MyAppleMenu - Sun, Nov 8, 2015

Sun, Nov 8, 2015The Few-Dollars-A-Day Edition

Apple Wins Dismissal Of Suit Over Retail Worker Bag Searches, by Robert Burnson, Bloomberg

The ruling by a San Francisco federal judge Saturday releases the company from having to compensate as many 12,400 former and current employees from 52 stores throughout the state a few dollars a day for time spent over a six-year period having their bags and Apple devices searched at meal breaks and after their shifts.

Don't Read This Website

News Is Bad For You – And Giving Up Reading It Will Make You Happier, by Rolf Dobelli, The Guardian

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

Stuff

Chef's Hat Lets You Bookmark And Organise Recipes From All Over The Web, by Alan Henry, Lifehacker

There’s no shortage of ways to organise recipes you find around the web, but they come and go so quickly it’s nice to see a new one. Chef’s Hat is a bookmarking and snipping tool that saves recipes you find around the web so they’re easy to find — and cook — later.

Notes

California Is Winning The Digital Privacy Fight, by Nicole A. Ozer, TechCrunch

CalECPA protects digital information held by companies, including the content of emails and cloud documents, location information and metadata. The state’s electronic privacy law also means that data on consumers’ computers and mobile devices have the same protection from government snooping as paper files.

NSA Says How Often, Not When, It Discloses Software Flaws, by Joseph Menn, Reuters

The U.S. National Security Agency, seeking to rebut accusations that it hoards information about vulnerabilities in computer software, thereby leaving U.S. companies open to cyber attacks, said last week that it tells U.S. technology firms about the most serious flaws it finds more than 90 percent of the time.

The re-assurances may be misleading, because the NSA often uses the vulnerabilities to make its own cyber-attacks first, according to current and former U.S. government officials. Only then does NSA disclose them to technology vendors so that they can fix the problems and ship updated programs to customers, the officials said.

Missing My Favorites

I missed my favorites. No, this is not about Twitter changing favorites to likes. This is about Apple removing the favorite contacts at the top of the app-switching page in iOS.

Yes, I know there is a list of contacts in Spotlight search -- but that list mixes up favorites with recent contacts. I hate that. I hate that Apple is constantly reminding me of having to interact with other humans that aren't my favorites on my precious precious pocket computer. :-)

So, I bought Launch Center Pro just to keep my favorite contacts. I think I can sleep happier tonight.

~

Thanks for reading.