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The Cynical-Inversion Edition Tuesday, May 9, 2017

FileMaker 16 Launches With Enhancements To Mobility, Scalability, Security And More, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

FileMaker 16 focuses on enhancing mobility, scalability, and security, along with providing new features and integrations for an improved app creation experience.

How Privacy Became A Commodity For The Rich And Powerful, by Amanda Hess, New York Times

We’ve arrived at a place where public institutions and figures can be precious about their privacy in ways we’re continually deciding individual people can’t. Stepping into the White House is now considered more private than that weird rash you Googled. It’s a cynical inversion of the old association between private life and the lower class: These days, only the powerful can demand privacy.

Is The Gig Economy Working?, by Nathan Heller, New Yorker

The American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

Support for the new work model has come together swiftly, though, in surprising quarters. On the second day of the most recent Democratic National Convention, in July, members of a four-person panel suggested that gigging life was not only sustainable but the embodiment of today’s progressive values. “It’s all about democratizing capitalism,” Chris Lehane, a strategist in the Clinton Administration and now Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs, said during the proceedings, in Philadelphia. David Plouffe, who had managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before he joined Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re seeing a large contingent of the Obama coalition demanding the sharing economy.” Instead of being pawns in the games of industry, the panelists thought, working Americans could thrive by hiring out skills as they wanted, and putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the people.

Stuff

Workflow Update Restores Google Chrome And Pocket Actions, Extends Apple Music Integration, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

Workflow has today restored some of the features that were removed in version 1.7.3 of the app (which was released when Apple confirmed the acquisition) and has brought a variety of changes and improvements, including new Apple Music actions.

New Apple Watch Activity Challenge Discovered Ahead Of Mother’s Day, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

To earn the award, you must complete a 1 mile workout on Sunday, May 14. This can be a walk, run or wheelchair workout — you just have to do at least a mile in distance in one session.

ArtRage 5 Review: Painting App Upgrade Fueled By An Enhanced Blend Of Interface, Brushes, And Artistic Tools, by Jackie Dove, Macworld

The version 5 upgrade is packed with valuable brush and composition enhancements that make it well worth considering if you own previous versions of the package. If you are new to ArtRage, and are looking for an intuitive painting app, it is a fine place to start.

WhatsApp Quietly Added Encryption To iCloud Backups, by Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch

WhatsApp has quietly beefed up the security of an iCloud backup feature for users of its messaging service — potentially closing a loophole that could enable otherwise end-to-end encrypted messages to become accessible in a readable form. Such as via a subpoena of Apple, which holds the encryption keys for iCloud, or by a hacker otherwise gaining access to a WhatsApp user’s iCloud account.

Notes

Apple Reportedly Doing Worldwide Overnight ‘Refresh’ On Older Apple Stores On May 16, by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac

Apple is planning a worldwide overnight ‘refresh’ of its older retail stores on the night of May 16, according to our own sources. We understand that this is specifically for older and smaller stores that aren’t suitable for the full redesign we’ve seen in flagship stores.

How Museums Are Turning To Virtual Reality And Apps To Engage Visitors, by Nikki Erlick, The Verge

The growing slew of digital entertainment options wrestling for our attention may be part of the problem for museums, but for many institutions, digital technology also offers a potential solution. Charged with the crucial task of preserving our past, museums must now navigate the future.

Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, New York Times

Any time you are feeling down about your life after lurking on Facebook, go to Google and start typing stuff into the search box. Google’s autocomplete will tell you the searches other people are making. Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.

As our lives increasingly move online, I propose a new self-help mantra for the 21st century, courtesy of big data: Don’t compare your Google searches with other people’s Facebook posts.

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If you were born on the 9th of May, well, Happy Birthday to You!

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Thanks for reading.