iPhone and the US-China Trade War

Jason Dedrick, Greg Linden, and Kenneth L. Kraemer broke down the cost of the iPhone and showed how China doesn’t get as much value from iPhone exports as we think.

So what about all of those famous factories in China with millions of workers making iPhones? The companies that own those factories, including Foxconn, are all based in Taiwan. Of the factory-cost estimate of $237.45 from IHS Markit at the time the iPhone 7 was released in late 2016, we calculate that all that’s earned in China is about $8.46, or 3.6% of the total. That includes a battery supplied by a Chinese company and the labor used for assembly.

Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken to Support Apple Pay

Savings bank Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken will become another German institution supporting Apple Pay. The move will happen sometime by the end of 2019, AppleInsider reported. The Euro-Cheque card is not expected to be supported at launch. That will follow at a later date.

Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken, a branch of German savings banks and cooperative banks, will support Apple Pay in 2019. While there is no specific date mentioned, the service should start “later this year,” said Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s vice president of internet services. Other German banks have already begun to adopt Apple Pay. “The ink is dry,” the Federal Association of German Banks wrote on Twitter, “The Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken will offer their customers Apple Pay later this year.” According to an article at Heise Online, the EC card, or Euro-Cheque card, will not be supported at launch. Girocard, the producers and managers of EC cards, will need to do some work on their end before integration can happen.

For a Limited Time, Visible Removes 5 Mbps Speed Cap

Starting today and for a limited time, Visible is removing its 5 Mbps speed cap for new and existing members. Speed Cap Visible is a relatively new prepaid carrier that uses Verizon’s network. Disclosure: I’ve been a member since the beginning of this year and I’m happy with my service. https://youtu.be/dODUY9G2uSs For now, the speed…

NSA Found Wrongly Collecting Phone Records For Second Time

The NSA has been found to have improperly collected the phone records of U.S. citizens. Again. The Wall Street journal reported on documents obtained by the ACLU. It said that the collection took place in October but it was unknown how many records were involved. The name of the telecoms firm involved was redacted.

The previously undisclosed error, which took place last October, occurred several months after the NSA said it had purged hundreds of millions of metadata records it had amassed since 2015 due to a separate overcollection episode. Metadata include the numbers and time stamps of a call or text message but not the contents of the conversation. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained the documents, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving the surveillance program. They are heavily redacted internal NSA memos that discuss oversight of intelligence-collection activities.