Ex-Facebook Security Chief Slams its Phone Number Look-Up Feature

Concerns over Facebook’s phone number look-up setting erupted once again Friday. A tweet from Jamie Burge highlighted that users can be looked up via their phone number. Furthermore, users cannot turn off that setting.  The tweet even prompted the social network’s former security chief, Alex Stamos to criticize the practice, Techcrunch reported. Mr. Stamos tweeted that “Facebook can’t credibly require two-factor for high-risk accounts without segmenting that from search and ads.”

Last year, Facebook was forced to admit that after months of pestering its users to switch on two-factor by signing up their phone number, it was also using those phone numbers to target users with ads. But some users are finding out just now that Facebook’s default setting allows everyone — with or without an account — to look up a user profile based off the same phone number previously added to their account.

Art Text Design Tool for Mac: $11.24

We have a deal on Art Text for Mac, graphic design software specifically tuned for lettering, typography, text mockups, and various artistic text effects. It comes with templates, gradient presets, shadow effects, and more. It’s $14.99 through our deal, but coupon code DOWNLOADIT takes off 25% for a checkout price off $11.24.

Physical Music Purchases Surpass iTunes Downloads

Sales of physical music media, like CDs and vinyls, have surpassed the number of people downloading music from iTunes. Which makes sense because everyone else has moved on to streaming music, which accounted for 75% of revenue last year for the recording industry.

Downloads represented just 11 percent of US labels’ revenue last year, a music industry trade group said Thursday. Physical sales — the term for music formats you can actually hold, which are mostly CDs and vinyl at this point — booked 12 percent.

Apple is Hiring More Software Employees Than Hardware

For the first time in years, Apple has been hiring more software employees than hardware employees. I think this is a great move because Apple software is generally basic.

It makes sense for Apple: its hardware is now not only ubiquitous, but demand has finally plateaud. At the end of 2018 (right around when Apple began its earnest search for more software people), it became very clear that the iPhone was no longer Apple’s meal ticket as sales lagged followed by a very rare warnings call from Tim Cook.

So now what? Lock people into the ecosystem with software and services. How to get there? Hire people who know how to build that walled garden.

Siri Shortcuts Might Just Be Misunderstood

Thursday’s update to Siri Shortcuts got writer Lance Ulanoff wondering if the feature is actually widely misunderstood. He saw it in action, working with apps that made an Espresso on command or could order your favourite pizza. He posted a column on Medium about the demo, and how Siri Shortcuts works. He concluded that the “ability to take deep dives into disparate apps without even touching your phone” is “the most compelling aspect” of the feature.

Getting Siri to launch an action isn’t that surprising, but what iPhone and iOS 12 users might not realize is the extent to which Siri’s been watching them and using local machine learning to build up a potential library of Siri Shortcut actions. It starts pretty simply. If you drag your thumb down on your home screen, you’ll immediately see a collection of 4-to-8 apps selected by Siri as those you use most often. There are also those Siri Suggestions that helpfully popup on your lock-screen offering to, for instance, initiate a call that its gleaned from your schedule.

New Siri Shortcuts for Third-Party Health and Fitness Apps

Apple highlighted a number of third-party health apps that have been updated to work with Siri Shortcuts Thursday. AppleInsider reported that the updated apps included QardioArm smart blood pressure, skiing-app Snoww as well as Streaks, WaterMinder, and Yazio. It also noted Apples suggestion that users could create personalized routines with these new Siri Shortcuts.

The apps Apple has selected offer a wide variety of functions to promote a healthy and active lifestyle, in a number of new ways. Following an announcement from Thursday about new additions to the Siri Shortcuts roster, the new batch of third-party health services cover both apps and hardware that can communicate with iPhones and other items in the Apple ecosystem.

 

Apple Watch Health Features Can Change Medicine

Apple Watch health features and fitness tracking have the potential to change medicine. Dan Hon writes how his friend’s Apple Watch helped him.

One day, while I was testing my own Apple Watch, Tom was deconstructing a rack of network equipment. He suddenly noticed his heart was pounding. Then he began feeling dizzy. Next came tunnel vision. He needed to sit down.

I think more and more health features will come to the Apple Watch,, such as blood glucose monitoring.

SpaceX Taking Next Steps Towards Sending Astronauts into Space

SpaceX will move a step closer to putting human’s into space this weekend. Early Saturday morning, it will launch an upgraded version of its Dragon capsule craft, called Crew Dragon. The craft will contain supplies for International Space Station. Wired reported on how Elon Musk’s company hopes to prove that this type of craft can keep a human crew safe if it had to make an emergency landing.

SpaceX has always intended for its Dragon capsules to ferry humans, but Every SpaceX Dragon capsule launched so far has only shuttled cargo to and from the ISS. The upgraded version, debuting on DM-1, will feature new crew life-support systems, seats, control panels, and a propulsion system that can be used to keep the crew safe during a launch emergency. But it won’t carry people; before astronauts can climb aboard, SpaceX has to prove Dragon is ready.

5G Makes Location Tracking More Precise

5G will be a major upgrade to cellular networks. But since this technology requires more cell towers than 4G, it will make location tracking more precise (paywall).

5G signals in the U.S. will have a very short range and won’t easily go through buildings. This means there need to be many more cell towers. The main way that a cellphone tells where you are—as opposed to a website or an app—is, which tower are you talking to. Today’s towers have a radius of about a mile. If the new towers cover a much smaller area, it means that they know much more precisely where you are.

Apple Cash Holdings Could Lead to Emulating General Electric

At BetaNews, Robert X. Cringely writes:

But most importantly for those who are still looking for a headline, Apple will in 2019 greatly expand its profile in the finance industry. Tim Cook has already started in 2019 along the same path forged by GE’s Jack Welch back in 1981.

This strategic shift started to show just this week with Apple directly financing iPhone sales in China and announcing an Apple credit card with Goldman Sachs.

The theme here is wiser utilization of all that cash to make more cash. That’s what Big Companies do and what Apple seems poised to do now.

Omnia Q Wireless Charger: $25.49

We have a deal on the Omnia Q Wireless Charger. This wireless charging pad will charge your iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, and other Qi-compatible devices. It also glows while it’s charging with built-in multi-hued LED bulbs. Our deal is for $29.99, but coupon code SEMIANNUAL saves 15%, for a checkout price of $25.49.

New Beats X Headphones to Go on Sale in Paris

LONDON- Apple’s Beats and Japanese fashion brand, Sacai are coming together to create BeatsX. The specially designed headphones are going to initially go on sale in a pop-up store in Paris on March 4th, AppleInsider reported. They come in three different colours, and they are not going to be cheap.

To buy a pair, at least initially, people will have to turn to a pop-up store launching in Paris on March 4. The product will also cost about $200 — a premium of more than $100 over normal BeatsX models. Apple is no stranger to treating Beats products as fashion accessories, often focusing more on their style than sound quality or features. The company regularly pays to insert Beats products into music videos or sports sponsorships to lure in a young audience.

Huawei and 5G Dominate Mobile World Congress

MWC in Barcelona is drawing to a close. We’ve seen foldable phones and a lot of talk about 5G. Another of the hot topics was Huawei, and the U.S. governments ongoing bid to claims that the company spies on behalf of the Chinese state. The New York Times has a rundown of what happened at conference.

American officials were left to hold a hastily called news conference on Tuesday at a booth operated by the Spanish government. They didn’t present any new evidence against Huawei. The conference previewed many of the hottest mobile trends, particularly the capabilities of new hyperfast 5G networks. For years, the technology has had more promise than actual uses. Executives said the faster networks would debut this year, with wider adoption coming in 2020 and beyond.

Hearing What the Moderators Actually Do

There has been much discussion in recent times about what social media companies and online platforms are doing to monitor content. For example, Facebook has moved to moderate Anti-Vaxxer content on its platform. Apple News is, of course, curated by editors. We often hear from the heads of companies about moderation, but not from the people who actually do it. Medium’s s Head of Trust and Safety spoke to people who have been on the frontline of this at a variety of tech companies. The conversation sheds a light on how decisions about content get made.

This is where the trust and safety team comes in. Most companies operating an online platform have one. It sometimes goes by other names — “content policy” or “moderation” — and comes in other flavors, like “community operations.” Whatever the name, this is the team that encourages social norms. They make platform rules and enforce them. They are at once the judges and janitors of the internet. This is not the job of a few dozen techie randos, but tens of thousands of workers, both full-time employees and contractors.

TikTok Fined 5.7M Over Illegal Data Collection of Kids

TikTok is being fined US$5.7 million over allegations that it “illegally collected images, voice recordings, and geolocation of children, some younger than 13.”

The amount, part of an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission announced Wednesday, is the largest civil penalty ever issued by the agency in a child privacy case. FTC commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter also filed a separate statement calling for TikTok executives to be held accountable in any future cases. “In our view, these practices reflected the company’s willingness to pursue growth even at the expense of endangering children,” the statement read.

Halide's New App Spectre Gives You AI-Powered Long Exposure

Halide is a fantastic camera app for the iPhone, and one that I use exclusively. The team created a new app called Spectre. It gives you long exposure photography powered by machine learning.

Spectre reimagines long exposures: its intelligent shutter takes hundreds of photos during the exposure time and merges the result. That means you don’t just get a final still image, but also a video of the entire exposure as it happened.

The app is on sale with an introductory price of only US$1.99.

Like Apple News, Privacy is a Feature of Apple Podcasts

It’s hard for publishers and individuals to make money via Apple’s platforms like News and Podcasts. Jason Snell’s argument seems to be that competitors like Spotify might do better than Apple because advertisers can’t collect user statistics from Podcasts. It’s a conundrum, because I think you can have both good privacy and good advertising. But Apple is never going to give up privacy in favor of deeper advertising. Hopefully there can be a happy medium.

Maybe it’s all for the best. There aren’t too many examples of enormous tech companies opting not to take advantage of their dominance in a market. Perhaps Apple’s light touch on the world of podcasting will continue, at least until a competitor does something to get its attention.

Do Not Track Setting Could Return With a Vengeance

Apple plans to remove the Do Not Track setting from iOS and macOS because it doesn’t actually do anything. Websites only have to voluntarily obey it, which means that the majority don’t. But a stronger DNT could be coming.

In January 2017 the European Commission announced an initiative to update the ePrivacy Regulation, a proposal that would revisit a 15-year-old directive dealing with privacy protections and how users consent to being tracked by cookies.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Echos Tim Cook on Privacy

At the Mobile World Congress 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella echoed publicly the notions of Apple’s Tim Cook on customer privacy. Computerworld’s Jonny Evans has the story.

Nadella’s Microsoft seems to be moving in a similar direction as the old guard of more responsible technologists join forces to combat the unintended consequences of tech firms who have moved fast and loose in their treatment and support for user privacy.

Evans concludes: “Ultimately, it’s all about trust.”

ActiveDock For Mac Lifetime License: $14.99

We have a deal on ActiveDock for Mac, an improved dock utility that adds several features designed to help you better manage your Mac. It looks and behaves like the regular macOS Dock, but adds in preview features, window management features, and more. Our deal is for a lifetime license for $19.99, but coupon code DOWNLOADIT takes off 25% for a checkout price of $14.99.

Email Scams Increasingly Involve iTunes Gift Cards

Email scams are increasingly involving iTunes gift cards, instead of the old wire transfers. Lily Hay Newman as the scoop.

This trend is on the rise among scammers, both for individual targets and organizations. The Federal Trade Commission reported in October that 26 percent of people who report being scammed in 2018 said they bought or reloaded a gift card to deliver the money, up from seven percent in 2015. The FTC says that gift card-related losses reported to the agency totaled $20 million in 2015, $27 million in 2016, $40 million in 2017, and $53 million in the first nine months of 2018 alone.

A Facebook Clear-History Tool is Coming in 2019

A Facebook clear-history tool is going to be with users by the end of 2019. That’s according to its CFO David Wehner, who spoke Tuesday at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2019 in San Francisco, CNBC reported. CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally announced the features in 2018. Mr. Zuckerberg promised in a post that the tool, when it arrived, would be “a simple control to clear your browsing history.”

The feature will allow users to see information about apps and web sites they’ve interacted with and delete this information from their Facebook accounts. Wehner said the feature will make it harder for Facebook to use data collected by third parties to target ads to users. “Broadly, [clear history is] going to give us some headwinds in terms of being able to target as effectively as before,” Wehner said.

Streaming Services and the Arms Race for TV Writers

We seem to be living in a golden age of television thanks to streaming services, and The writers behind some of our favourite shows are getting well rewarded for it. Fast Company looked at how Netflix kickstarted “a $1 billion arms race” for TV writing talent. With Apple stepping into the field, and spending serious cash on the likes of Oprah, the fees look like they are only going to go one way.

In the last 18 months there have been so many jaw-dropping deals with the people who dream up TV shows–and the numbers for those deals so staggeringly high–that reports of another TV writer getting piles of cash thrown at him or her by a network, studio, or streaming company has become almost numbingly de rigueur. The starting gun that set off this phenomenon can be traced back to Netflix’s announcement in the summer of 2017 that it was poaching Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes from her longtime home at ABC in a deal worth $150 million.

FBI: Encryption Infects Law Enforcement Community

The FBI really really dislikes end-to-end encryption, saying that it’s a problem that infects the law enforcement community (paywall).

The so-called going-dark issue…is a problem [that] infects law enforcement and the intelligence community more and more so every day,” said Amy Hess, executive assistant director with the FBI, in an interview. Ms. Hess, who previously oversaw the FBI’s science and technology branch, testified to Congress on the problem during Apple’s 2016 clash with the bureau.

Apple and others are worried about Australia’s encryption ban, and it could be a test case for the rest of the Five Eyes.