Linked List: July 2019

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t ★

Headline from Jon Swartz’s report for MarketWatch on Apple’s Q3 results: “The iPhone Just Did Something It Hasn’t Done in Nearly 7 Years, and It Isn’t Good for Apple”.

What could it be? This:

Sales of signature smartphone are less than half of Apple’s quarterly revenue for the first time since 2012.

So from 2013-2018, the oft-repeated narrative was that Apple was in trouble because they were too dependent on iPhone sales. Now they’re diversifying, particularly through services and wearables, and that’s “not good for Apple”. OK.

LG Updates Their 5K 27-Inch UltraFine Display ★

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

Available for $1,299.95, the new LG UltraFine 5K Display offers the same 5120 x 2880 resolution as the previous UltraFine 5K Display with 14.7 million pixels and P3 wide color gamut.

The display connects to a Mac using a Thunderbolt 3 cable, and this version of the monitor can connect using USB-C, which means that it’s also compatible with the iPad Pro. There are three downstream USB-C ports with speeds up to 5Gb/s, and when used with a Mac notebook, charging over TB3 is supported with up to 94W of power available.

When connected to an iPad Pro via USB-C, it’s limited to 4K resolution, but the old 5K UltraFine Display didn’t support iPad Pro at all. When the previous 5K UltraFine Display started disappearing from retailers — especially Apple’s own store — most of us assumed it was being discontinued, leaving Mac users with no good options for a 5K display. Good to know it was simply being updated.

But I’ve been holding out hope that in addition to the $5,000–7,000 Pro Display XDR, Apple might also release their own 6K (or even 5K) Pro Display without all of the advanced color and brightness capabilities, for pro users whose work doesn’t require those expensive features. This update to LG’s UltraFine Display makes me think that’s now less likely.

Apple Maps in iOS 13 ★

Ryan Christoffel, writing for MacStories:

Timed with the spread of its first-party mapping data, Apple is giving the Maps app a big upgrade in iOS 13 that represents the company’s biggest push yet to overtake Google Maps as the world’s most trusted, go-to mapping service. Apple Maps in iOS 13 represents — if you’re in the US at least — Apple’s purest vision to date for a modern mapping service. Here’s everything that it brings.

Comprehensive overview of what’s new, and where Apple Maps stands versus Google Maps.

Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2019 third quarter ended June 29, 2019. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $53.8 billion, an increase of 1 percent from the year-ago quarter, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.18, down 7 percent. International sales accounted for 59 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

“This was our biggest June quarter ever — driven by all-time record revenue from Services, accelerating growth from Wearables, strong performance from iPad and Mac and significant improvement in iPhone trends,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “These results are promising across all our geographic segments, and we’re confident about what’s ahead. The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products.”

Solid quarter. As usual, Jason Snell has a bunch of informative charts and graphs.

Monday, 29 July 2019

The Talk Show: ‘Pousse-Café’ ★

Special guest John Moltz returns to the show for a mid-summer Q&A episode, answering actual questions from actual listeners.

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Friday, 26 July 2019

‘Fast Software, the Best Software’ ★

Craig Mod:

I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.

Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance. Fastness in software is like great margins in a book — makes you smile without necessarily knowing why.

I love this essay so much I wish I could kiss it. One of the confounding aspects of software today is that our computers are literally hundreds — maybe even a thousand — times faster than the ones we used 20 years ago, but some simple tasks take longer now than they did then. Opening the Web Export dialog in Photoshop, for example.

Renato Mariotti: ‘Actually, Robert Mueller Was Awesome’ ★

Renato Mariotti, writing at Politico:

Tasked with overseeing the most high-profile investigation of our time, Mueller managed to complete the investigation without appearing to have a partisan agenda, with both sides embracing him at times. Even Trump said he acted “honorably” — before he turned on Mueller as “conflicted” and partisan — and touted “total exoneration” soon after Mueller concluded his work. Mueller’s down-the-middle, leak-free handling of the high-stakes investigation was an object lesson in professionalism.

And Wednesday’s performance was no different.

This jibes with my take almost perfectly.

See also: Preet Bharara:

Bob Mueller today was decent, honest, humble, measured, patriotic, apolitical and above the fray. He returned none of the bile the president and others have heaped on him. Whatever you thought of his performance, he is far better than his critics and remains an American hero.

Thursday, 25 July 2019

Apple to Acquire Majority of Intel’s Smartphone Modem Business ★

Intel Newsroom:

Intel and Apple have signed an agreement for Apple to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. Approximately 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, along with intellectual property, equipment and leases. The transaction, valued at $1 billion, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions, including works council and other relevant consultations in certain jurisdictions.

No surprise here. 2,200 new employees sounds like a lot, but they’re just going to keep working on what they were already working on: cellular modems. Remember this bit of the Cook Doctrine: “We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make.” If anything, Apple waited too long to take control of its modems the way it has its SoC’s.

Update: Here’s Apple’s press release. The big tell: their executive quote is from Johny Srouji.

“We’ve worked with Intel for many years and know this team shares Apple’s passion for designing technologies that deliver the world’s best experiences for our users,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “Apple is excited to have so many excellent engineers join our growing cellular technologies group, and know they’ll thrive in Apple’s creative and dynamic environment. They, together with our significant acquisition of innovative IP, will help expedite our development on future products and allow Apple to further differentiate moving forward.”

Motherboard: ‘Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement’ ★

Caroline Haskins, reporting for Motherboard:

Amazon’s home security company Ring has enlisted local police departments around the country to advertise its surveillance cameras in exchange for free Ring products and a “portal” that allows police to request footage from these cameras, a secret agreement obtained by Motherboard shows. The agreement also requires police to “keep the terms of this program confidential.”

This is a bad look for both sides.

Wednesday, 24 July 2019

Joanna Stern on the Current State of 5G Across America ★

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Eager to test out a technology that’s been more hyped than flavored sparkling water, I embarked on a 5G expedition from Denver to Atlanta to Chicago to Manhattan’s Lower East Side. I mostly used the new, $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, one of the first 5G phones and the only one available across all the carriers. I also tested the LG V50 ThinQ 5G on Sprint’s network; Verizon has a version but I didn’t test it.

After nearly 120 tests, more than 12 city miles walked and a couple of big blisters, I can report that 5G is fasten-your-seat-belt fast… when you can find it. And you’re standing outdoors. And the temperature is just right.

The Case of Al Franken ★

Jane Mayer, in a remarkably deeply researched piece for The New Yorker:

A remarkable number of Franken’s Senate colleagues have regrets about their own roles in his fall. Seven current and former U.S. senators who demanded Franken’s resignation in 2017 told me that they’d been wrong to do so. Such admissions are unusual in an institution whose members rarely concede mistakes. Patrick Leahy, the veteran Democrat from Vermont, said that his decision to seek Franken’s resignation without first getting all the facts was “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made” in forty-five years in the Senate. Heidi Heitkamp, the former senator from North Dakota, told me, “If there’s one decision I’ve made that I would take back, it’s the decision to call for his resignation. It was made in the heat of the moment, without concern for exactly what this was.” Tammy Duckworth, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, told me that the Senate Ethics Committee “should have been allowed to move forward.” She said it was important to acknowledge the trauma that Franken’s accusers had gone through, but added, “We needed more facts. That due process didn’t happen is not good for our democracy.” Angus King, the Independent senator from Maine, said that he’d “regretted it ever since” he joined the call for Franken’s resignation. “There’s no excuse for sexual assault,” he said. “But Al deserved more of a process. I don’t denigrate the allegations, but this was the political equivalent of capital punishment.” Senator Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, told me, “This was a rush to judgment that didn’t allow any of us to fully explore what this was about. I took the judgment of my peers rather than independently examining the circumstances. In my heart, I’ve not felt right about it.” Bill Nelson, the former Florida senator, said, “I realized almost right away I’d made a mistake. I felt terrible. I should have stood up for due process to render what it’s supposed to — the truth.” Tom Udall, the senior Democratic senator from New Mexico, said, “I made a mistake. I started having second thoughts shortly after he stepped down. He had the right to be heard by an independent investigative body. I’ve heard from people around my state, and around the country, saying that they think he got railroaded. It doesn’t seem fair. I’m a lawyer. I really believe in due process.”

That’s quite a paragraph.

First and foremost, I think Mayer makes an incredibly solid case that Franken was railroaded. When the scandal first broke, Franken himself immediately called for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation. That investigation should have been allowed to run its course, and it seems clear now, based on Mayer’s reporting, that his resignation was not called for.

Second, the Democrats lost their single best television presence. It shouldn’t be this way but it is: being good at TV is very good for politics. However repugnant you think Donald Trump is as a man and as a president, there’s no denying that he is very good at being on TV — he hosted a prime time network TV show for over a dozen years, and likely would still be hosting it today if, you know, he hadn’t been elected president. Ronald Reagan was underestimated by the political class because he was “just an actor”, but that’s exactly why he should have been taken very seriously from the moment he entered politics: he was amazingly good at being on TV.

Franken is very smart, very funny, and very good at being on TV — and he was great at making his questioning in Senate hearings work for TV. I’m not saying Democrats should have looked the other way at egregious behavior just because he was good on TV, but Franken’s importance to the party at a national level should have at least made them look twice at whether what he’d actually done was actually egregious.

Tuesday, 23 July 2019

Facebook Negotiated Its Rules ★

Great column from Matt Levine, writing for Bloomberg:

But the process wouldn’t be a one-on-one negotiation. It’s not like Congress would say “we want to regulate your data collection practices” and Facebook would say “hmm no we’d rather you didn’t” and Congress would say “okay you have good lawyers we give up.” Facebook’s main leverage against the FTC — “we don’t think we did anything wrong and if you insist on restricting our data collection we will see you in court” — just wouldn’t work to stop Congress from making a law, because it is irrelevant. Congress can make a law about data privacy even if no one has broken any previous laws. In fact that’s the best reason to make a law! “There is a bad thing that is happening, and there is no law against it, so we should make a law against it”: That is a perfectly sensible line of reasoning!

Stop-Motion Version of ‘The Shining’ Made With Lego ★

Beautiful work by filmmaker and Lego enthusiast Wim Laroy.

BMW to Charge $80 Annual Fee for Apple CarPlay ★

Greg Fink, reporting for Car and Driver:

BMW will turn Apple CarPlay into a subscription service beginning with its 2019-model-year vehicles.

The German automaker currently charges a one-time $300 to add Apple CarPlay capability to navigation-equipped BMW models. Going forward, though, navigation-equipped BMWs will come with CarPlay at no charge for one year. Following that first year, customers will need to pay an annual fee of $80 to maintain the relationship between their Apple device and their BMW’s infotainment system.

That is some serious next-level bullshit right there.

Update: Turns out this story is 18 months old — and I linked to it then, too! — but is somehow making the rounds again now (perhaps because this is the year when it took effect).

How to Use a Zebra Ink Cartridge With Studio Neat’s Mark One Pen ★

When I linked to Studio Neat’s Mark One: Apollo Edition Kickstarter campaign the other day, I mentioned that I use a Mark One using Zebra ink refills, thanks to a 3D-printed converter. A few readers asked how to obtain this converter. I’m linking here to the model. I don’t own a 3D printer — the guys at Studio Neat made this for me as a favor — but if you have access to a 3D printer this should get you started.

The refills you need are the JSB-04 (0.4mm, very fine) or the JSB-05 (0.5mm, fine), and, of course, you can get them at JetPens.

Sony’s Proto-Walkman That Went to the Moon ★

A fascinating lesson in the power of iteration. You get to a breakthrough like the original iPhone one step at a time.

Saturday, 20 July 2019

Morning Brew ★

My thanks to Morning Brew for sponsoring this week at Daring Fireball. There’s a reason over 1 million people (including me) start their day with Morning Brew — the daily email that delivers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Business news doesn’t have to be dry and dense. Morning Brew is to the point and funny.

Make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. Check it out.

Instagram ‘Tag Cleaners’ Are Fighting Against Digital Vandalism ★

Megan Farokhmanesh, writing for The Verge:

Tag cleaners, as they call themselves, drown out gore, harassment, and more by flooding a user’s tagged photos with pleasant images. It’s benevolent spam. The most prolific accounts are usually reposting the same images ad nauseam in quick bursts. Randomfloweracc, run by a 17-year-old named Lori, uses cartoons like Rilakkuma or Hello Kitty. Naomi, owner of cute.cleanup, is also partial to Sanrio characters and rainbows. […]

Instagram appears to have removed all of the tagged photos of Devins’ death, but there’s little to stop abusers from creating new accounts and restarting the cycle again. In the days following her death, The Verge noticed waves of these photos, both originating from the same accounts constantly reposting, as well as multiple new accounts cropping up. Reports filed by The Verge usually resulted in photos being taken down in minutes; but in some cases, that’s all it takes for any user to see them to begin with.

What these “tag cleaners” are doing is clearly good. It’s heartwarming that they spend so much time on this. But it’s heartbreaking that they have to do this in the first place. If Facebook truly cared, they could stop this hateful trolling in its tracks.

Today’s Proceeds From the Apollo Reddit App Are Going to the SPCA ★

Christian Selig:

So yeah, to try to help some today 100% of Apollo’s proceeds (every penny I make) will be donated to the local SPCA animal shelter. Apollo’s free to download with a Pro version that adds some extra features, as well as an Ultra version that adds a few more, so if you unlock those today it’ll be completely going to the animals and you get a little treat as a thank you for being awesome!

You might remember we did the same thing a year ago and raised $5,000 for the SPCA. I really want to try to hit $10,000 this time, I really think we can do it!

Fantastic app, great cause. Apollo isn’t just a truly nice native iOS app; it simply makes Reddit readable for me.

Friday, 19 July 2019

Jony Ive Describes the 20th Anniversary Macintosh in 1997 ★

This was so early in Ive’s career that he still had hair, and went by “Jon Ive”. The 20th Anniversary Mac was a weird beast, starting with the fact it commemorated the 20th anniversary of the company, not the Mac (which was 11 years old at the time). The main thing is it was never meant to sell at scale — it started at $7,500 and according to Wikipedia Apple only ever made 12,000 of them. It was a shipping prototype, effectively.

But the design clearly presaged what we now know as the modern iMac, which effectively is the modern desktop: all-in-one design, LCD display (this was truly radical in 1997), good built-in speakers, and an attempt to minimize the tangle of cables most PCs and Macs had in the back. All the hallmarks of Ive’s design sense are there.

Mark One: Apollo Edition ★

I’m a big fan of Studio Neat, the two-man design studio of Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost. Their Glif is an amazing iPhone tripod mount (works with any size iPhone, or any other phone for that matter), and their Canopy turns Apple’s Magic Keyboard into my favorite portable iPad keyboard.

One of their most recent products is a pen: the Mark One. I’m using one as my daily carry right now (with a custom 3D-printed converter that lets me use my beloved Zebra Sarasa 0.5mm ink cartridges^*). It’s a very nice pen and a beautiful, functional object. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, they’ve created a limited edition version, on sale in an 8-day Kickstarter campaign that coincides with the dates of the Apollo 11 mission. The project is already funded three times over — most likely, I suppose, from fans of the standard Mark One — and this is the only opportunity to buy this edition. I’m in.

* For years, I swore by 0.4mm Sarasas. But now that I’m older and my eyesight is deteriorating, I can’t print as small as I used to, so I switched to 0.5mm a while back and now I can’t believe I ever used the 0.4mm pens for so long. A tenth of a millimeter sounds like a negligible difference, but in practice, it’s the difference between “very fine” and “fine”.

Ken Rosenthal on Jayson Stark ★

Ken Rosenthal, writing for The Athletic:

Sometimes, I wish I could think like Jayson — and sometimes, with all the stuff ping-ponging around his brain, I’m grateful I cannot. But always, I wish I could write like him. Jayson’s writing is conversational, entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny. He doesn’t take himself seriously. But he takes his audience extremely seriously, and considers no detail too small in his service of the reader.

Among his many attributes, Jayson has a knack for engaging relatively obscure veterans who are keen observers of the game, and then elevating them to oracles in his columns. After a long night of October baseball, 99 percent of us will gather in the clubhouse around the star of the game. Jayson will be off in the corner, talking to whoever he has identified as this year’s Corky Miller or Casey Candaele or Skip Schumaker or Mark DeRosa — and naturally, getting the best stuff.

Stark was a longtime baseball columnist for The Inquirer here in Philly. Back in the ’90s, he got an entire two-page spread in the Sunday Inquirer all to himself. My roommates and I used to fight over who got to read it first. I like The Athletic a lot, but I’d subscribe just to read Jayson Stark.

Thursday, 18 July 2019

An Oral History of David Cone’s Perfect Game, 20 Years Ago Today ★: One of the greatest days in baseball history. What are the odds that this could happen on a day when Don Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi Berra? One of the things I always loved about David Cone is that he didn’t have the best stuff — he pitched with his mind as much as he did his arm.
Mark Ritson on Apple’s Long-Term Brand Positioning ★: I enjoyed this quite a bit, but the big thing Ritson misses is that the fundamental reason why Apple’s brand is differentiated from its competitors isn’t about its advertising — it’s about the products themselves. The products themselves are differentiated — only iPhones run iOS, only Macs run MacOS. That’s where it starts, and the advertising only serves to point out how the products are different and why they’re better. The “Think Different” campaign was an exception, but that’s because at the time, Apple’s fundamental problem was that its products were not differentiated enough. That’s the thing many people misunderstand about Apple’s “product marketing” team. They don’t come in at the end and figure out how to advertise finished products; they’re right there at the beginning, helping define what the products actually are.

Wednesday, 17 July 2019

All 104 James Bond Movie Villains Ranked ★

Jacob Hall, writing for Esquire:

They say a James Bond movie is only as good as its villain. That’s not always true—weak bad guys unwind fantastic Bond movies. Stellar villains elevate terrible installments. While England’s top spy has gone head-to-head against a variety of foes, you can’t deny that some have served as meatier adversaries as others. That’s why we have to do what any Bond fan must do: rank every single James Bond villain in a big list.

Points to Hall for comprehensiveness — there are 24 Bond movies, with at least one boss and several henchmen in each film. I think he gets the order largely right, but there’s a lot to quibble with. (5th place isn’t shabby on a list of 104, but I’d rank Auric Goldfinger in the top 3, at least — he’s the quintessential Bond villain.)

The other thing I disagree with is putting Blofeld down as a single character. He appears in 7 films but, in the films in which we see his face, was never played by the same actor twice (yet). Hall’s rankings include the actors’ performances — I’d say each actor’s Blofeld should be included separately — or at least we need a separate list of ranked Blofelds. I’d go with: Donald Pleasence, Christoph Waltz, Charles Gray, Telly Savalas, Max von Sydow — and I’d probably put Pleasence’s Blofeld in the top 3 overall. Like Goldfinger, he’s quintessential. And the goofy unnamed “Blofeld” whom Roger Moore’s Bond tosses out of a helicopter and into a chimney in the dreadfully awkward opening scene of For Your Eyes Only ought to be dead last on the whole list.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Who Led Liberal Wing, Dies at 99 ★

Linda Greenstone’s obituary for The New York Times is utterly compelling. This anecdote says a lot:

Justice Stevens was known around the court for treating others with sensitivity and respect. One former law clerk, Christopher L. Eisgruber, described in a 1993 essay an incident at a party for new clerks: Before Justice Stevens arrived, an older male justice had instructed one of the few female clerks present to serve coffee. When Justice Stevens entered, he quickly grasped the situation, walked up to the young woman and said: “Thank you for taking your turn with the coffee. I think it’s my turn now.” He took over the job.

NYT: ‘Notre-Dame Came Far Closer to Collapsing Than People Knew’ ★

The New York Times:

The New York Times conducted scores of interviews and reviewed hundreds of documents to reconstruct the missteps — and the battle that saved Notre-Dame in the first four critical hours after the blaze began.

What became clear is just how close the cathedral came to collapsing.

The first hour was defined by that initial, critical mistake: the failure to identify the location of the fire, and by the delay that followed.

The second hour was dominated by a sense of helplessness. As people raced to the building, waves of shock and mourning for one of the world’s most beloved and recognizable buildings, amplified over social media, rippled in real time across the globe.

That Notre-Dame still stands is due solely to the enormous risks taken by firefighters in those third and fourth hours.

Fascinating investigative journalism and excellently illustrated presentation on the web. Highly recommend reading on an iPad.

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

Business Insider: ‘Google Is Trying to Convince Congress It Has Search Competition’ ★

Nick Bastone, reporting for Business Insider:

“In our core search business, consumers can choose among a range of options: Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and many more,” Cohen said. “Specialized search services are strong competitors, too, including companies like Amazon, eBay, Kayak, Travelocity, Yelp, and others.”

But recent statistics paint a different picture. According to StatCounter, Google accounts for over 92% of the search engine market share worldwide as of this June.

Its closest competitor, Bing, accounted for just over 2.5% of the market.

Competition isn’t the right word. Yes, there are competing search engines, clearly. The right word is monopoly, and it’s just as clear that Google has a very strong monopoly on the search engine market. Monopolies aren’t illegal — but monopoly holders are subject to regulations that non-monopoly competitors are not. That’s the issue. Google’s argument shouldn’t be to simply say that they have competition, it should be to say that they compete fairly.

That might be a tough argument for them to make while under oath.

The Omega Speedmaster: The Watch That Went to the Moon ★

Krishnadev Calamur, writing for The Atlantic:

In other words, the Speedmaster and watches like it provide a sense of permanence in an age with little of it. The Speedmaster available today is virtually the same as the one Aldrin wore on the moon, or indeed the one Omega introduced way back in 1957, as a tool for race-car drivers.

It is unchanged because there’s nothing to change: The mechanical watch is, along with the bicycle, an arguably perfect invention. If wound every day and serviced regularly, it can run for perpetuity. There aren’t many things you can say that about in our era of fast fashion and biennial phone upgrades.

This is, to me, exactly the appeal of mechanical watches.

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?

Saturday, 13 July 2019

Nilay Patel: ‘Facebook’s $5 Billion FTC Fine Is an Embarrassing Joke’ ★

Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

That, as The New York Times’ Mike Isaac points out, is the real story here: the United States government spent months coming up with a punishment for Facebook’s long list of privacy-related bad behavior, and the best it could do was so weak that Facebook’s stock price went up.[…]

From some other perspectives, that $5 billion fine is a big deal, of course: it’s the biggest fine in FTC history, far bigger than the $22 million fine levied against Google in 2012. And $5 billion is a lot of money, to be sure. It’s just that like everything else that comes into contact with Facebook’s scale, it’s still entirely too small: Facebook had $15 billion in revenue last quarter alone, and $22 billion in profit last year.

Apple Brings Back Texas Hold’em ★

John Voorhees, writing for MacStories:

When the App Store opened for business in 2008, Apple released Texas Hold’em, the company’s first and only iOS game and successor to an iPod version that debuted in 2006. The game, which Stephen Hackett profiled for MacStories last year was short-lived, disappearing from the App Store in 2011.

In the eight years since the game’s release, Apple has left the iOS game market to third-party developers, with the exception of Warren Buffett’s Paper Wizard. Today, however, the company released an updated version, which was spotted by an eagle-eyed 9to5Mac reader. Strangely, the game’s description says the release is meant to celebrate the App Store’s 10th Anniversary, which occurred last July 10th, not quite 11 years ago today.

I find this so fascinating. First, I actually enjoy this game. I’m sure there are better poker games in the App Store now — or at least smarter ones — but the game mechanics of this one, in landscape mode, are just fun. But why bring it back now? Why say it’s to commemorate the App Store’s 10th anniversary after its 11th anniversary? Was this meant for last year but held up for a year for some reason?

It’s also interesting what they’ve updated and what they haven’t. They’ve switched the font to San Francisco (but maybe that’s just because they were always specifying the system font), and it adapts to fit the iPhone X-class displays, but there’s still no iPad version and still no iCloud syncing across devices. For the most part, the game seems unchanged. Oh, and in a sign of the times, the price dropped from $4.99 to free.

Friday, 12 July 2019

FTC Approves Roughly $5 Billion Facebook Settlement ★

Emily Glazer, Ryan Tracy, and Jeff Horwitz, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The Federal Trade Commission has endorsed a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook Inc. over a long-running probe into the tech giant’s privacy missteps, according to people familiar with the matter.

FTC commissioners this past week voted 3-2 in favor of the agreement, with the Republican majority backing the pact while Democratic commissioners objected, the people said. The matter has been moved to the Justice Department’s civil division and it is unclear how long it will take to finalize, one of the people said. Justice Department reviews are part of FTC procedure but typically don’t change the outcome of a decision by the commission.

I’m still with Kara Swisher on this — add a zero and we might have a fine that will change Facebook. $5 billion is just the cost of doing business.

Where Are All the Bob Ross Paintings? ★

Who would’ve thought that it’s next to impossible to buy an original Bob Ross? Delightful video piece from a team at The New York Times — I recommend just opening the link and hitting play.

‘Robot Umpires’ Debuted in the Atlantic League All-Star Game ★

Johnny Flores Jr., reporting for Yahoo Sports:

On Wednesday, the independent Atlantic League, which is a partner of Major League Baseball, debuted the electronic strike zone during its All-Star game, making it the first American professional league to do so.

Home plate umpire Brian deBrauwere wore an earpiece that was connected to an iPhone in his pocket. The earpiece relayed balls and strikes after receiving it from a TrackMan computer system utilizing a Doppler radar and deBrauwere called them as he received them.

Sounds like they need to work on the latency, but this is probably the future for all professional baseball.

Former Tesla Employee Admits Uploading Autopilot Source Code to iCloud ★

Sean O’Kane, writing for The Verge:

Cao denied stealing sensitive information from the automaker in the same filing. His legal team argued he “made extensive efforts to delete and/or remove any such Tesla files prior to his separation from Tesla.” Cao is now the “head of perception” at XPeng, where he is “[d]eveloping and delivering autonomous driving technologies for production cars,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

Uploading very sensitive source code to your personal iCloud account, then going to work for a Chinese competitor — sure sure, nothing suspicious about that.

According to a joint filing from the two parties that was also filed this week, Tesla has subpoenaed documents from Apple. While Apple is not involved in this case, a former employee who worked on the tech company’s secretive autonomous car project was charged by the FBI with stealing trade secrets last July.

That employee allegedly Air Dropped sensitive data to his wife’s laptop and was also caught on CCTV leaving Apple’s campus with a box of equipment. He had left his job at Apple to take a position at XPeng before being arrested.

I’m starting to think this XPeng company isn’t on the up and up.

Apple Disables Walkie Talkie App Due to Vulnerability That Could Allow iPhone Eavesdropping ★

Apple, in a statement to TechCrunch:

We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible. Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent. We apologize again for this issue and the inconvenience.

I was just trying to use the Walkie Talkie feature today and chalked up its inability to connect to a bug. It’s not quite reliable enough, but when it works, it’s a fun and convenient feature.

‘The Shining’ Starring Jim Carrey ★

On the surface this is just fun. But we’re obviously going to soon have real-world scandals based on these “deep fake” videos. Right now, video footage is a compelling way to prove something is true. What happens when we can’t trust video?

Thursday, 11 July 2019

AppleInsider: ‘Amazon Now Fastest-Growing Music Service, Outpacing Apple and Spotify’ ★

Mike Wuerthele, writing for AppleInsider:

Driven by inexpensive Alexa products, Amazon is adding customers at a faster rate than either Spotify or Apple Music — but still has a long way to go to catch up.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Amazon has quietly outpaced subscriber additions versus its more well-known competitors. A report by the Financial Times claims that Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers have grown by about 70% in the last year.

Time for the Justice Department to investigate Apple’s music business.

Apple Has Pushed a Silent MacOS Update to Remove Zoom’s Hidden Web Server ★

Zack Whittaker, reporting for TechCrunch:

Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom, the popular video conferencing app, which allowed websites to automatically add a user to a video call without their permission.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant told TechCrunch that the update — now released — removes the hidden web server, which Zoom quietly installed on users’ Macs when they installed the app.

Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.

That’s the end of that chapter. I forgot to mention the other day that the worst part about Zoom’s local web server is that if you deleted the Zoom app, the web server would silently reinstall the Zoom app if a website you visited requested it. That phrase I quoted yesterday, “nonconsensual technology”, really sums it up. I’ll go out on a limb and say Apple is none too pleased about this. I can’t think of a better example to explain why we — which is to say honest Mac users and developers — are stuck with ever-tightening sandbox restrictions on the Mac.

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Rip Torn, Actor Known for ‘The Larry Sanders Show’, Dies at 88 ★

Ross O. Lincoln, writing for The Wrap:

But it was the 1992-1998 HBO comedy “The Larry Sanders Show” for which Torn will be perhaps best remembered. For playing Artie, the doggedly loyal attack dog of a producer who runs the eponymous show and manages the fragile ego of its star, Torn was widely acclaimed. He received six Emmy nominations, winning once in 1996, and over the show’s run was also nominated for two American Comedy awards (winning one), an American Television Award, and four Cable Ace awards (winning one), among many other accolades.

One of the hardest things to do in cinema — whether movies or TV — is convey a palpable, credible sense of camaraderie. It takes great writing, great acting, and perfect casting. “The Larry Sanders Show” is, depending on my mood, my favorite TV show of all time. And the heart of the show was the unwavering friendship between Artie and Larry.

Mix up a salty dog and pour a scotch for Rip Torn.

Zoom Considers Their Major Security Vulnerability a Feature, Not a Flaw ★

Nicole Nguyen, reporting for BuzzFeed News:

Not only did Zoom allow attackers access to the video cameras of its Mac app users, but it also left its web server running in the background, even after the user uninstalled the Zoom app. BuzzFeed News also verified that the server also reinstalled the Zoom app when a meeting link was clicked, without notifying the user, if the Zoom app had been deleted from the machine.

Saitta criticized these behaviors, saying they are “not justifiable in these cases and come with significant risk.” She recommends that people remove Zoom from their systems and refrain from using the app until the company delivers a version without that always-on web server. “This is an excellent example of what my friend Deb Chachra calls ‘nonconsensual technology,’” she told BuzzFeed News. “It’s a sadly common attitude among tech companies that what the user wants can be ignored on a whim.”

Simply outrageous.

Zoom Is Disturbingly Dangerous Software ★

Jonathan Leitschuh:

This vulnerability allows any website to forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without the user’s permission.

On top of this, this vulnerability would have allowed any webpage to DOS (Denial of Service) a Mac by repeatedly joining a user to an invalid call.

Additionally, if you’ve ever installed the Zoom client and then uninstalled it, you still have a localhost web server on your machine that will happily re-install the Zoom client for you, without requiring any user interaction on your behalf besides visiting a webpage. This re-install ‘feature’ continues to work to this day.

Any architecture that requires a localhost web server is questionable at best. (That means every Mac with Zoom installed is running a web server.) But the fact that Zoom implemented it in a way such that the web server was still there, still running, even when you deleted the Zoom app, is morally criminal, and should be legally criminal. No one who understands how this worked could possibly have thought this was ethical. Install the app, try the app, delete the app — you expect all traces of the app to be gone. Not only did Zoom leave something behind, it left behind a web server with serious security vulnerabilities. I’m not prone to histrionics but this is genuinely outrageous — not even to mention the fact that Leitschuh reported this to Zoom months ago and Zoom effectively shrugged its corporate shoulders.

If you ever installed Zoom, I’d go through the steps to eradicate it and never install it again.

Tuesday, 9 July 2019

Katie Notopoulos Tried Emailing Like a CEO ★

Katie Notopoulos, writing at BuzzFeed:

What trips me up most is my habit of scanning my inbox, often on my phone, opening an email, reading it, and thinking, “I’ll reply to that later when I’m at my computer and/or not in the middle of this other project and can give a full reply.” Then I leave it marked as “read” and forget about it. I check my inbox constantly, but I only actually deal with my emails in a deliberate way during a few dedicated chunks of my day.

That is me.

The other key part of boss-style email is doing a lot of email on the phone. This meant goodbye to my old crutch of “I’ll reply when I get to a computer.” I would fire off emails from my phone on the subway, walking around at lunch, on the toilet at the office. For the first time, I actually started using the suggested Gmail replies, which are actually pretty useful in the sense of purely transmitting information.

That first Monday, as I fired off a bunch of not-super-important emails, something strange happened. I felt… extremely good. I was high on the fumes of efficiency. No longer did a little cloud hang over me, the nagging feeling you get when you know you’re supposed to do something and can’t remember what.

I’ve been thinking about this lately — that I should treat email more like I treat texting. A few words — or maybe just an emoji — and that’s it.

Walt Mossberg’s Review of the Original iPhone ★

As we look back at Jony Ive’s career at Apple, surely the high water mark was the original iPhone in 2007. Walt Mossberg’s review holds up perfectly — he absolutely nailed it:

The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly. […]

In addition, even when you have great AT&T coverage, the iPhone can’t run on AT&T’s fastest cellular data network. Instead, it uses a pokey network called EDGE, which is far slower than the fastest networks from Verizon or Sprint that power many other smart phones. And the initial iPhone model cannot be upgraded to use the faster networks.

The iPhone compensates by being one of the few smart phones that can also use Wi-Fi wireless networks. When you have access to Wi-Fi, the iPhone flies on the Web. Not only that, but the iPhone automatically switches from EDGE to known Wi-Fi networks when it finds them, and pops up a list of new Wi-Fi networks it encounters as you move.

Hard to believe, in hindsight, that Wi-Fi was a novel feature. My favorite part of the review is the chart comparing the iPhone to its top rivals circa 2007 — the Samsung BlackJack, BlackBerry 8800, and Treo 700p. They look like relics. One thing I’ve noticed recently is that I still see people — some of them surprisingly young — using basic flip phones. But I never see anyone using a BlackBerry-style phone with a QWERTY keyboard.

(The other funny thing, looking back, is how Samsung was still Samsung back then, copying not only BlackBerry’s form factor but even its goddamn name.)

On the Bugginess of This Year’s OS Betas From Apple ★

Ulysses:

During the last couple of weeks, quite a few people contacted us about crashes, hangs and other problems with Ulysses on devices running the beta versions of iOS 13, iPadOS and macOS Catalina. We’ve been asked a couple of times if we couldn’t offer a beta version of Ulysses that works fine on the new OSes. Unfortunately, for the time being, we can’t.

From our experience with previous OS updates, we feel safe to say that these betas are extraordinarily unstable and buggy. After all, beta versions of operating systems are still just beta versions — they are buggy, they are crash-prone, and they do lose data. Whereas in recent years, it was pretty safe to install preview versions early on, this year that’s definitely not the case (see for example this report on Cult of Mac).

Most impactful for us, however, is that the (great, great) updates done to iCloud are also leading to severe problems with the service. As iCloud is Apple’s sync service, it’s beyond our power to solve them, of course. Some public beta users reported synchronization outages and data loss that propagated to devices that did not even run the beta but were just connected via iCloud.

I’ve heard this from a bunch of developers. Right now iCloud is dangerous on the beta OSes. That’s not a complaint in and of itself; if there weren’t bugs they wouldn’t be betas. But I think it was a bad idea for Apple to release public betas at this stage. One trick I learned long ago is to install MacOS betas on an external hard drive and keep my regular startup drive unmounted while running the beta OS. But iCloud is a data store too, and you can’t unmount it.

iOS 12 to 13 Comparison Screenshots ★

Nice visual guide to what’s new — so far — in iOS 13 from Ryan Burnett. Twitter is pretty good for something like this.

Study Claims Huawei Staff and Chinese Military Have Deep Links ★

CNBC:

A new analysis of CVs of Huawei staff appeared to reveal deeper links between the technology giant and China’s military and intelligence bodies than had been previously acknowledged by the firm.

The paper, which looks at employment records of Huawei employees, concluded that “key mid-level technical personnel employed by Huawei have strong backgrounds in work closely associated with intelligence gathering and military activities.” Some employees can be linked “to specific instances of hacking or industrial espionage conducted against Western firms,” it claimed.

Get me to the fainting couch. What a shocker.

Matthew Panzarino: ‘Apple Sans Ive’ ★

Matthew Panzarino:

The narratives, to summarize, are essentially that:

Jony had checked out, become incompetent or just plain lazy

Apple is doomed because he is leaving

If those narratives look contradictory, then you have eyes.

If you take the sum of the breathless (dare I say thirsty) stories tying together a bunch of anecdotes about Jony’s last couple of years, they are trying to paint a picture of a legendary design figure that has abandoned the team and company he helped build, leading to a stagnation of forward progress — while at the same time trying to argue that the company is doomed without him.

OK.

Perhaps my favorite piece on Ive’s departure. I agree with the whole thing, top to bottom, particularly his dismissal of the, as he says, “thirsty” takes on Ive’s last few years.

Apple Revamps MacBook Lineup ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today updated MacBook Air, adding True Tone to its Retina display for a more natural viewing experience, and lowering the price to $1,099, with an even lower price of $999 for college students. In addition, the entry-level $1,299 13-inch MacBook Pro has been updated with the latest 8th-generation quad-core processors, making it two times more powerful than before. It also now features Touch Bar and Touch ID, a True Tone Retina display and the Apple T2 Security Chip, and is available for $1,199 for college students.

In addition to bumping the specs on these two models and lowering their prices, Apple also got rid of the non-retina Air (except for education institutional buyers, and at retailers like Best Buy) and completely dropped the 12-inch MacBook. We all knew the non-retina Air would eventually — finally — go away. Unless I’m overlooking something, ~~Apple no longer sells (to consumers) any devices with non-retina displays~~. Update: I did overlook something: the entry level 21-inch iMac is still non-retina.

I’m a little surprised to see the MacBook dropped completely, but the Air, though bigger, is a much more capable machine. Overall, it is a tremendous simplification of the entire MacBook lineup, and that’s a good thing. Retina Air and two sizes of MacBook Pro — hard to see how it could get any simpler. Other than the increase in size of the “smallest” MacBook, the only knock against today’s revamp is that the starting price (for those other than college students) has jumped from $1000 to $1100.

Update: A few other observations:

Apple isn’t making a point of it, but these new MacBooks both have the new third-generation butterfly keyboards.
According to Student Monitor, MacBooks have 60 percent market share among college students. That’s impressive period, but downright bananas for those of us who remember where Macs were market-share-wise 20 years ago.
Apple’s back-to-school promotion saves you up to $200 and includes a pair of Beats Studio 3 wireless headphones, which retail for $300. That’s a great deal.

Trump Can’t Block Critics From His Twitter Account, Appeals Court Rules ★

Charlie Savage, reporting for The New York Times:

President Trump has been violating the Constitution by blocking people from following his Twitter account because they criticized or mocked him, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The ruling could have broader implications for how the First Amendment applies to the social-media era.

Because Mr. Trump uses Twitter to conduct government business, he cannot exclude some Americans from reading his posts — and engaging in conversations in the replies to them — because he does not like their views, a three-judge panel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled unanimously.

This is the least important Trump controversy I can think of, but I do find it an interesting case. With the absurd number of replies he gets with each tweet — thousands, if not tens of thousands — I can’t see why he even bothers blocking people. But I like to think he’s actually sitting there, wasting time each day poking buttons in the Twitter app, angrily blocking people.

Monday, 8 July 2019

Summer Sponsorships at DF ★

Hey there, DF readers. I’ve been lax and haven’t updated the DF sponsorship calendar for July and August until now. These months are wide open, including this week, and they’re available at a reduced rate. If you have a product or service to promote to DF’s affluent, discerning audience, get in touch.

Kolide ★

My thanks once again to Kolide for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Kolide believes you don’t need to spy on your users or cripple their devices to meet your compliance and security goals. To that end, Kolide recently launched a new product that integrates with your Slack team and messages your users directly when their Mac, Windows, and Linux devices are not up to spec. Your users will receive clear instructions about what is wrong and step-by-step instructions that will fix it. They can even confirm in real-time that they resolved the problem, right in Slack.

This simple premise of keeping your users in the loop and making them a part of the security team is called “User Focused Security” and Kolide is the fastest way to implement it in your organization.

Try Kolide’s new product for free for 30 days for your entire fleet.

Sunday, 7 July 2019

Megan Rapinoe, USWNT Repeat as World Cup Champs ★: What a team, what a great source of pride for the U.S. They don’t just win; they win playing a beautiful style of the beautiful game. Forget about equal pay to the U.S. men’s team, the women should be paid more.

Friday, 5 July 2019

Kuo Confirms Apple Will Use New Scissor-Switch Keyboard in Future MacBooks ★

Tim Hardwick, writing at MacRumors:

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will do away with its controversial butterfly mechanism keyboard in future MacBooks, beginning with a refreshed MacBook Air later this year.

In a report obtained by MacRumors, Kuo says Apple will instead use a new keyboard design based on scissor switches, which should provide better key travel and durability than the more failure-prone butterfly keyboard.

The news here isn’t about the return to scissor-switch keyboards with more travel — word spread on that a few months ago. It’s an open secret. The news is that it might ship first on an updated Air — until now, word was that it would first appear on the upcoming 16-inch edge-to-edge display MacBook Pro that will replace the current 15-inch models. It sounds like that 16-inch MBP won’t be coming until 2020 — which makes some sense because Apple did just refresh the 15-inch models. And if the new Air is on an annual update schedule, it should be set for October.

Update: A friend wrote to me: “That this leaked after Ive’s departure is no coincidence.” A few DF readers have emailed with the same thought.

That’s not a crazy idea, but you have to consider the source. Given that today’s report came from Ming-Chi Kuo, I’d say no way.

Whether sanctioned (by Apple PR as strategy) or unsanctioned (by, say, a rogue member of the MacBook team who blames Ive for the butterfly keyboard fiasco), I think it’s very unlikely to have been leaked to Kuo. Kuo obviously has some good sources, but it’s been very clear to me for years that they’re all in the Asian supply chain, none in Cupertino.

The leaks from Cupertino pinning responsibility for the keyboards on Ive — and also saying that new scissor-switch keyboards with more travel are in the works — came months ago. They were just done quietly.

Xiaomi Uses Apple Video to Advertise Its Rip-Off ‘Mimoji’ Phone ★

Tianyu M. Fang, reporting for Caixin Global:

Xiaomi’s augmented-reality avatar set, Mimoji, is definitely not a clone of Apple’s Memoji — they just look very similar and happen to share identical-sounding names — the Chinese company clarified last week.

But ads for Apple’s Memoji and Apple Music have been embedded on Xiaomi’s product page for the Mi CC9 smartphone on e-commerce platforms JD.com and Suning, in lieu of original Xiaomi graphics, a Weibo user found on Friday.

The rip-off is what it is — Xiaomi being Xiaomi. China just doesn’t have a culture where intellectual property is respected, but Xiaomi takes it to an absurd level.

What gets me is the news media treating this as a dispute. Some say it’s a copy of Apple’s Memoji feature, Xiaomi says it’s a coincidence. It’s ridiculous. Xiaomi didn’t “accidentally” include Apple’s videos on its website. If you had video of a guy shoplifting items, you wouldn’t say he “accidentally” didn’t pay for them just because that was his own bullshit excuse after he was caught. You’d say he stole them. That’s how Xiaomi should be written about — as kleptomaniacal IP thieves.

Tuesday, 2 July 2019

China Is Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at Its Border ★

Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard:

Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Guardian, The New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found.

The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller’s device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software.

On the one hand, I think, well, what do you expect going into China? On the other, who goes anywhere without their phone? And on the gripping hand, what happens if you have an iPhone?

Monday, 1 July 2019

The Talk Show: ‘A Bit Too Thin’ ★

There’s a very large overlap between readers of this website and listeners of my podcast. But if you don’t listen to my show regularly, that’s fine with me. But I really think this latest episode is a good one. As soon as I got done writing my initial thoughts on Jony Ive leaving Apple, I started thinking about doing a podcast about it, and my first thought was to have Ben Thompson as my guest. It turned out great, largely thanks to Ben’s insight and observations.

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