A service called DoNotPay can manage your free trials. Sign up using its digital credit card number and you won’t be charged when the trial ends.
The Free Trial Card is a virtual credit card you can use to sign up for free trials of any service anonymously, instead of using your real credit card. When the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines to be charged, thus ending your free trial. You don’t have to remember to cancel anything. If you want, the app will also send an actual legal notice of cancellation to the service.
I’m interested to try this out. Currently I use a service called Privacy, which lets me generate virtual cards that I can lock to a certain merchant or money amount. The story by Wired is about free trials, but the app description sounds like it can do more, calling itself a “robot lawyer.”
Elon Musk’s Neuralink project presented a medical device Tuesday that could read data from 1,500 electrodes. Wired explained the science behind the ambitious project aiming to link brains with computers.
In a presentation to the California Academy of Sciences on Tuesday evening, Neuralink presented a medical device capable of reading information from 1,500 flexible electrodes connected to a laboratory rat – 15 times faster than current systems embedded in humans. The goal is to eventually implant it in people with paralysis or other medical conditions that will let them control computers with their minds – and the company has ambitious plans to begin human trials as soon as next year. So how does it work? Neuralink says surgeons would have to drill holes through the skull to insert flexible electrodes. But in the future, they hope to use a laser to pierce tiny holes in the skull.
Apple has renewed Carpool Karaoke for a third season, Cult of Mac reported. The show will be exclusively available to Apple Music subscribers. It came out of a segment of James Corden’s Late Late Show.
The cast of Stranger Things have already filmed an episode for season 3. Other celebrity pairings haven’t been announced yet. Last season featured Matthew McConaughey with Snoop Dogg, Kendal Jenner with Hailey Beiber and Miley Cyrus and Boyz II Men with Gisele Bundchen. Apple hasn’t said how many episodes to expect in season three. The first season had 21 episodes while the second had 19. Carpool Karaoke won a 2018 Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series. The series was nominated for an Emmy in the same category this year too.
New York-based bank Goldman Sachs isn’t usually associated with average consumers. But it has spent US$1.3 billion to transform itself with initiatives like Apple Card (via CNBC). Goldman Transformation So far in 2019 Goldman Sachs has spent US$275 million on its new businesses like Apple Card and its consumer bank Marcus. In an earnings call…
Apple released a silent update to Macs to patch apps affected by the Zoom security flaw, which it turns out affects a number of other apps.
John Martellaro and Charlotte Henry join host Kelly Guimont to discuss Apple’s engineering focus and the use case for the “new” iPod touch.
iPadOS and iOS 13 developer beta four are now available, two weeks after developer beta three was released.
In 2000 a physicist was asked to study the health risks of wireless networks. He found [PDF] that there “was likely to be a serious health hazard.” Except he was wrong.
In his research, Dr. Curry looked at studies on how radio waves affect tissues isolated in the lab, and misinterpreted the results as applying to cells deep inside the human body. His analysis failed to recognize the protective effect of human skin. At higher radio frequencies, the skin acts as a barrier, shielding the internal organs, including the brain, from exposure. Human skin blocks the even higher frequencies of sunlight.
Despite all the studies showing a link between smartphones and cancer being debunked, I don’t think this idea will ever go away.
We have a deal on a subscription to History Search Pro Plan, which turns websites you visit into searchable documents. You choose what gets added to the service, and it works through browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. One year of History Search Pro Plan is $47.88 through our deal.
The Apple Card release date is around the corner, with the latest and possibly final iOS 12.4 beta appearing recently.
Amazon faced the toughest questioning from lawmakers during a hearing Tuesday attended by representatives of big tech firms. Reuters reported that Apple too, found itself in the firing line during the hearing. Questions to Apple focussed on costs associated with App Store Purchases
Legislators also demanded explanations from Apple Inc about charges for apps and in-app purchases, Facebook Inc for its rapidly changing privacy policy and Alphabet’s Google over whether its rivals are demoted in search results. The committee does not have authority to punish the companies, and any effort to change antitrust laws affecting tech firms would face hurdles in the Republican-controlled Senate. So the questioning served largely to convey the panel’s displeasure over many of the companies’ business practices.
Amazon declared Prime Day 2019 the largest shopping event in its history with customers from 18 countries buying over 175 million items.
According to its terms of service, popular app FaceApp owns the rights to all photos you create with it.
Essentially, if you make something in FaceApp, FaceApp can do whatever it wants with what you’ve made. Not only can it repost your images without your permission, it can monetize the images, either directly or indirectly, without compensating you or notifying you that it has done so in any way.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing isn’t new. Facebook has similar terms, and so does Google.
Apple previews some emojis for 2019 World Emoji Day, with additions coming in the future in categories like food, animals, and activities.
iPhones have over 100,000 times more processing power than the Apollo 11 computer; with 4GB of RAM they have over a million times more memory, and with 512GB of storage they have over seven million times more storage.
Despite the rapid technological advances since then, astronauts haven’t actually been back to the moon since 1972. This seems surprising. After all, when we reflect on this historic event, it is often said that we now have more computing power in our pocket than the computer aboard Apollo 11 did. But is that true? And, if so, how much more powerful are our phones?
It’s amazing to see how far technology has advanced since then.
Apple has planned to fund original podcasts, with executives discussing buying exclusive rights from media companies.
We have a deal on Keeper, a password manager for iOS, Mac, Android, Windows, and Linux. With Keeper’s password manager and vault, you can generate, store, and AutoFill strong passwords on all devices while securely storing private documents. It also supports multiple forms of 2FA, including TOTP, SMS, Touch ID, Face ID, and U2F security keys (e.g. Yubikey). A one year subscription is $19.99 through our deal.
ZDNet writes: “The skills shortage is spreading further, with developers for data science, DevOps and cloud roles in high demand.” Citing recruiting research in the UK:
Harvey Nash director David Savage said the recruiter found the biggest skills shortages were in data science and analytics. He said because data science demands a narrow field of technical skills, plus a highly academic approach, there are huge problems in the talent pipeline and no clear or easy way to increase the number of available professionals.
There’s a shortage in the U.S. as well for highly skilled programmers.
Recent events at and products from Apple suggest that there’s a re-emphasized focus on engineering. John suspects who’s behind it.
