Linked List: November 23, 2020

Monday, 23 November 2020

The Talk Show: ‘A Craptastic Craptacular’ ★

Joanna Stern returns to the show to talk about the new M1 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

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Ben Thompson has a good column at Stratechery on Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein departing Vox in very different, but very on-personal-brand ways.

Thompson ties in the Vox talent exodus with BuzzFeed’s acquisition last week of HuffPost, which leads him to the following comment regarding BuzzFeed chief Jonah Peretti’s curious claim, in an interview with Peter Kafka at Recode (a Vox sub-site!), that the Times’s paid-subscriber-focused strategy somehow puts them at odds with their longstanding mission to serve as the paper of record:

At the same time, it is worth noting that the New York Times has, contrary to Peretti’s implication, never been a newspaper for the masses. Sure, its subscription model is by default exclusionary, but only being available in printed form, mostly in New York, was far more exclusionary. The point about subscriptions driving a particular point of view is a valid one, but then again, it is not as if BuzzFeed has been shy about its political preferences either. The reality is that the implication of the Internet is that ideas are in abundance, and people will seek out what they already agree with, as opposed to accepting what is delivered to them.

Paid-subscriber focus or no, the New York Times today is far more accessible to far more people, free of charge, than it ever could have been in the pre-web era. The quality of the work the Times publishes will continue, more than ever, to be the foundation upon which its reputation stands. There was a time not so long ago when upstarts, like Peretti, saw the Times as old and slow. Not any more. Well, old, yes, but not slow. Joining forces with HuffPost feels like the stodgy media move of the month.

Ezra Klein Follows Matt Yglesias Out the Door at Vox ★

Edmund Lee, writing for The New York Times:

Ezra Klein, a founder of the popular website Vox.com, is leaving the publication to become a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times, the latest high-profile departure from Vox Media during a wave of change in the digital media business.

This follows fellow Vox founder Matt Yglesias, who left to start his own subscriber-based weblog, Slow Boring, on Substack 10 days ago.

Jim Bankoff, the Vox Media chief executive, said the company was now in a position to withstand the loss of key employees. “All the Vox Media brands are well past the point where they are about individuals,” he said in an interview. “By themselves, each site is a massive, mainstream, modern media brand that touches tens if not hundreds of millions of people across every conceivable platform.”

Yeah that’s just great for Vox that their best-known and most-talented writers have flown the coop.

Not So Fast on That Washington Post Report That Apple Is Lobbying Against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act ★

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, who reports on China for Axios, on Twitter:

According to sources I have spoken to with knowledge of the matter, this Washington Post story does not accurately characterize Apple’s position on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

It is not accurate to say that Apple’s aim is to water down key provisions of the bill, and it is not accurate to characterize Apple as lobbying against the bill.

(And no, the sources I am citing are not a strident email from Apple’s PR department).

Reed Albergotti, the Washington Post reporter for the story claiming Apple is lobbying to “water down” the bill, has long seemed to have an axe to grind against “big tech” companies, and Apple in particular, so I’d take his report with an extra grain of salt now that Allen-Ebrahimian has thrown cold water on it.

Apple Is Not Backing Down on Postponed App Tracking Transparency Feature in iOS 14 ★

Jane Horvath, Apple’s senior director of global privacy, responding to an open letter from privacy advocates disappointed that Apple delayed iOS 14’s App Tracking Transparency feature:

Advertising that respects privacy is not only possible, it was the standard until the growth of the Internet. Some companies that would prefer ATT is never implemented have said that this policy uniquely burdens small businesses by restricting advertising options, but in fact, the current data arms race primarily benefits big businesses with big data sets. Privacy-focused ad networks were the universal standard in advertising before the practice of unfettered data collection began over the last decade or so. Our hope is that increasing user demands for privacy and security, as well as changes like ATT, will make these privacy-forward advertising standards robust once more. […]

By contrast, Facebook and others have a very different approach to targeting. Not only do they allow the grouping of users into smaller segments, they use detailed data about online browsing activity to target ads. Facebook executives have made clear their intent is to collect as much data as possible across both first and third party products to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users, and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products.

Go SMS Pro, a Popular Android Messaging App, Exposed Millions of Users’ Private Photos and Files ★

Zack Whittaker, reporting for TechCrunch:

When a Go SMS Pro user sends a photo, video or other file to someone who doesn’t have the app installed, the app uploads the file to its servers, and lets the user share a web address by text message so the recipient can see the file without installing the app. But the researchers found that these web addresses were sequential. In fact, any time a file was shared — even between app users — a web address would be generated regardless. That meant anyone who knew about the predictable web address could have cycled through millions of different web addresses to users’ files.

Go SMS Pro has more than 100 million installs, according to its listing in Google Play.

TechCrunch verified the researcher’s findings. In viewing just a few dozen links, we found a person’s phone number, a screenshot of a bank transfer, an order confirmation including someone’s home address, an arrest record, and far more explicit photos than we were expecting, to be quite honest.

Not what you want from an SMS app.

Apple’s Chief Security Officer Indicted for Bribing Santa Clara Sheriff in Gun Permit Scandal ★

Sue Dremann, reporting for Palo Alto Weekly:

A grand jury issued two indictments on Thursday, Nov. 19, against Undersheriff Rick Sung, 48, and Capt. James Jensen, 43, who are accused of requesting bribes for concealed firearms licenses, also known as CCW licenses. Insurance broker Harpreet Chadha, 49, and Apple’s Chief Security Officer Thomas Moyer, 50, are accused of offering bribes to receive the permits, District Attorney Jeff Rosen said during a press conference on Monday morning.

The two-year investigation by the district attorney’s office found that Sung, who was allegedly aided by Jensen in one instance, held up the distribution of CCW licenses and refused to release them until the applicants gave something of value. […]

Sung and Jensen allegedly held up four gun licenses from Apple employees and extracted from Moyer a promise that Apple would donate iPads to the sheriff’s office. A donation of 200 iPads worth nearly $70,000 was ended at the last minute after Aug. 2, 2019, when Sung and Moyer learned that the district attorney’s office had issued a search warrant seizing all of the sheriff’s office’s CCW license records.

Not a good look.

Washington Post: Apple’s Lobbying Group Seeks to ‘Water Down’ Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act ★

Reed Albergotti, reporting for The Washington Post:

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, where academic researchers estimate the Chinese government has placed more than 1 million people into internment camps. […]

The staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks with the company took place in private meetings, said Apple was one of many U.S. companies that oppose the bill as it’s written. They declined to disclose details on the specific provisions Apple was trying to knock down or change because they feared providing that knowledge would identify them to Apple. But they both characterized Apple’s effort as an attempt to water down the bill.

“What Apple would like is we all just sit and talk and not have any real consequences,” said Cathy Feingold, director of the international department for the AFL-CIO, which has supported the bill. “They’re shocked because it’s the first time where there could be some actual effective enforceability.”

Not a good look.

Update: Axios reporter Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian says Albergotti is wrong on Apple’s lobbying efforts here.

Secret Amazon Reports Expose Company Spying on Labor, Environmental Groups in Europe ★

Lauren Kaori Gurley, reporting for Motherboard:

A trove of more than two dozen internal Amazon reports reveal in stark detail the company’s obsessive monitoring of organized labor and social and environmental movements in Europe, particularly during Amazon’s “peak season” between Black Friday and Christmas. […] The documents show Amazon analysts closely monitor the labor and union-organizing activity of their workers throughout Europe, as well as environmentalist and social justice groups on Facebook and Instagram. They also reveal, and an Amazon spokesperson confirmed, that Amazon has hired Pinkerton operatives — from the notorious spy agency known for its union-busting activities — to gather intelligence on warehouse workers.

Not a good look.

John Siracusa, Adam Engst, and Yours Truly on the Best Mac Ever ★

So many reviews of breakthrough Mac hardware in the past week, but the best one is this episode of Jason Snell’s “20 Macs for 2020” podcast, wherein Siracusa, Engst, and I explain why the SE/30 was the best ever.