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RCS, Successor to SMS, Could Come to Apple Devices

Andrew Orr ·

RCS is a technology touted as the replacement for SMS. It will bring rich, iMessage-like features to texting, and major carriers support it. And it sounds like Apple is interested.

According to the purported slide from the conference, Apple has “engaged in discussions with the GSMA and Operators about including RCS in iOS.” This is inherently vague and doesn’t offer too many details about the extent to which Apple is involved, but the pitch seems to center on three things.

I find it unfortunate that RCS seems to only support encryption during transport, and not end-to-end encryption. Governments around the world would probably not let end-to-end encryption become so widespread.

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Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Talks Time Off and Time Magazine

Charlotte Henry ·

Salesforce boss Marc Benioff is one of tech’s most compelling and surprising characters and has been for a long time. This summer, he made a decision that caught most people unawares – he named a co-CEO. A CNBC interview with Mr. Benioff reveals how time off this summer made he decide to focus only on the things he loves and touches on his purchase of Time Magazine.

Weeks at work are filled with dinners, parties, events and business council meetings exclusively for CEOs, meaning that if anyone from Salesforce is to attend, it has to be him. Meanwhile, he’s trying to run a 30,000-person company, build Salesforce towers across the globe, bolster his philanthropy, invest in start-ups, mentor other business leaders and become a louder voice on a number of social and political issues. “So I made a very good decision — to have two CEOs,” Benioff said with a laugh, during a recent interview at his home in San Francisco. “Then it’s a divide and conquer strategy.” Following his time off the grid, Benioff flew to Hawaii refreshed and resolved to focus only on the things in life he enjoys.

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M.G. Siegler's 2018 Homescreen and How it Changed

Andrew Orr ·

I love reading about how other people use their devices, and every year M.G. Siegler shares how his home screen evolves over time.

We all have our apps that we use on a daily basis. And for new ones to break in, they don’t just have to be better, they have to be so much better that they’re worth replacing another app. More specifically, the time you use another app.

Readers will know I’m a fiend when it comes to organization. So for my iPhone and iPad I keep my most-used apps on the home screen, and organize them all alphabetically.

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Apple's International Privacy Trade-Offs

Charlotte Henry ·

LONDON – Apple has for a long time proudly flaunted its pro-privacy values. It, quite fairly, highlights how its products are aligned with these values, especially when compared to its competitors.  However, this is coming under increasing strain. According to a Techcrunch report, European customers, in particular, are beginning to question whether Apple is still putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to privacy. Deals with Google and its ongoing presence in China, are leaving Apple walking something of a tightrope.

Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead crying foul over perceived hypocrisy. The problem for this subset of otherwise loyal European iPhone users is that Apple isn’t offering enough privacy.

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It is Still Down to Humans to Fight Fake News

Charlotte Henry ·

2019 is undoubtedly going to be a big year in AI. The discussion over fake news will continue too. Sean Gourley, CEO of machine intelligence company Primer, wrote in Wired that while progress in AI is being made, at the moment humans, not algorithms, need to lead the fight against fake news. I know from my own research into fake news how important a role bots play in the spread of disinformation. Unfortunately, the technology is not yet discerning enough to be relied upon to separate fact from fiction. AI has not been able to fight back. It may be able to one day, but until then, it is down to us humans.

One of the reasons that computational propaganda has been so successful is that the naïve, popularity-based filtering systems employed by today’s leading social networks have proven to be fragile and susceptible to targeted fake information attacks.To solve this problem, we will need to design algorithms that amplify our intelligence when we’re interacting together in large groups. The good news is that the latest research into such systems looks promising.