Linked List: July 15, 2019

Monday, 15 July 2019

Chris Welch Reviews Sony’s WF-1000XM3 Noise-Canceling Earbuds ★

$230, but they have active noise cancellation and a bunch of different sizes for the rubber nubbins that go in your ear. I think they look very nice, and they definitely look very Sony. It’s good to see that Sony still has it. The biggest downside: they’re not water resistant.

(Also a little frustrating that the company that came up with great names like Walkman, PlayStation, and Trinitron couldn’t come up with a better name than “WF-1000XM3”. Jiminy.)

Microsoft Word Passes 1 Billion Installs on Google Play Store ★

Corbin Davenport, writing for Android Police:

Even though cloud-based productivity suites like Google Docs are incredibly popular, many people (and large corporations) still operate on good ol’ Microsoft Office. The Word text processor was Microsoft’s first Android app to pass 500 million installs on the Play Store, and a little over a year later, it has now passed the 1 billion mark.

As with most apps that reach this many installations, the count isn’t made up entirely of downloads from the Play Store. Microsoft has agreements with Samsung and other manufacturers to pre-install Word (and several other apps) on phones and tablets, so there’s a good chance many of those billion installations come from devices where the app has never been opened.

The Office apps are very popular on iOS too, of course. It makes sense that Microsoft put so much effort into trying get Windows Phone off the ground — they knew that mobile was going to be a huge part of the Office franchise. Turns out it just wasn’t on their own platform.

Peter Thiel Says FBI and CIA Should Probe Google ★

Peter Thiel, in a speech to the National Conservatism Conference:

Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI?

Number two, does Google’s senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?

Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military… because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn’t go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?

I don’t know if there’s any merit to these accusations, but that’s a hell of a thing for Thiel to accuse Google of.

Washington Post: ‘Apple Preaches Privacy. Lawmakers Want the Talk to Turn to Action.’ ★

Reed Albergotti and Tony Romm, reporting for The Washington Post:

While Apple formally supports the notion of a federal privacy law, the company has yet to formally back any bills proposed on the Hill — unlike Microsoft. “I would argue there’s a need for Apple to be a more vocal part of this debate,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), a fierce critic of tech companies for their privacy violations. […]

“If you are going to use the value of privacy in your marketing, I think you have an obligation to your consumers to tell us what that means,” said India McKinney, a legislative analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization that advocates for Internet privacy and security.

McKinney noted that Apple hasn’t signed on to privacy legislation that other companies, such as Web browser DuckDuckGo, have supported, including an amendment to the new California law that prevents consumer data collection by default and gives citizens the right to sue tech companies for violations. If Apple were to throw its weight behind strong privacy protections even at the state level, it would help counter pressure from other large tech companies to water down the legislation, she said. “That would make headlines. That would be really useful,” she said.

Interesting dilemma on this one. I can see the argument that without backing specific legislation, Apple’s privacy stance is insular, guiding only its own products and services. But do we really want any private companies, even Apple, dictating the terms of public policy? Do Facebook and Google get a seat at the table?