The big Apple news this week isn’t about music or watches or iPads or payments. It’s about ads: Apple is allowing developers to block advertisements from the forthcoming version of its mobile browser, Safari, for iOS 9.
(Apple)
The new Safari will allow developers to make extensions that block ads or other forms of content on web pages. The prime candidate for blocking is, of course, advertising—which slows down the web, can be intrusive, doesn’t work, and, let’s face it, is usually annoying. (Except, of course, on this website).
But the abilities granted by Safari 9 to developers extend much beyond simply ad blocking. In Apple’s words: “Content Blocking gives your extensions a fast and efficient way to block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content.”
All the junk that comes along with the Washington Post homepage.
Ghostery is a popular browser extension for all major desktop browsers. It blocks all content pulled in from third-party servers.
The way the modern web works is this: if you go to a website, it only sends some text and images your way. But it also pulls in data from dozens of analytics tools, ad servers, ad exchanges, web analytics firms, social buttons and trackers, and various other forms of online surveillance that serve you ads, measure you responses, gauge your profile, figure out your shoe size, and so on. Ghostery stops all of it. Apple’s content blocker appears to allow developers to do something similar.
Why is Apple doing this? Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab lays out three ways of looking at it: either Apple is serious about all its recent privacy talk, or it is out to get Google and Facebook, or it wants people to look at the ads served by its own iAds service on its new News app. Perhaps it is a mix of the three.
But what is clear is that small businesses that rely entirely on online advertising are going to have to rethink how they make money. Some 200 million (paywall) now use ad blockers. Mobile operators are reported to be thinking (paywall) about implementing ad blocking.
Few of Britain’s disgruntled train riders will feel much sympathy for Network Rail, the state-owned operator of the country’s rail infrastructure. Today, the company reported sharply lower profit for its latest fiscal year, in part due to heavier investments in upgrading tracks, tunnels, stations, and the like. (The trains themselves are run by an array of privately owned companies.)
Network Rail spent a record £3.4 billion ($5.3 billion) on upgrades in the year to March, or more than £120 million a week. That’s double the amount it spent five years ago.
To what end? Britain’s trains carried a whopping 1.65 billion passengers in the latest financial year, up by 67 million from the year before. But this achievement is sullied by Network Rail’s punctuality performance, which has suffered despite the rapid ramp-up in spending. The share of trains that arrive within five minutes of their scheduled time for short journeys and 10 minutes for longer hauls is now around 90%—but anything below its 92.5% target triggers a fine from the government. Of the delays, Network Rail itself is responsible for 60%, it says.
By a stricter standard—arriving within one minute of schedule—only around 65% of British trains currently run on time. For the cost, in terms of both heavy government investment as well as the relatively pricey fares faced by travelers, the British rail system doesn’t compare very well with other advanced countries.
“While progress is being made in improving performance, safety, asset reliability and delivering more renewals and projects, our rate of acceleration in these areas isn’t yet where we want it to be,” said Patrick Butcher, Network Rail’s finance director.
Millions upon millions of animal mummies have been found in the dark, carved stone tunnels beneath the location of Egypt’s earliest pyramid. The astounding piles of preserved animal remains not only signify a cultural and religious phenomenon, but also speak to the mammoth industry that operated to maintain a source of constant tributes to the gods.
New submitter nickweller writes: More than 20 Stingray fake phone towers which can collect data from passing devices and listen in on calls have been discovered operating in the UK. The Metropolitan Police have refused to say who is controlling the IMSI catchers, also known as Stingrays, or what is being done with the information they are gathering. Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said: "If people imagine that we’ve got the resources to do as much intrusion as they worry about, I would reassure them that it’s impossible.”
Cloud computing is the future of computing. Specialization and outsourcing make society more efficient and scalable, and computing isn't any different.
But why aren't we there yet? Why don't we, in Simon Crosby's words, "get on with it"? I have discussed some reasons: loss of control, new and unquantifiable security risks, and -- above all -- a lack of trust. It is not enough to simply discount them, as the number of companies not embracing the cloud shows. It is more useful to consider what we need to do to bridge the trust gap.
A variety of mechanisms can create trust. When I outsourced my food preparation to a restaurant last night, it never occurred to me to worry about food safety. That blind trust is largely created by government regulation. It ensures that our food is safe to eat, just as it ensures our paint will not kill us and our planes are safe to fly. It is all well and good for Mr. Crosby to write that cloud companies "will invest heavily to ensure that they can satisfy complex...regulations," but this presupposes that we have comprehensive regulations. Right now, it is largely a free-for-all out there, and it can be impossible to see how security in the cloud works. When robust consumer-safety regulations underpin outsourcing, people can trust the systems.
This is true for any kind of outsourcing. Attorneys, tax preparers and doctors are licensed and highly regulated, by both governments and professional organizations. We trust our doctors to cut open our bodies because we know they are not just making it up. We need a similar professionalism in cloud computing.
Reputation is another big part of trust. We rely on both word-of-mouth and professional reviews to decide on a particular car or restaurant. But none of that works without considerable transparency. Security is an example. Mr Crosby writes: "Cloud providers design security into their systems and dedicate enormous resources to protect their customers." Maybe some do; many certainly do not. Without more transparency, as a cloud customer you cannot tell the difference. Try asking either Amazon Web Services or Salesforce.com to see the details of their security arrangements, or even to indemnify you for data breaches on their networks. It is even worse for free consumer cloud services like Gmail and iCloud.
We need to trust cloud computing's performance, reliability and security. We need open standards, rules about being able to remove our data from cloud services, and the assurance that we can switch cloud services if we want to.
We also need to trust who has access to our data, and under what circumstances. One commenter wrote: "After Snowden, the idea of doing your computing in the cloud is preposterous." He isn't making a technical argument: a typical corporate data center isn't any better defended than a cloud-computing one. He is making a legal argument. Under American law -- and similar laws in other countries -- the government can force your cloud provider to give up your data without your knowledge and consent. If your data is in your own data center, you at least get to see a copy of the court order.
Corporate surveillance matters, too. Many cloud companies mine and sell your data or use it to manipulate you into buying things. Blocking broad surveillance by both governments and corporations is critical to trusting the cloud, as is eliminating secret laws and orders regarding data access.
In the future, we will do all our computing in the cloud: both commodity computing and computing that requires personalized expertise. But this future will only come to pass when we manage to create trust in the cloud.
This essay previously appeared on the Economist website, as part of a debate on cloud computing. It's the third of three essays. Here are Parts 1 and 2. Visit the site for the other side of the debate and other commentary.
Let me start by describing two approaches to the cloud.
Most of the students I meet at Harvard University live their lives in the cloud. Their e-mail, documents, contacts, calendars, photos and everything else are stored on servers belonging to large internet companies in America and elsewhere. They use cloud services for everything. They converse and share on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. They seamlessly switch among their laptops, tablets and phones. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that they don't really care where their computers end and the internet begins, and they are used to having immediate access to all of their data on the closest screen available.
In contrast, I personally use the cloud as little as possible. My e-mail is on my own computer -- I am one of the last Eudora users -- and not at a web service like Gmail or Hotmail. I don't store my contacts or calendar in the cloud. I don't use cloud backup. I don't have personal accounts on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. (This makes me a freak, but highly productive.) And I don't use many software and hardware products that I would otherwise really like, because they force you to keep your data in the cloud: Trello, Evernote, Fitbit.
Why don't I embrace the cloud in the same way my younger colleagues do? There are three reasons, and they parallel the trade-offs corporations faced with the same decisions are going to make.
The first is control. I want to be in control of my data, and I don't want to give it up. I have the ability to keep control by running my own services my way. Most of those students lack the technical expertise, and have no choice. They also want services that are only available on the cloud, and have no choice. I have deliberately made my life harder, simply to keep that control. Similarly, companies are going to decide whether or not they want to -- or even can -- keep control of their data.
The second is security. I talked about this at length in my opening statement. Suffice it to say that I am extremely paranoid about cloud security, and think I can do better. Lots of those students don't care very much. Again, companies are going to have to make the same decision about who is going to do a better job, and depending on their own internal resources, they might make a different decision.
The third is the big one: trust. I simply don't trust large corporations with my data. I know that, at least in America, they can sell my data at will and disclose it to whomever they want. It can be made public inadvertently by their lax security. My government can get access to it without a warrant. Again, lots of those students don't care. And again, companies are going to have to make the same decisions.
Like any outsourcing relationship, cloud services are based on trust. If anything, that is what you should take away from this exchange. Try to do business only with trustworthy providers, and put contracts in place to ensure their trustworthiness. Push for government regulations that establish a baseline of trustworthiness for cases where you don't have that negotiation power. Fight laws that give governments secret access to your data in the cloud. Cloud computing is the future of computing; we need to ensure that it is secure and reliable.
Despite my personal choices, my belief is that, in most cases, the benefits of cloud computing outweigh the risks. My company, Resilient Systems, uses cloud services both to run the business and to host our own products that we sell to other companies. For us it makes the most sense. But we spend a lot of effort ensuring that we use only trustworthy cloud providers, and that we are a trustworthy cloud provider to our own customers.
This essay previously appeared on the Economist website, as part of a debate on cloud computing. It's the second of three essays. Here are Parts 1 and 3. Visit the site for the other side of the debate and other commentary.
According to new research, the ways in which our brains process spoken and computer languages are similar. Programmers may also get the mental benefits of being bilingual — such as a delayed onset of Alzheimer’s disease, for example.
Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of the largest US bank by assets, is a fairly busy guy. But he has kindly offered to clear his schedule to bring Elizabeth Warren up to speed on, you know, banking.
Bloomberg reports that Dimon told a roomful of Chicago-area executives that he was worried that the Massachusetts Democrat—who sits on the Senate banking committee and is well known for her prickly relationship with Wall Street—might not have a sufficiently sophisticated grasp of the intricacies of global finance. According to Bloomberg, Dimon said that his colleagues have “legitimate” concerns about US politicians, including Warren.
“I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system,” Dimon told a sold-out luncheon hosted by the Executive Club of Chicago. Bloomberg also reported that Dimon offered to meet with Warren at a time of her choosing.
Lashauna Burks said her daughter simply wanted to celebrate the end of the school year with her friends on Friday by hosting a party that promised food, fun and music. However, the gathering at the Craig Ranch Community Pool in McKinney, Texas abruptly turned violent when two white women at a nearby pool began making racist comments at the black teen partygoers.
BOSTON—Having made some pretty bold claims concerning the product’s effectiveness and overall value, hotshot marketing app TargetDemo is talking a big game about being good for its small-business customer base, sources confirmed Tuesday. “This high and mighty product sure has a lot of nerve to claim that it can streamline data collection and improve communication with customers,” local woman Michelle Carson said upon reading the incredibly cocky description on the TargetDemo website, noting that she would only believe the app’s similarly audacious claims about its ability to enhance profitability “when [she sees] it for [herself].” “On top of that, this big shot product apparently expects us to believe that not only does it provide 24-hour customer service and a user-friendly interface, but that it can also increase workforce productivity by 15 to 25 percent. That’s a lot of big talk right there, buddy—they must have ...
Jawbone files 2nd lawsuit against rival Fitbit Washington Post NEW YORK — Fitness tracker maker Jawbone has filed its second lawsuit in two weeks against competitor Fitbit. The complaint filed Wednesday says that essentially all of Fitbit's products violate patents belonging to Jawbone, and asks the court to stop Fitbit ...
Voat is fucked they now have more users than they can scale to, and all these new users are the sort that call this action "censorship" and "a conspiracy" and a "debacle" by "that bitch Ellen Pao"
New submitter sethstorm writes: As a change to their community management, Reddit administrators have banned multiple communities (known as subreddits) in a bid to remove harassment. In response, users have responded in different ways — some have pointed out the bias of Reddit admins for leaving known harassers alone such as those in the "SRS" subreddit, others have attempted to re-create the banned subreddit "FatPeopleHate", and many have gone to overwhelm Voat (a competitor).
One late night, you are up in your bedroom when you hear your mom calling you downstairs. You are halfway down the staircase when all of a sudden, you see your mom in front of her bedroom door, terrified, she whispers, ‘Don’t go downstairs. I heard her, too.’
Who do you believe?
The one calling me downstairs. They’re lesbians, not ghosts.
Some background: last year, we reported on a page from the Hyrule Warriors art book that depicted “Linkle,” a female version of Link that never made it into the actual game.
One of Linkle’s defining characteristics here is her usage of the crossbow. Nobody else uses this crossbow inside of Hyrule Warriors—here’s a list of every weapon available in the original game. No crossbow, as you can see.
Now, take a look at this still from the trailer:
GameXplain got a tip pointing this detail out, and now fans are theorizing that perhaps this is a teaser for Linkle. Otherwise, why include something so random? There are no other errant floating weapons in the footage, and any weapon that is included can be traced to a specific character. Save for the crossbow. Weird, huh? (Permalink)
Super Opinionated.
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