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The Got-Father's-Piece Edition Friday, August 10, 2018

Siri Is Now Trained To Recognize Your Local, Weirdly Named Small Businesses, by Devin Coldewey, TechCrunch

Getting directions to the nearest Starbucks or Target is a task Apple’s virtual assistant can handle with ease. But what about local businesses with names that Siri has never heard, and might mistake for another phrase or the user misspeaking? To handle these, Apple has created libraries of hyper-local place names so Siri never hears “Godfather’s Pizza” as “got father’s piece.”

Apple Axes 'Wrong Apps' In Gambling Purge, by Chris Baraniuk, BBC

Several developers complained via social media that their apps, which they said had nothing to do with gambling, were taken down.

The affected apps included a Polish magazine, a gif-sharing service and a platform for sending clips of Xbox games to friends.

Hacking A Brand New Mac Remotely, Right Out Of The Box, by Lily Hay Newman, Wired

That attack, which researchers will demonstrate Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, targets enterprise Macs that use Apple's Device Enrollment Program and its Mobile Device Management platform. These enterprise tools allow employees of a company to walk through the customized IT setup of a Mac themselves, even if they work in a satellite office or from home. The idea is that a company can ship Macs to its workers directly from Apple's warehouses, and the devices will automatically configure to join their corporate ecosystem after booting up for the first time and connecting to Wi-Fi.

Stuff

Apple Pushes GiveBack Program With Trade-ins Now Worth Instant Credit Toward New iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, by Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac

Apple rebranded its reuse and recycling trade-in program earlier this year as “Apple GiveBack.” Now, customers buying new devices on Apple’s website can use a trade-in to instantly offset the cost.

How I Use 1Password, by Shawn Blanc, The Sweet Setup

1Password holds the login information to every single website and service that I use. From my personal bank to my business website hosting to my favorite online photo printer. And that’s just the start. Heck, I even have a login for my thermostat.

Take Control Over Your Wi-Fi Signal With NetSpot, by Anthony Casella, iMore

If you've ever had to provide Wi-Fi coverage, or if you are having issues with dead zones in a current Wi-Fi network, then NetSpot can help you troubleshoot and plan better coverage of just about any sized area.

Here’s a quick look at what all I store in 1Password and why it’s so helpful.

Four Apps To Download Before The Perseid Meteor Shower, by Jenni Fink, Newsweek

On Sunday night and into Monday morning, people around the globe will be able to see up to 70 meteors an hour during the dazzling Perseid meteor shower.

The meteors can be seen with the naked eye. But these apps will help make the moment even better.

Develop

Being A Young Startup Founder Was Isolating—here’s How I Coped, by Jesse Kaplan, Quartz

My decision to fly solo so early in my career was often met with surprise and uncertainty. Prospective vendors, partners, and employees were less inclined to take a chance on a lone, inexperienced founder, incredulous that I could build and grow a massive company on my own. And as the demands of running an early-stage business inevitably piled up, I had no one to share responsibilities with, bounce ideas off of, or keep me motivated. In the face of early skeptics and operational burdens, staying focused without a cofounder (or, for a while, even a coworker) was not always easy.

Almost five years later, it’s safe to say that workplace isolation is no longer a concern—my company, Parcel, was acquired by Walmart in the fall of 2017, and I now have a few million coworkers. Still, the techniques I learned for coping with those lonelier early days remain fundamental to my working style.

Checking Emails After Work Is Bad For Your Partner As Well As You, by Ian Sample, The Guardian

People who constantly monitored office messages at home felt it did no harm to their closest relationships, but their spouses and partners told a different story, researchers found.

Notes

Angela Ahrendts Discusses Intuitive Leadership, Challenges Of Building Timeless Brands, More In Global Leadership Summit Interview, by Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac

“I was raised ‘love one another as I have loved you,’” Ahrendts noted. “You carry that with you. [Your values] are the foundation of everything you are. You hire that way, you fire that way. I have always been a purpose driven human. I don’t like the word ‘work.’ I want to make an impact, I want to make a difference. How do you unite people around that higher purpose? At Apple, Tim calls it our North Star.”

Expanding on the importance of humility and remembering your roots, Ahrendts added, “The other value I was raised with was ‘whatever you give, you get tenfold in return.’ The higher up you go, the more people forget that. I’ve always said the higher up I go, the more that I need to never forget, the more I need to connect and over-communicate.”

“What Have We Done?”: Silicon Valley Engineers Fear They've Created A Monster, by Susan Fowler, Vanity Fair

There’s a relatively low risk associated with launching gig-economy companies, start-ups that can engage in “a kind of contract arbitrage” because they “aren’t bearing the corporate or societal cost, even as they reap fractional or full-time value from workers,” explains Seattle-based tech journalist Glenn Fleishman. Thanks to this buffer, they’re almost guaranteed to multiply. As the gig economy grows, so too does the danger that engineers, in attempting to build the most efficient systems, will chop and dice jobs into pieces so dehumanized that our legal system will no longer recognize them. And along with this comes an even more sinister possibility: jobs that would and should be recognizable—especially supervisory and management positions—will disappear altogether. If a software engineer can write a set of programs that breaks a job into smaller increments, and can follow it up with an algorithm that fills in as the supervisor, then the position itself can be programmed to redundancy.

The Messy, Democratizing Beauty Of The Internet, by Jeff Javis, The Atlantic

Instead, we should view the evolution of the internet in context. First, it is vital to judge the totality of the value of the platforms and the net. Without them, we would not have #blacklivesmatter, #metoo, and the voices of the Parkland students, and Americans would not now finally see how often white people call the police on others who are living their lives while black. Look at your Facebook feed. I challenge you to find the infestation of Nazis in it (unless you already consort with them). You’ll find cats and cheese. You’ll find friends sharing babies or illnesses, reaching out for connection. You’ll find people who have not been spoiled or addicted by technology, who still have agency, ethics, and intelligence.

Bottom of the Page

A lot of us put our macOS Dock on the left or the right because we have screens that are wider than taller. And Apple has always provided this choice to macOS users.

So: why can't I put all the tab bars on the left or right of windows?

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Thanks for reading.