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Apple Hit with $12.2 Million Fine in Italy Over iPhone Throttlegate

Jeff Gamet ·

Italy just slapped Apple with a €10.7 million fine (about US$12.27 million) for anti-trust violations stemming from the software fix for iPhones crashing because of worn out batteries, also known as “throttlegate.” Reuters summed up Italy’s reasoning for the fine saying,

Italian consumer groups had complained that software updates for mobile phones reduced the functionality of the devices and were designed to push clients into buying new handsets.

The idea that making a product perform poorly will make customers want to buy more from a company seems a little illogical to me. Still, Apple’s failure to tell customers what they were doing sits at the root of the problem. In this case, it’s a $12 million lesson in why transparency with customers is so important.

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Google Adds Privacy Controls in Search

Andrew Orr ·

Google will start showing privacy controls on its search page, instead of forcing users to navigate their My Activity page.

Google calls the new feature Your Data, and has experimented with offering information about data privacy in different formats like video, illustrations, and text. The idea, Miraglia says, is to help as many users as possible understand what data a service collects, why, and what controls are available.

I think it’s a good move by Google, but like Douglas Schmidt said in the article: “It never hurts for people to be reminded that their online activities are being monitored, but I’m not sure it would make anybody feel better about what’s being done with it.”

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Fiber Optic Breakthrough Could Make Internet 100X Faster

Andrew Orr ·

Researchers have had a fiber optic breakthrough, and it could significantly speed up existing networks and boost efficiency. The secret is twisted light.

Fibre optic cables use pulses of light to transmit information, but currently information can only be stored through the colour of the light, and whether the wave is horizontal or vertical.

By twisting light into a spiral, engineers effectively create a third dimension for light to carry information: the level of orbital angular momentum, or spin. “It’s like DNA, if you look at the double helix spiral,” said Min Gu from RMIT University. “The more you can use angular momentum the more information you can carry.”

I wonder how much current ISPs would throttle this 100X faster internet?