Axios writes:
Tristan Harris, the former Googler who helped popularize the notion of “time well spent” laid out the shift he says the tech industry needs to make in order to stop, as he puts it, “downgrading humanity.” … Harris made the case that today’s technology downgrades humanity by creating a vast artificial social system powered by “overwhelming” AI and an “extractive” attention economy.
The problem, as Harris notes, is that the first company to blink loses.
Notarization is an automated code scan service for Mac developers that looks for malicious code and blesses it if none found. In a future version of macOS, the Gatekeeper will look for that notarization. This is a good thing.
We have a deal on the Mighty Vibe Spotify Offline Player. This device is just what the name suggests: it will play your Spotify music on-the-go without a smartphone or Internet connection. It’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled, supports wired and most Bluetooth headphones and speakers, has 1,000+ song storage, and is durable and has a built-in clip-on. Plus, the promo video below is definitely funny. It’s $76.99 through our deal.
Federico Vittici and Steve Troughton-Smith are saying that iOS mouse support could be coming this year as an accessibility feature of iOS 13. Mr. Vittici mentioned it on the Connected podcast, while Mr. Smith confirmed the rumor via Twitter.
I personally don’t see the need for a mouse on a touch-oriented device. But I’m glad it will be optional, instead of a required component of iOS.
Developers, it’s time to consider deleting the Facebook SDK and not using its tools anymore. Do we even need to explain why?
Today is an all hardware episode, Andrew Orr and John Martellaro join host Kelly Guimont to discuss butterfly keyboards and SSD upgrades.
Material depicting child abuse l is still being widely shared across WhatsApp. An investigation by The Next Web found the Facebook-owned messaging service had failed to tackle the problem, despite assurances it would do so.
Despite Facebook’s attempts to clamp down on inappropriate content, the two-week long investigation conducted in March found dozens of WhatsApp chat groups with hundreds of members that share child sexual abuse material. The groups were identified through a third-party WhatsApp public group discovery app that Google recently banned from Play Store, but can still be sideloaded using the installation files that are available online elsewhere. Nitish Chandan, a cybersecurity specialist who is also the project manager of CPF, found that members are being solicited using invite links, who are then called on to join a more private group using virtual numbers so as to evade detection.
Starting in June, people that use dating app Bumble will find themselves protected against unwanted nudes using an AI tool called Private Detector.
Tim Cook addressed the TIME 100 Summit Tuesday. There, he encouraged people to put down their iPhones. He even said he turned off push notifications from lots of apps, reported Techcrunch.
Today, when users install new apps they often say “No” to push notifications. And with Apple’s new tools to control notifications, users are now actively triaging which apps can get in touch. In fact, that’s what Tim Cook says he did, too. “If you guys aren’t doing this — if you have an iPhone and you’re not doing it, I would encourage you to really do this — monitor these [push notifications],” the CEO suggested to the audience. “What it has done for me personally is I’ve gone in and gutted the number of notifications,” Cook said. “Because I asked myself: ‘Do I really need to be getting thousands of notifications a day?’
Sir Jony Ive does not make a huge number of media appearances. When he does, they tend to be worth taking in. Design magazine Document has an in-depth interview with Sir. Jony and Dior top designer Kim Jones in its new edition. In it, he talked about design tools, the future, and the values that run through Apple.
To me, what the institution represents first and foremost is a set of values and a clear sense of why Apple exists, and what contribution we can make to culture—what contribution we can make to society. What I can bring to that is to practice what I do within those values and to extend them. I think it stems from my sense of curiosity. I’m absurdly, frantically inquisitive. Given that I’ve been at Apple for nearly 30 years now, I think I’m sort of steeped in those values. I think the values are powerful but they’re general, and it’s how you turn your curiosity and ideas into vision. I think that very simplistically describes my relationship with Apple.
The British Government has decided to allow Huawei to build part of its 5G network, a move at odds with the U.S. administration.
Google announced today that its Google Fit app that launched on Android in 2014 is now available for iOS.
Apple Pay officially launched in Austria, giving customers of Erste Bank and N26 access to the service in the country.
If you make less than US$34,000 per year, you could get a TurboTax refund if the company made you pay them when you filed your taxes.
If you are one of the millions of Americans who made under $34,000 last year, you should have been able to use a free version of TurboTax. If TurboTax directed you to a paid version, it’s worth giving the company a call.
“I called today and they are issuing a refund on my credit card,” one reader said. “I just had to mention ProPublica.”
Thanks to lobbying by corporations like TurboTax, the IRS doesn’t do our taxes for us like other countries.
MindNode 6 is out and it brings more productivity features to help us with our mind maps. Some of the new features: Focus Mode puts a spotlight on one part of your mind map and fades out all the rest; Hide Connections reduces distractions even further by hiding all connections on the canvas; Sticker Search helps you quickly find the right sticker to make your document even more appealing; Multi-Select gives you styling, editing, and rearranging for multiple nodes; External Screen Support lets you put your mind map on two screens at once; Customizable Panels lets you drag and drop your favorite actions onto the panel’s quick actions. On iPad drag the panels to the other side of the screen; Traditional Chinese is the newest language, increasing overall localizations to 14. App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)
After the latest Facebook privacy fiasco which involved Instagram passwords, regulators are looking even more closely at Mark Zuckerberg.
Beyoncé’s Lemonade album is available on Apple Music, as well as Spotify and Deezer, for the first time since its release in 2016.
In a new study (n=2,000) 51% of iPhone users said they text and drive, compared to 35% for Android users.
16% of iPhone users said they never get distracted while driving (vs. 23% of Android users and 38% of users of other mobile operating systems).
iPhone users are more than twice as likely than Android users to video-chat, use Instagram, stream shows on Netflix or Hulu, and take photos and videos while driving.
10% of iPhone users admitted watching videos on YouTube while driving, while 4% of Android users admitted to doing the same.
This was written a few months ago, by the awesome Steve Sande by the way, but is worth discussing.
Chances are good that if you have an older Mac, it has an internal hard disk drive. Today, we’ll look at five reasons why you should update that Mac to an SSD.
SSDs are very affordable nowadays. If your Mac isn’t too old and ready to retire, this upgrade is a good move.
Sometimes an iOS app wants access to your Contacts — for good but sometimes also bad reasons. Here’s how control which apps can read your iOS Contacts. And revoke permission if necessary.
