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Lawmakers Want Apple to Turn Privacy Talk into Action

Andrew Orr ·

Although Tim Cook vocally supports privacy laws in the United States, Apple doesn’t actually support many of them.

A number of privacy advocates and U.S. lawmakers — who did not attend the meeting — say Apple has not put enough muscle behind any federal effort to tighten privacy laws. And state lawmakers, who are closest to passing rules to limit data sharing, say Apple is an ally in name only — and in fact has contributed to lobbying efforts that might undermine some new data-protection legislation.

This is something I’ve noticed as well. I think Tim and co should do more to support privacy legislation.

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Amazon Prime Changed How we Shop online

Charlotte Henry ·

To mark Amazon Prime Day, Recode looked at the origins of the next-day delivery service. It outlined the dramatic effect it had on how people perceived online shopping.

The service, which launched in February of 2005, was a first of its kind: For an upfront payment of $79, customers were rewarded with all-you-can-eat two-day delivery on their orders. At the time, Amazon charged customers $9.48 for two-day delivery, meaning if you placed just nine of these orders in a year, Prime would pay for itself.  “[E]ven for people who can afford second-day shipping, this feels sort of like an indulgent luxury,” Bezos said of Prime, on a call with Wall Street analysts when he introduced the service in February 2005. Jeff Bezos’s letters to customers on the Amazon.com homepage announcing the Amazon Prime and Prime Video launches. With it, Amazon single-handedly — and permanently — raised the bar for convenience in online shopping. That, in turn, forever changed the types of products shoppers were willing to buy online.

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Apple VPN as the Company's Latest Privacy Service

Andrew Orr ·

Michael Grothaus argues that an Apple VPN should be the company’s next privacy service.

The obvious existing bundle this VPN could slip into would be iCloud. Apple could offer an “iCloud VPN” service to all paid iCloud subscribers. And because Apple controls all the hardware and operating systems of the devices it makes, its VPN setup could be dead simple: if you’re signed into iCloud on your device, iCloud VPN is set up, running, and protecting your browsing activity from outsiders without you having to click a single button.

I’m not so sure I want an Apple VPN. Remember, this would mean that Apple could potentially know all of your network traffic unless they had a no logging policy.

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Computing Pioneer Alan Turing the Face of New British Banknotes

Charlotte Henry ·

Alan Turing will be the new face of the Bank of England’s £50 notes, BBC News reported. His codebreaking was crucial to the Allies victory in the Second World War. The new notes will enter circulation by the end of 2021.

The note was once described as the “currency of corrupt elites” and is the least used in daily transactions. However, there are still 344 million £50 notes in circulation, with a combined value of £17.2bn, according to the Bank of England’s banknote circulation figures. “Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today,” said Bank of England governor Mark Carney. “As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as a war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far ranging and path breaking. Turing is a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”