Andrew Orr

The New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia “groomed a Saudi employee at Twitter” to help spy on certain user accounts, presumably including that of Jamal Khashoggi.

Many Saudis had hoped that Twitter would democratize discourse by giving everyday citizens a voice, but Saudi Arabia has instead become an illustration of how authoritarian governments can manipulate social media to silence or drown out critical voices while spreading their own version of reality.

Once Arab Spring happened back in 2010-2011, I think that was the moment that governments—authoritarian and otherwise—realized the power of social media as a force for the public. And of course some governments don’t like that.

Today the White House will talk with technology companies with a plea to make it easier for tech workers to do public service in government.

For the Trump administration, the hope is that private companies might encourage employees to take leaves of absence to help modernize state and federal agencies — bringing a Silicon Valley sensibility to challenges like improving veterans’ health care and combating cybersecurity threats.

This sounds like a shockingly good idea for the current administration, and maybe it will help to deflate the Silicon Valley bubble a bit.

The Jobs at Apple web page has a new design, and there’s a video that gives you a look at what’s like to work for Apple. There are links to teams, Apple Retail, an About page, and students.

This is where some of the world’s smartest, most passionate people create the world’s most innovative products and experiences. Join us and you’ll do the best work of your life — and make a difference in other people’s lives.

Pando is the world’s biggest organism. It’s a forest made up of genetically identical aspen trees numbering 47,000. Scientists think it’s anywhere between 80,000 and 1 million years old. And humans are slowly killing it.

“People are at the center of that failure,” Paul Rogers, an ecologist Utah State University who co-authored the paper, told Earther. Nearby ranchers have allowed their cattle to roam and snacked voraciously on young stems, and as human populations have grown in the area, deer hunting has decreased for safety reasons. But thriving deer populations wreck havoc on young aspen stems. For the past 40 years, it appears the root system has not been able to reproduce fast enough to keep up with the decimation.

CAN 2018 GET ANY WORSE? GET YOUR SH*T TOGETHER HUMANITY!

Chat app Discord recently updated its terms of service to prevent users from suing the company.

In a section of the terms of service titled “Dispute Resolution,” Discord asserts that “most disputes can be resolved without resorting to arbitration.” Any Discord user wishing to raise issue with the company must now provide “notice of the dispute,” which includes “a brief, written description of the dispute, the relief requested and the contact information of the party giving it.”

The policy goes into effect on Oct. 23. Those wishing to opt out will have 30 days to send a notice to Discord.

Why do I have a dark feeling that Discord will announce a data breach within the next six months? If that happens, users can’t sue Discord for mishandling their data.

Louis Rossman, a computer repair technician in New York City, recently made a YouTube video accusing Apple of using U.S. Customs to seize his shipment of Mac batteries.

“Make no mistake. I am not an Apple customer I do not take to being ripped off nicely. I don’t care if I have to spend $50,000 in legal fees, to get back my $1000 worth of batteries. This is principle. Apple, you are not going to get away with this. And don’t think I don’t notice the timing on this stuff,” explains an angry Rossmann.

I think the situation is a little odd. I watched the video, which you can find here. It sounds like Mr. Rossman got the batteries from China. He doesn’t outright say they aren’t counterfeits, he just implies it. But if they are counterfeits, then U.S. Customs is just upholding the law. If the batteries are genuine, he should explicitly state that.

Leonid Bershidsky writes how you can avoid Google data collection by not using the company’s two biggest tools: Search and Chrome.

Ditching Chrome and Search, however, is an easy way to reduce the amount of information Google gets, essentially without users’ informed consent despite its pro forma compliance with European regulations.

Google says it uses the data collection of Chrome and Search to subsidize other products. Well, if the company is willing to charge phone manufacturers for those products, why not end users? Putting a price on the Google apps, against a promise of no data collection, would quickly show which of them are viable.

I really think Google should offer a paid tier for all of its services. And have the paid tier be free of advertising and data collection. Otherwise it’s eventually going to get regulated into the dirt like Microsoft in the 90s.

I came across this article via The Loop. It’s an article written by Matthew Cassinelli, a member of the Shortcuts (née Workflow) team, about how he powers Reminders with Shortcuts.

When it comes down to it, what Reminders provides for Shortcuts (and you) is really a nice, big bucket for text that you can add to with Siri.

Any time you’re lost in thought, you can just Ask Siri to save that one-liner, and then do something useful with it using Shortcuts instead of letting it drift away in the wind.

He also shares seven Shortcuts he uses with Reminders.

Sam Byford writes how China rips off the iPhone and continues to fragment the Android market with new operating systems and knockoffs.

For the unfamiliar, Chinese phone software can be garish, heavy-handed, and quite unlike anything installed on phones that are popular outside of Asia. If there’s anything that’s going to turn you off the brand-new Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example — unsubstantiated Cold War-esque paranoia aside — it’s likely to be the software.

Back when I used to write for an Android website (I know, shocking!) I had received a Chinese phone to review. It had adware and possibly other malignant stuff built right in, so I won’t gush over Chinese hardware like The Verge does.

Oh, and the aforementioned Cold War-esque paranoia? I assume Mr. Byford refers to the government ban on Huawei and ZTE. But I guess it’s a personal choice if you want to heed the warning or not.

An Austrian computer repairman has amassed what is possibly the world’s largest Apple collection, and it’s currently for sale.

Over the years since he began working for a company that repaired Apples in Vienna in the 1980s, Roland Borsky’s collection has grown to roughly 1,100 computers, he says – far more than the 472 items at Prague’s Apple Museum, which says it is the world’s biggest private collection of Apple products.

Now that his income has dried up, Borsky says he cannot afford the rent on his warehouse. He hopes that a benefactor will put his collection on display and pay off his debt of 20,000-30,000 euros ($23,000-35,000).

If someone doesn’t buy the collection it will have to be destroyed.

Apple customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand get a new Apple data tool. This tool is the same that European users got because of GDPR.

Apple devices such as the iPhone or Apple Watch collect detailed data about users, such as whom they email, call or text message and even biometric data such as heart rates and fingerprints. But Apple’s practice has been to keep much of that data on the devices themselves and encrypt it with the user’s pass code, meaning that Apple does not possess the data and cannot unscramble it if asked to do so by law enforcement officials.

It’s good to see Apple do this, and I’m going to use it and see what changes have been made. You can log into the page here.

Privacy setting Do No Track found in virtually all browsers doesn’t actually do much. That’s because its use isn’t enforced.

Why do we have this meaningless option in browsers? The main reason why Do Not Track, or DNT, as insiders call it, became a useless tool is that the government refused to step in and give it any kind of legal authority. If a telemarketer violates the Do Not Call list, they can be fined up to $16,000 per violation. There is no penalty for ignoring Do Not Track.