Linked List: January 31, 2019

Thursday, 31 January 2019

The Talk Show: ‘The Butts Incident’ ★

John Moltz makes his long-awaited return to the show. Three big topics this week: the Facebook VPN app fiasco (and the company’s pattern of ethical violations), the Group FaceTime bug that allowed callers to listen to audio before the call was answered, and Apple’s quarterly results.

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You Really Couldn’t Make This Shit Up ★

Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng, writing for The Daily Beast:

Jeff Bezos’s top personal security consultant has questioned his mistress’s brother as part of the probe into how the couple’s text messages wound up in the hands of the National Enquirer.

Gavin de Becker, the Amazon chief’s longtime personal security consultant and the point person for the investigation, confirmed to The Daily Beast on Wednesday that his probe has scrutinized Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos mistress Lauren Sanchez and a personal and business associate of Trumpworld figures including Roger Stone, Carter Page, and Scottie Nell Hughes. […]

Stone confirmed his association with Sanchez in text messages with The Daily Beast on Wednesday evening. “I do know Michael Sanchez — very good guy,” he wrote. Stone proceeded to deny that he hacked Bezos’s phone. When The Daily Beast pointed out that it had never suggested or asked if he had, Stone replied, “You are busted. You are not a journalist. No one believes anything you write.”

I was staying away from the whole Bezos divorce saga, but this is too unbelievable to ignore. Roger Stone is involved? I feel like a dope for being surprised by this.

Walt Mossberg on Apple’s Control of iOS ★

Walt Mossberg:

Unlike Facebook, which has no real competition, Apple’s app ecosystem is dwarfed by Android and its apps. If you prefer much looser enforcement vs. bad actors, more malware, less privacy and a platform maker that itself collects private information by the ton, you have a choice.

Apple Revokes Google’s Enterprise Certificates for iOS Apps ★

What’s good for the goose is good for the Google.

As soon as I saw this yesterday, I thought it was pretty much the exact same thing Facebook had been doing. Only fair they’d face the same result.

Update: BuzzFeed has statements:

In a statement, Google told BuzzFeed News, “We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon.” Apple told BuzzFeed News, “We are working together with Google to help them reinstate their enterprise certificates very quickly.”

Apple has issued no such statement regarding Facebook.

Dumbest Take of the Day on the Apple-Facebook Thing ★

Casey Newton at The Verge, “Apple’s Power Over Facebook Ought to Worry the Rest of Us”:

But there’s an argument for Facebook’s kind of research, too, and I heard it from some of you. One is that it’s common — and indeed, by the end of the day, Google had to remove a similar app from its enterprise development program.

All sorts of stuff is common but against the rules of the App Store.

Two is that Facebook’s program sought and obtained consent from its participants, and that to say people shouldn’t have been able to offer their consent is oddly patronizing.

By this logic the government shouldn’t regulate payday lenders and banks, because usurious interest rates are OK if people consent to them.

Three is that by paying its volunteers, it essentially made them contractors — offering a fig-leaf defense of the move to include Facebook Research among the company’s enterprise app deployments.

I’m sure they were all sending in 1099s. Give me a break. Everybody knows that Apple’s enterprise certificate program does not in any way permit distribution of this kind of software, which wouldn’t be allowed in the App Store. But that’s exactly how Facebook was using it.

There are pros and cons to Apple’s iron-clad control over native apps on iOS. This incident with Facebook is one of the pros.

TechCrunch:

After we asked Google whether its app violated Apple policy, Google announced it will remove Screenwise Meter from Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program and disable it on iOS devices.

The company said in a statement to TechCrunch:

“The Screenwise Meter iOS app should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program — this was a mistake, and we apologize. We have disabled this app on iOS devices. This app is completely voluntary and always has been. We’ve been upfront with users about the way we use their data in this app, we have no access to encrypted data in apps and on devices, and users can opt out of the program at any time.”

Makes you wonder how many companies are abusing the enterprise beta stuff to effectively side-load apps onto iPhones that would never pass muster in the App Store.

How Tax Brackets Actually Work ★

Marginal tax rates are fair and aren’t complicated, but are vastly misunderstood.