If there is a larger lesson to learn from The Code, it is that technology cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which it is created. The major currents in society shape and guide the creation of a system that appears to spring from the minds of its inventors alone. Militarism and unbridled capitalism remain among the most powerful forces in the United States, and to my mind, there is no reason to believe that a new generation of techies might resist them any more effectively than the previous ones. The question of fixing Silicon Valley is inseparable from the question of fixing the system of postwar American capitalism, of which it is perhaps the purest expression. Some believe that the problems we see are bugs that might be fixed with a patch. Others think the code is so bad at its core that a radical rewrite is the only answer. Although The Code was written for people in the first group, it offers an important lesson for those of us in the second: Silicon Valley is as much a symptom as it is a cause of our current crisis. Resisting its bad influence on society will ultimately prove meaningless if we cannot also formulate a vision of a better world—one with a more humane relationship to technology—to counteract it. And, alas, there is no app for that.
“Apple does a great job making their OS more and more secure with every new release,” says Kuskov. “But it is hard to prevent such attacks on the OS level, since it's the user who clicks on a link and downloads Shlayer and runs it, like any other software.”
While Flash might seem like an outdated lure, given the numerous public warnings about its fallibility and the fact that it’s dying off completely this year anyway, it’s actually perversely effective.
When the company behind your smartphone’s software commits to backing up your device’s data online, how far should it go to have your back?
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What that means is that while the contents of your iPhone remain encrypted on Apple’s servers, you don’t have the only key to unlock them – the Cupertino, California, tech giant also has one.
Perhaps the Apple Watch Series 3 is the biggest case to be made that there's an audience for a lower-cost Apple Watch that doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the latest model.
Today, I learnt that Apple did not release one particular episode of Little America here in Singapore.
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