Linked List: April 18, 2023

Tuesday, 18 April 2023

Martin Peers, writing for The Information (paywalled, alas), “Apple’s New Savings Account Makes iPhones More Valuable — for Thieves”:

Whether this is smart for consumers depends on whether you’re comfortable having your life ruined if someone steals your iPhone. The Wall Street Journal recently published an excellent report about how iPhone thieves are draining people’s bank accounts. That’s a result of people storing credit cards on Apple Pay and very often keeping photos of sensitive personal documents — passports and drivers’ licenses, for example — on their phones. Some people even write down their passwords in the Notes app on the phone. When you stop to think about it, storing all this stuff on a phone does seem kind of crazy.

That Wall Street Journal report by Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen is indeed excellent (and I still intend to follow-up on it here, but still haven’t finished), but Peers makes it sound like all a thief needs to empty your bank account is your phone. What the Journal story made clear is that thieves need both your phone and your device passcode. That’s a big difference.

Is the threat serious if a thief obtains both your phone and your device passcode? Very. But so long as you’re protective of your passcode, you’re safe overall. Passwords protected in your keychain, or even in Notes, are safer than passwords written on paper. You’ve got to store them somewhere. Promulgating a message that it’s reckless to put any sensitive information in your phone, even using features that are designed to store that information securely, is terrible advice. There’s nothing crazy about it. It’s simply worth remembering, at all times, just how much your device passcode is protecting.

And the new interest-paying savings accounts are just an alternative to having your Apple Card cash-back go to your Apple Cash account — which pays no interest. So if Peers has successfully spooked any Information readers from signing up for these savings accounts, all he’s succeeded in doing is keeping them from earning interest. There’s zero difference in security. It’s news for Luddites.

This isn’t solely Apple’s doing, of course. Most banks and the like now have phone apps, all of which make people vulnerable. But Apple has encouraged it, going so far as to allow people to store their drivers’ licenses on their iPhones and to unlock their front doors with their iPhones. And now there’s this savings account — iPhone thieves must be rubbing their hands in anticipation.

It’s a little hard to square Apple’s moves in this direction with Apple CEO Tim Cook’s evangelism regarding privacy and tech, not to mention his warnings about the dangers of people using technology too much. [...] Could it be Cook is only concerned about data security and privacy when it comes to social media, a business run by other companies?

This is just looking to piss on Apple no matter what the story. A digital state ID stored in Apple Wallet is more secure than a printed card stored in your physical wallet. If one thief takes my iPhone, and another takes my wallet and keys, the first thief needs my device passcode to get anything. The second thief instantly knows everything that’s printed on my driver’s license and credit cards — including the address of my home, where the keys will unlock the doors. The digitization of banking does carry risks, but the pre-digital world of banking revolved around paper checks and signatures.

There’s nothing hard to square about Apple’s initiative in this regard at all. I’ll bet Tim Cook ~~has his driver’s license in Apple Wallet~~ — and I practically guarantee that he has his credit cards in Apple Wallet. Apple Wallet really is more secure that a physical wallet and cards. And the new savings accounts simply offer Apple Card customers a way to earn interest on cash accounts that heretofore did not pay any interest at all. There’s nothing to be cynical about with this.

[Update: California isn’t on the very short list of states that currently support IDs in Apple Wallet — it’s still just Arizona, Colorado, and Maryland. But my point stands: I’d wager good money that as soon as California does support it, Tim Cook will put his ID in Wallet.

Also, because these savings accounts pay industry-leading interest rates, it’s certain that many people will transfer more money into them than they would with regular Apple Cash accounts, which means more money is at risk if a thief obtains their phone and device passcode.]

Fox News Settles With Dominion for $787 Million, Averting Defamation Trial Over Its 2020 Election Lies ★

CNN:

Fox News reached a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday as the case raced toward opening statements, paying more than $787 million to end a colossal two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the right-wing network’s credibility.

Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company. [...]

The right-wing network said in a statement that it “acknowledge[s] the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” referring to Davis’ recent ruling that 20 Fox News broadcasts from late 2020 contained blatantly untrue assertions that Dominion rigged the presidential election. But Fox won’t have to admit on-air that it spread lies about Dominion, a Dominion representative told CNN.

The $787.5 million payout is roughly half of the $1.6 billion that Dominion initially sought, though it is nearly 10 times the company’s valuation from 2018, and roughly eight times its annual revenue in 2021, according to court filings.

What a gift to humanity this lawsuit has been.

On the face of it, it makes no sense that anyone still watches Fox News. But that assumes that people choose their news sources based on trustworthiness and a desire to learn the truth. That’s how and why I pick my news sources. It’s probably how and why you do too. But Fox News appeals to a whole swath of people who have an entirely different mindset.

Fox News addicts justify their continuing viewership on the grounds that, more or less, “everyone does it” — that MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, etc. all blatantly lie to their viewers/readers in the same way Dominion proved that Fox News lies to its viewers. They’re all liars and thieves, every system is rigged, and everyone in a position of power or authority is crooked. It’s a form of nihilism that, I think, explains exactly how Trump got elected and how he still has significant electoral support. If you believe everyone is a corrupt liar, you might as well vote for the corrupt liar who (a) is on your side in the culture wars, and (b) wears his corruption and dishonesty on his shirtsleeve. And might as well keep watching the cable “news” network that’s on your side in the culture wars, proven liars or not.

Fox is paying a serious price here, but I suspect it’s purely financial, not attention.

Adios, Parler ★

Todd Spangler, reporting for Variety:

Parler, the self-described “uncancelable free-speech social platform” that catered to right-wing users — which was nearly acquired by Kanye West last year — has been shut down by its new owner.

“No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more,” Arlington, Va.-based digital media company Starboard said in announcing Friday that it had acquired Parler.

No reasonable person believes Parler is ever going to successfully rebrand, either, so it’s a curiosity what they bought it for. (Also, there’s at least one unreasonable person who ostensibly believes a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business.)

The End of Computer Magazines in America ★

Harry McCracken, writing at Technologizer:

The April issues of Maximum PC and MacLife are currently on sale at a newsstand near you — assuming there is a newsstand near you. They’re the last print issues of these two venerable computer magazines, both of which date to 1996 (and were originally known, respectively, as Boot and MacAddict). Starting with their next editions, both publications will be available in digital form only.

But I’m not writing this article because the dead-tree versions of Maximum PC and MacLife are no more. I’m writing it because they were the last two extant U.S. computer magazines that had managed to cling to life until now. With their abandonment of print, the computer magazine era has officially ended. [...]

I take the loss personally, and not just because computer magazines kept me gainfully employed from 1991-2008. As a junior high student and Radio Shack TRS-80 fanatic, I bought my first computer magazine in late 1978, three years after Byte invented the category. It was a momentous enough moment in my life that I can tell you what it was (the November-December 1978 issue of Creative Computing) and where I got it (Harvard Square’s Out of Town News, the same newsstand that had played a critical role in the founding of Microsoft just four years earlier). Even before I purchased that Creative Computing , our mailman had misdelivered a neighbor’s copy of Byte to our house, an error I welcomed and did not attempt to correct. From the moment I discovered computer magazines, I loved them almost as much as I loved computers, which is why I ended up working in the field for so long.

As McCracken himself notes, it’s impossible to overstate the essential role computer magazines played before the web. I read Macworld and MacUser cover-to-cover every month. Magazines were how you learned to do stuff, how you learned about new applications and new hardware products, how you learned what you might want to buy. When I eventually started writing occasional back-page columns for Macworld, it was an indescribable thrill.

Apple BKC in Mumbai, the First Apple Store in India, Opened Today ★

Looks beautiful. Some architectural details from Apple Newsroom:

Apple BKC features a triangular handcrafted timber ceiling that extends beyond the glass façade to the underside of the exterior canopy, reflecting the unique geometry of the store. Each tile is made from 408 pieces of timber, forming 31 modules per tile with a total of 1,000 tiles that make up the ceiling. There are over 450,000 individual timber elements, all of which were assembled in Delhi. Upon entering the store, customers are greeted by two stone walls sourced from Rajasthan and a 14-meter-long stainless steel staircase connecting the ground level and the cantilevered mezzanine.

Chance Miller on Mastodon:

Tim Cook reacting to someone who brought a Macintosh SE to the opening of the Apple BKC store in Mumbai today.

Maybe the happiest I’ve ever seen him.

Those things weigh 17 pounds.

Apple Card’s Savings Account Is Now Available, Offering 4.15 Percent Interest ★

Apple Newsroom:

Starting today, Apple Card users can choose to grow their Daily Cash rewards with a Savings account from Goldman Sachs, which offers a high-yield APY of 4.15 percent — a rate that’s more than 10 times the national average. With no fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balance requirements, users can easily set up and manage their Savings account directly from Apple Card in Wallet. [...]

Once a Savings account is set up, all future Daily Cash earned by the user will be automatically deposited into the account. The Daily Cash destination can also be changed at any time, and there’s no limit on how much Daily Cash users can earn. To build on their savings even further, users can deposit additional funds into their Savings account through a linked bank account, or from their Apple Cash balance.

If you shop around, you can find some accounts offering closer to 5 percent, but 4.15 is indeed a very good interest rate right now. There’s no catch here — it’s simply another reward for having an Apple Card. You just sign up in the Wallet app, and boom, your cash rewards go into the savings accounts and you start earning interest.