named him the top tech PR person in 2015.