Turns out the membrane in Apple’s redesigned Touch Bar MacBook Pro keyboard really is supposed to help keep debris away from the butterfly key mechanism. Apple’s public statement is the redesign is just to make the keys quieter, but an internal Apple service document MacRumors got ahold of says otherwise. From the document:

The keyboard has a membrane under the keycaps to prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism. The procedure for the space bar replacement has also changed from the previous model. Repair documentation and service videos will be available when keycap parts begin shipping.

Of course, Apple doesn’t want to publicly admit there’s a problem with the keyboards on previous MacBook models because of the growing number of lawsuits claiming they’re defective. Odds are there are a lot of attorneys really happy this document leaked.

It’s called The Diderot Effect, and it explains modern consumerism, why you buy things you don’t need. It all started when we were told as kids that we just had to have the awesome decoder ring found in that special cereal box. Today, unless we’ve seen the latest superhero movie or have the latest iPhone, we are somehow less of a person. Our goods define our identity. This linked article provides some perspective on manipulated consumerism.

Online retail hackers account for 90% of all login attempts. According to a report by cybersecurity firm Shape Security, hackers use special software with stolen data to login multiple times, called credential stuffing.

These attacks are successful as often as 3% of the time, and the costs quickly add up for businesses, Shape says. This type of fraud costs the e-commerce sector about $6 billion a year, while the consumer banking industry loses out on about $1.7 billion annually. The hotel and airline businesses are also major targets—the theft of loyalty points is a thing—costing a combined $700 million every year.

A recent study in the Psychological Science journal asked 6,641 residents in the U.K. to describe in writing their first memory, and the age they were in that memory. Around 40% of people found out that that memory is probably false.

It might seem dismissive to assume that these memories are false, but memory researchers have good reason to conclude that people aren’t truly remembering being a baby. Research on infantile amnesia, the official term for the phenomenon in which we forget things that happened to us as babies and young children, has shown that it’s close to impossible to retain declarative memories at that young age.

A group of Silicon valley socialists want to take power from billionaires and give it to workers and local communities. At a protest on July 9, about 40 people chanted things like “Caging children is a crime. Salesforce, f*ck your bottom line!”

That Monday, they were protesting a Salesforce contract to supply services to human resources operations at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the sister division within the Department of Homeland Security to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)–the unit infamous for detaining children of asylum seekers.

Writing for Vice, Alex Norcia argues that cops shouldn’t be allowed to be funny online. Alex uses the example of an incident where a lost pug was found by local police, and they posted a “pugshot” onto social media.

Yes, everyone appreciates a solid laugh. And sarcasm, irony, and good cheer are generally great things. This is especially true of life online, which can be especially toxic. But the fuzz should not have this luxury. The fuzz should not be funny on social media, because the fuzz are not (and, again, should not be) funny people. Particularly in the face of Black Lives Matter and when the public’s distrust in the institution is so deservedly high. It is a serious job, and these are serious times.

I may be wrong but isn’t the word “fuzz” supposed to be derogatory? I’ll take humor over insults any day.

Representative Mike Coffman (R-CO) says he’s ready to take action and restore net neutrality protection. The rules were overturned and ultimately expired on June 11th, opening the door for ISPs to control internet traffic passing through their networks as they see fit. Coffman says the bill he’s introducing will create an “internet constitution.” Reuters reports,

The bill would ensure “no throttling, no blocking, no paid prioritization and oversight of interconnection” rules between internet providers and backbone transit providers, his office said in a statement.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been hell bent on removing any restriction and regulations protecting net neutrality. With one GOP member breaking ranks and supporting net neutrality maybe, just maybe, we’ll see more follow suit.

Page 2 of Particle Debris takes us to an exploration of the 8th generation Core CPUs used in the new MacBook Pros. Plus, the re-emergence of Spectre—and the continuing work on how to defend. Also, honoring Python’s Guido van Rossum.

Not many people like to make and take phone calls nowadays. But David Pierce writes that sending text messages removes the humanity from communication. Is voice chat the future instead?

In the swing from calls to texts, we lost the warmth and humanity that made the phone work in the first place. I’m not pining for the days of the loudly spinning rotary phone, though. Better ways to actually talk to people already exist. A few companies are building tools that improve upon what didn’t work about phone calls, making them less disruptive and more productive.

At the same time, a new type of chat is sitting right under our noses. It’s called voice messaging, and it deserves a place alongside text and video as core parts of how we chat in the digital age.

Tim Cook wants to see a cashless society, but Gene Marks writes that it’s an inherently discriminatory system. Not accepting cash excludes service to people (usually poor people) who may be unable to get a credit or debit card. But a new bill would make it illegal for restaurants to refuse paper money.

However, one city in the US is resisting that trend: Washington DC. In the nation’s capital cash is still king, and a new bill introduced this week wants to keep it that way. The Cashless Retailers Prohibition Act of 2018 would make it illegal for restaurants and retailers not to accept cash or charge a different price to customers depending on the type of payment they use.

Apple sure is spending a lot of money on research and development, but doesn’t seem to have much to show for it. Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 3.0 got ahold of an investor not from Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi that states,

Perhaps most importantly, despite R&D spending more than quintupling over the last 6.5 years, Apple’s pace of new product/services introductions does not appear to have accelerated. We note that Apple cumulatively spent $11.5B between 1998 and 2011, a period in which it introduced the iPod, iPad, and iPhone – last year alone, Apple spent a similar amount. We believe that Apple’s R&D productivity has declined (which is not uncommon as companies scale, but may also be attributable to the loss of Steve Jobs). That said, it is also possible that the recent surge in R&D spending could translate into accelerated product and services announcements in the near to medium term.

So maybe Apple is going to surprise us with some huge product announcements, or maybe it’s R&D has just become a giant money pit.

In recent disturbing (but not entirely surprising), it turns out that major media outlets don’t mention climate change. Over a two-week period from late June to early July, ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 127 segments or weathercasts that discussed this summer’s heat wave. But only CBS mentioned climate change as a contributing factor.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that human-induced climate change is exacerbating both the frequency and intensity of heat waves. Heat domes like the one that caused this recent heat wave are becoming more intense and more common, scientists have found. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who has studied extreme weather patterns in California, said recent heat in California was unusual.

The US Department of Justice isn’t hip on the idea of AT&T and Time-Warner merging, so it’s contesting the government’s approval of the deal. The DOJ filed an appeal to overturn the merger approval over concerns it will reduce competition in the pay television market. Experts, however, don’t think there’s much hope for the appeal. CNBC said,

Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson told CNBC’s “Fast Money” that given how decisive [Judge] Leon’s ruling was, there aren’t a lot of obvious arguments the government can make for its appeal. He said, however, that the Justice Department may try push back on the idea that AT&T wouldn’t take into consideration it is an integrated company when it is negotiating programming agreements.

Of course, AT&T and Time-Warner say the merger won’t stifle competition. If the court moves ahead with the appeal and grants a stay that’ll put the whole deal on hold, so it’s a safe bet AT&T is going to fight this in a big way.

We take a lot of photos. We upload them. But a study from UC Santa Cruz shows that photographs don’t actually present the truth of the moment: they actually distort it. The effect is called “cognitive offloading.” The linked article explains. “It turns out that photographing gives the photographer significantly less need to encode (i.e. we tend to put more mental stock, if you will, into the photograph that we just took rather than actually encoding the memory ourselves).” Sounds like vacationers need to spend more time gazing and less time photographing.

Have you ever wanted a robot gardener? Maybe this new robot can help. It’s not a gardener per se, it’s a robot/plant hybrid that has a plant on its head and chases sunlight to keep the plant fed.

The resulting plant-robot hybrid looks like a leafy crab or a robot Bulbasaur. It moves toward the sunshine when needed, and it retreats to shade when it’s had enough. It’ll “play” with a human if you tap its carapace, and it can even make its needs known by performing a little stompy dance when it’s out of water.

It turns out that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has a track record of being devastatingly wrong on Net Neutrality, as explained by TechCrunch‘s Devin Coldewey:

DC Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been nominated for the position of Supreme Court Justice, and on this occasion I think it warranted that we revisit in detail the sound intellectual thrashing this man suffered at the hands of his colleagues just last year on the topic of the internet and net neutrality. Because Kavanaugh was very, very wrong then and gives every indication that he will take his ignorance unapologetically to the highest court in the land.

It’s one of those times when politics and technology intersect like a 19th Century head on train crash. If you care about Net Neutrality (being restored), understanding this nominee’s position on the subject makes this piece a very good read.

Uber laid off 100 “safety drivers” in Pittsburgh amidst a rejiggering of its aggressive autonomous vehicle testing program. From Quartz:

The company held a meeting earlier today (July 11) to inform about 100 autonomous vehicle operators—people who monitor its self-driving cars—that their jobs were being terminated, a source close to the situation told Quartz. Uber said it was eliminating the position of autonomous vehicle operator, and that operators were free to apply to other roles at the company, the source said.

Uber confirmed it laid off about 100 autonomous vehicle operators in Pittsburgh and eliminated the position. The company plans to replace these jobs with about 55 “mission specialists”—specialists who are trained in both on-road and more advanced test-track operations, and who are expected to provide more technical feedback to self-driving car developers. Uber said affected operators could apply for these positions.