Facebook's Cryptocurrency Has Big Backers

Facebook is preparing to launch a new cryptocurrency. The Wall Street Journal found that the project has backing from some of the biggest names in finance and e-commerce.

Facebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., MA +0.20% PayPal Holdings Inc., and Uber Technologies Inc. to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year. The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said.

Tim Cook Talks Privacy and Trade With President Trump

Tim Apple Cook met with U.S. President Donald Trump Thursday. Reuters reported that the two discussed the ongoing trade dispute with China, U.S. investment, immigration, and privacy.

Trump’s meeting with Cook was disclosed by daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump during an event that Trump held with governors on skills development. Cook is a frequent visitor to the White House and has worked with Ivanka Trump on her job training and education initiatives. The president often name-checks Cook as a business leader who has brought jobs and investment back to the United States. On Thursday, Trump spoke with Cook about “trade, U.S. investment, immigration and privacy,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said. A spokesperson for Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

How Surveillance Affects the Legal System: A Judge’s View

We often read about surveillance from the perspective of us, the users, or technology companies. Here is a judge’s view on it.

Congress is way behind in determining how far the police can go in using technology to invade people’s privacy, and many of the legal disputes arising from this collision have not reached the Supreme Court. For the public, as a practical matter, the rules of the road are being decided by prosecutors. Your privacy is not their highest priority.

I think that’s ultimately the heart of the matter: We have a technologically-inept government.

Google Builds HTTPS Directly Into Top Level Domains

More websites have encrypted their traffic than ever, but there is a loophole. Some use a mixture of HTTPS and unsecure HTTP. Google is closing this by building HTTPS protection directly into certain top level domains.

Which means that today, when you register a site through Google that uses “.app,” “.dev,” or “.page,” that page and any others you build off it are automatically added to a list that all mainstream browsers, including Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, and Opera, check when they’re setting up encrypted web connections. It’s called the HTTPS Strict Transport Security preload list, or HSTS, and browsers use it to know which sites should only load as encrypted HTTPS automatically, rather than falling back to unencrypted HTTP in some circumstances. In short, it fully automates what can otherwise be a tricky scheme to set up.

Pre-order Dead Cells on iOS Now

Dead Cells is now available to pre-order for iOS,  Cult of Mac reported. The popular console game costs $9.99, or $7.99 if you order now.

Dead Cells is a roguelike-metroidvania game that has been incredibly well received by fans and critics. It boats a “very positive” rating on Steam after more than 23,500 reviews, and has sold 1 million copies on the Switch alone. If you haven’t already had a chance to play it, you’ll soon have no excuse. Having Dead Cells in your pocket means you can play it anywhere, at almost any time.

 

App Only Bank Monzo to Launch in U.S.

Monzo plans to launch in the U.S. Yahoo Finance reported. It will be the first time the app-only bank has ventured outside of the UK. It could potentially be a challenger to the forthcoming Apple Card as it offers some similar facilities.

“We’ve just crossed 2m customers, our TV ad is going great, we should have a quarter of a million new customers this month, and we’re contribution margin positive here in the UK, so it feels like the UK business is on track to be really successful,” Tom Blomfield, the CEO and founder of Monzo told Yahoo Finance UK. “Now feels like the right time to start thinking about our next market.” Blomfield said sign-up events will be held in LA, San Fransisco, New York, and other major US cities before rolling out online applications.

 

Most Privacy Policies Exceed Reading Standards With Low Readability

Journalists at The New York Times read 150 privacy policies, finding most of them to be incomprehensible with low readability scores.

To be successful in college, people need to understand texts with a score of 1300. People in the professions, like doctors and lawyers, should be able to understand materials with scores of 1440, while ninth graders should understand texts that score above 1050 to be on track for college or a career by the time they graduate. Many privacy policies exceed these standards.

I wish there was a standard for privacy policies so companies can’t hide their sins behind jargon. In the mean time, I use this website.

Telegram Says China Behind Cyber Attack

Telegram said China was behind a massive cyber attack on it during recent protests in Hong Kong.  The firm’s founder Pavel Durov tweeted the accusations, Bloomberg News reported.

The encrypted messaging app said it experienced a powerful distributed denial of service attack after “garbage requests” flooded its servers and disrupted legitimate communications. Most of those queries came from Chinese internet protocol addresses, founder Pavel Durov said in a subsequent Twitter post. This case was not an exception,” he tweeted without elaborating. Hong Kong is in the throes of political unrest as the Beijing-backed government attempts to force through controversial legislation that would for the first time allow extraditions to China, which protesters fear could be used to squelch government opposition.

Governments Are Terrible at Securing Data

It absolutely infuriates me when agencies like the FBI, and governments like Australia, the U.S., Germany, and more want us to break encryption or circumvent it with a back door. As Mathew Gault writes, they are completely inept at securing data. Even the NSA, which likes to think it’s the “world leader in cryptology” got hacked.

Regular phone and internet users remain vulnerable, forced to take individual protective measures, like a poor wage-worker without health insurance who’s told to secure her nest egg by cutting out morning lattes.

Portable 10,000mAh Power Bank: $15

We have a dal on a very inexpensive 10,000mAh portable power bank. This orange and white device has two USB ports for charging two devices at the same time—and both ports push 2.4 amps. This device is just $15 through our deal.

Google Pixel 4 Gives us a Hint of iPhone XI

Google just shared a photo of its upcoming Pixel 4 phone, and I think it gives us a hint of what the iPhone XI will look like. Android manufacturers are notorious for copying the appearance of iPhones, like the notch. The Pixel 4 shows a square camera module on the back, so I think it’s likely the rumors and mockups of a square iPhone XI camera module with three cameras are probably correct.

Well, since there seems to be some interest, here you go! Wait ’til you see what it can do. #Pixel4

Behind the Scenes of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is an upcoming AR game from Niantic and WB Games San Francisco. The Dev Diaries are a new series that will feature a behind the scenes look at the people who created the game and stories that inspired it.

“It’s what everyone imagines when you read the Harry Potter books,” said Marigold. “You imagine the characters and world coming to life around you. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite takes this a step further and brings it to life in your world so that you can actually see all the magical characters and fantastic creatures all around you. It’s almost like you can reach out and touch them.”

Really neat to hear from the team, and I can’t wait for the game.

The 2019 Mac Pro Features Custom SSD Connectors

Apple promised the 2019 Mac Pro would be modular, making it easy to upgrade with new components. But AppleInsider found that it will have custom SSD connectors you’ll have to buy from Apple.

The information Apple provides isn’t enough detail to confirm what kind of SSDs are being used by the Mac Pro, but what the image reveals is that it isn’t any standard SSD that is in use with other devices…Sources inside Apple not authorized to speak on behalf of the company say the drives do not use a standard M.2 pinout, but declined to speak about the slot’s pin compatibility with older Apple SSD modules. This does leave open the possibility Apple is using a connector it previously created or has since modified.

Oh people are going to love this.

Twitter Co-Founder Laments Rise of Instant Feedback

Twitter co-founder and Medium CEO Ev Williams described preparing to post on the social network he helped create as “armoring up for battle.” He told the Recode Code conference that he misses the day’s when bloggers did not get instant feedback.

“Part of the beautiful thing about blogging was you were always looking for feedback but you didn’t get it as momentarily — things could marinate,” said Williams, who was speaking onstage at Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, on Tuesday with Vox founder and editor-at-large Ezra Klein. “Now, there’s an addiction to short-term feedback that is detrimental sometimes to thought.” Williams, who is now leading Medium, compared the mindset of getting ready to post on social media platforms like Twitter as “armoring up for battle.” This isn’t the first time Williams has expressed regret over what some view as the potentially negative effects of Twitter.

Bolt's Cut Price Offer to Challenge Uber in London

Ride-hailing service Bolt is back in London, and ready to take to on Uber. It will find doing so a tough challenge. However, as Wired noted, the service previously known as Taxify has one big advantage – it is much cheaper.

Bolt has spent the last two years going through the licensing process properly, and now it’s ready for action. But it is not new to ride hailing. The company was founded in 2013 by 19-year-old Estonian Markus Villig, and began by targeting markets – such as his home town of Tallinn – where Uber was slow to expand. It now operates in more than 30 countries, and has found particular success in Africa, where it offers rides on mopeds as well as in cars – the continent makes up about half of its revenue. But Uber is already deeply embedded into London’s transport system. It accounts for 80 per cent of all ride-hailing journeys, and is integrated into Google Maps and Citymapper.

Elizabeth Warren Wants Anti-trust Chief to Recuse Himself From Apple Investigation

Senator Elizabeth Warren said that the Justice Department’s anti-trust chief should recuse himself from investigations into Apple and Google. Senator Warren, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said that Makan Delrahim had previously lobbied for the firms and therefore should not investigate them, Reuters reported.

In a letter to Delrahim, Warren said Alphabet Inc’s Google had hired him in 2007 to lobby federal antitrust officials on behalf of the company’s proposed acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick Inc, and he had reported an estimated $100,000 in income from Google in that year. She said Apple Inc had hired Delrahim in 2006 and 2007 to lobby the government on its behalf on patent reform issues.

 

ProBASE C Aluminum Monitor Stand with Built-in USB Hub: $119.99

We have a deal on the ProBASE C Aluminum Monitor Stand. Made from aluminum and designed to match the styling of your iMac 5K, this device has a built-in USB hub with three USB Type-A ports (USB 3.0) and one USB Type-C port. It also features a concealed drawer to store flash drives, external HDDs, memory cards, stationery, pens, etc. This stand is $119.99 through our deal.

Apple Ends Danish iCloud Data Center Project

Apple has ended its plans to build a $921m iCloud data center in Denmark, AppleInsider reported. The company told the relevant local authority that it will not be building on the 285 hectares site in Kasso that it acquired in 2017. Apple will proceed with another data center project in the country.

In a “short phone call” to the Aabenraa Municipality, Apple advised it had made the decision to concentrate only on its data center construction taking place in Viborg, a second Danish construction project for the company. Apple also plans to sell the land, with no intention to construct anything else on the property, a statement from the municipality reads. Described as “completely unexpected,” Aabenraa director Stig Isaksen suggests the call was “an overall strategic business decision made in the United States, and that the decision has been taken entirely independently of the circumstances of the Aabenraa Municipality.” Isaksen also claims there has been “much praise” for local partners and the municipality from Apple throughout the project.

 

Win $1,000 By Using a Flip Phone for a Week

Frontier Bundles is hosting a challenge where people can win US$1,000 if they use a flip phone exclusively for a week. All you have to do to enter is fill out a form and explain why you should be the winner. The closing date for entry is July 1, 2019 at 5PM MST.

If you’re the person we choose, you’ll be responsible for using a flip phone in place of your smartphone for seven full days (that’s 168 hours!), and we want you to log your experience. We’ll have you track (don’t worry, your info stays safe with us!) how long it takes you to do basic tasks such as texting and checking email, how many times you wish you could Google something, how many hours you slept, how your productivity changed (or didn’t!), and even if you were late to appointments.

PaMu Scroll True Wireless Earbuds: $69.99

We have a deal on a pair of PaMu Scroll True Wireless Earbuds with a charging case. These earbuds feature Bluetooth 5.0, touch controls, and allow you to connect to Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. There are four colors to choose from, and their $69.9 through our deal, a 53% discount off retail.

Photos of Travelers, License Plates Stolen in U.S. Customs Breach

Photos of travelers and license plates were stolen in a U.S. Customs breach. A subcontractor for the agency was hacked, but CBP won’t say which one. One hypothesis says it might be Perceptics.

CBP said copies of “license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP” had been transferred to the subcontractor’s company network, violating the contract’s security and privacy rules. The subcontractor’s network was then attacked and breached. No CBP systems were compromised, the agency said. It’s unclear whether passport or facial-recognition photos were included in the breach.

Apple TV Strategy by the Numbers

At one time, it was theorized that Apple would make its own TV set, integrated with Apple TV functionality. Instead, Apple has gone one better by seeking to integrate the Apple TV (4K) into TVs made by others. LoupVentures has the strategy and the numbers.

We believe, eventually, many major TVs will embed Apple TV software. This adoption curve may be similar to CarPlay …

Apple’s approach to the living room has been… led by Apple TV which we estimate is now used in 26m US homes monthly (21% of US households). We believe there are 53 million active Apple TVs worldwide.

While this may appear to be the beginning of the end of the Apple TV box, we believe the device will retain unique value. We believe the standalone box will continue …

This is, of course, all about ramping up for Apple TV+ subscriptions.