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The Data-Industrial-Complex Edition Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Apple’s Tim Cook Makes Blistering Attack On The “Data Industrial Complex”, by Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has joined the chorus of voices warning that data itself is being weaponized again people and societies — arguing that the trade in digital data has exploded into a “data industrial complex”.

Cook did not namecheck the adtech elephants in the room: Google, Facebook and other background data brokers that profit from privacy-hostile business models. But his target was clear.

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Cook said Apple is “in full support of a comprehensive, federal privacy law in the United States” — making the company’s clearest statement yet of support for robust domestic privacy laws, and earning himself a burst of applause from assembled delegates in the process.

Complete Transcript, Video Of Apple CEO Tim Cook's EU Privacy Speech, by Jonny Evans, Computerworld

The themes of this year’s conference is “Debating Ethics: Dignity and Respect in Data Driven Life", Cook is the first tech CEO to serve as the keynote speaker for the conference and was invited to speak.

He talked about data, put in a bid for a bill of U.S. digital rights, slammed competitors for profiting while unleashing powerfully negative forces, and spoke up for a GDPR-style privacy protection in the U.S.

Arriving Next Week and Next Year

Apple Registers Three New Desktop Macs In Eurasian Database Ahead Of October 30 Event, by Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac

Once more, ahead of Apple’s October 30 event, the Eurasian Economic Competition database has listed filings for new Mac models running macOS 10.14. Four of these model identifiers relate to as-yet-unannounced machines.

Apple Reportedly Planning Global Rollout For Its Streaming TV Service Next Year, by Nick Statt, The Verge

Apple’s streaming television service, which is said to resemble Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, will launch in the first half of next year, according to a report today from The Information. The service, which may exist as a standalone app or within the existing TV app, will launch in the US first and become available in more than 100 countries after a few months of availability, the report says. It will feature a mix of original programming, access to third-party services, and the ability to subscribe directly to channel packages offered by network and cable providers, similar to Amazon’s Channels feature.

Hear My Podcast

How I Cheated The Apple Podcast Charts For $5, by Nicholas Quah, NiemanLab

It should be obvious to anyone who takes a closer look that my podcast, WAVes, is over a year old and has exactly zero reviews. So the fact that it’s charting is very fishy. As of Sunday, two days after all of this activity, the podcast racked up 170 more downloads than it had previously. Much of that activity, not surprisingly, was from Bangladesh.

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I don’t know if podcasters use click farms regularly. Apple has said it’s working on cracking down on this. But my experience shows that this cheating thing sort of works — though I’m still waiting for the call that my podcast has been optioned for a TV series.

Stuff

Microsoft Garage’s Earth Lens App Can Be Used To Analyze Objects In Aerial Imagery, by Pradeep, MSPoweruser

With this iPad app, you can automatically extract information from a large aerial imageryand have the analysis presented in a useful view.

Jamf Announces Jamf Setup And Jamf Reset To Enable Shared iPad Deployments Outside Of Education, by Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac

Jamf has just announced a new pair of apps aimed to allow iPad and iPhone to be used in more situations in the enterprise market. While Apple has had a shared iPad deployment model for the past few years in K–12, it’s never been extended to enterprise use.

Develop

IBM Open Sources Mac@IBM Code, by Bradley Chambers, 9to5Mac

The code being open-sourced offers IT departments the ability to gather additional information about their employees during macOS setup and allows employees to customize their enrollment by selecting apps or bundles of apps to install.

Notes

Top Apple Mac App Secretly Sends Your Browser History To China, Researcher Finds, by Rhett Jones, Gizmodo

Adware Doctor is one of the most popular paid apps in the App Store for Macs, and it’s on sale! Unfortunately, you probably don’t want to take advantage of the bargain because new research shows it’s essentially spyware and is periodically transmitting user data to a server in China.

Patrick Wardle is a respected security researcher who’s made some big discoveries of issues with Apple before. On Friday, he published a post on his Objective-See blog that details the ways in which Adware Doctor violates Apple’s App Store policy and betrays its users.

Mobile Health Apps Are Going Largely Unpoliced. The Public Deserves Better., by Michael L. Millenson, Undark

When colleagues and I recently examined the medical literature on direct-to-consumer diagnostic apps in a study published in Diagnosis, we repeatedly found studies marred by bias, technological naïveté, or a failure to provide crucial information for consumers. There was also a glaring lack of studies with actual consumers to see how they use these apps and what the impact on individual health, whether for better or worse, might be.

Bottom of the Page

One minute into using my Mac earlier this evening, I discovered that the AirPort Utility app, which usually does not appear on the Dock, appeared in the dock.

So I click on the app's icon, and the usual window comes up, and I was alarmed to find the error message informing me that my Time Capsule may be overheating.

That's not comforting.

So I rebooted the Time Capsule. And the error message reappears after a few seconds.

Not good.

Next, I tried turning off "Enable file sharing."

So far, touch wood, the error message has not appear.

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I think I'm going to shop for a new wireless setup. No chance of Apple coming back with a new Time Capsule next week, right?

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Also, is it just me, or is the AirPort Utility app stucked on Dark mode?

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Thanks for reading.