A design flaw in Comcast’s online payment portal exposed partial home addresses and social security numbers for 26.5 million customers. The flaw displayed the first number and street name for addresses, and the last four digits in social security numbers. Buzzfeed broke the news, and Comcast quickly patched the flaw. Comcast says no one exploited the flaw, and they had it patched within hours of learning about it. Still, the fact that nearly anyone had access to the information is pretty creepy.

Apple removed the Infowars podcasts from its iTunes listings citing hate speech violations, but is letting the Infowars Official app stay on its iPhone and iPad App Store. Why remove the podcasts, but not the app, since they all offer the same content? Even though the podcasts violate Apple’s guidelines, the app doesn’t. In a statement to Buzzfeed, Apple said,

We strongly support all points of view being represented on the App Store, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions, and follow our clear guidelines, ensuring the App Store is a safe marketplace for all. We continue to monitor apps for violations of our guidelines and if we find content that violates our guidelines and is harmful to users we will remove those apps from the store as we have done previously.

The problem here is that Apple’s App Store guidelines Alex Jones Infowars App Still on App Store Even After Podcasts Were Blocked, and they’re apparently different than the iTunes Store guidelines for podcasts. It’s confusing for content creators and consumers. Apple is well within its rights to block podcasts and apps for any reason, even if they’re arbitrary. I’d prefer, however, if Apple’s guidelines were clear and consistently enforced.

This article demonstrates many things. 1) Teenagers spend too much time on Facebook. 2) They are subject to psychological manipulation. 3) Those who create channels into teenage minds will do anything to make money. 4) Few realize this is happening. And 5) If Facebook can do this to youngsters, so can others with more unpleasant motives.

Apple’s latest addition to its original television lineup is a series based on Min Jin Lee’s best selling book Pachinko. The book chronicles the lives of a Korean that immigrated to the U.S., and Apple signed it into what Hollywood Reporter calls “a sizable script-to-series commitment.” HR adds,

Soo Hugh (who oversaw on season one of AMC’s The Terror) will pen the script for Apple as well as executive produce and serve as showrunner on the likely series. Pachinko hails from Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res, which is behind Apple’s upcoming Reese Witherspoon-Jennifer Aniston morning show drama and was the tech giant’s entry into the scripted space. Author Lee will also be credited as an executive producer on the Apple take.

I love how Apple is bringing diversity to its original TV show programming and is turning its back on the old-school white male-dominated television world.

Facebook wants to offer new services to its users, so it’s asking banks in the United States to share personal account information. That includes account balances and credit card activity, because who better to have access to our personal financial data than Facebook? From the Wall Street Journal:

As part of the proposed deals, Facebook asked banks for information about where its users are shopping with their debit and credit cards outside of purchases they make using Facebook Messenger.

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have shown time and again that our personal data is far more valuable than our privacy. At least one bank has already told Facebook “no,” and hopefully the others will, too.

On August 1, LEGO launched its first line of sustainable blocks made from sugarcane. LEGO wants to make its production to be sustainable by 2030. The new blocks are made of sugarcane plastic and are shaped like plants. But is that really eco-friendly?

According to the World Wildlife Fund:

Sugarcane is a water-intensive crop that remains in the soil all year long. As one of the world’s thirstiest crops, sugarcane has a significant impact on many environmentally sensitive regions, like the Mekong Delta and the Atlantic Forest.

Sugar mills produce wastewater, emissions and solid waste that impact the environment. The massive quantities of plant matter and sludge washed from mills decompose in freshwater bodies, absorbing all the available oxygen and leading to massive fish kills. In addition, mills release flue gases, soot, ash, ammonia and other substances during processing.

The terms artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and deep learning are often confused or interchanged. Friday’s Particle Debris links to an article by a researcher who explains the differences. With that background in hand, PD looks at some intriguing research in the field, including research robots that beg for their lives.

I previously wrote about how Apple Books has greatly improved in iOS 12, and Ryan Christoffel agrees in his own rundown of Apple Books as a love letter to readers.

Apple could have easily taken the look of apps like Music and Podcasts and slapped it on Books, and it would have been fine. The company did nothing of the sort, though; instead, Apple Books offers one of the most drastic departures from existing iOS design norms available on the platform…

Books’ design isn’t entirely foreign to other iOS apps – there are some similarities, such as the abundant use of white space – but overall its differences far outweigh any commonalities. And those differences prove that there’s still plenty of room to expand the accepted design norms on iOS.

Apple iPhone processor maker TSMC was knocked to its knees over the weekend when the WannaCry computer ransomware virus infected fabrication tools. The virus left the equipment unusable while it was being removed. Bloomberg reports,

TSMC said that 80 percent of the fabrication tools affected by a virus outbreak Friday evening had been restored and that it expects full recovery on Monday. The Taiwanese company said the incident, which comes as it ramps up chipmaking for Apple Inc.’s next iPhones, would delay shipments, without specifying which customers would be affected. Its shares fell more than 1 percent in Taipei.

Odds are TSMC is prioritizing Apple, so we probably won’t see much of an impact on iPhone availability when new models ship this fall. TSMC’s other clients, however, probably won’t fare as well.

Almost all of the podcasts from Alex Jones, the media personality known for his right-wing Infowars platform and conspiracy theories, have been blocked from Apple’s iTunes Store. Apple is citing hate speech as the reason, just like Facebook, YouTube and Spotify when those platforms blocked his content. Apple told Buzzfeed,

Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.

I’m with Andrew Orr on this one: Apple made the right move on this one. Regardless of political views, actively engaging in hate speech is wrong, and when you’re in Jones’ position can entice others into doing the same—or even into taking physical action against other people. And saying Apple, Facebook, or any other company that refuses to host or link to Jones’s content is violating his First Amendment rights is flat-out wrong; the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from curtailing what you can say, not what companies allow on their online services.

A recent study, described at Big Think, reveals that students who multi-task with smartphones in class are less able to retain information they’ll need for future exams. From the article. “This finding demonstrates for the first time that the main effect of divided attention in the classroom is not an immediate effect of selection or switching on comprehension but a long-term effect of divided attention on retention,” the researchers wrote.

I first came across this article via Daring Fireball, and it discusses the Bullsh*t Web, a term for the ad-filled web we’re now familiar with.

Take that CNN article, for example. Here’s what it contained when I loaded it:

• Eleven web fonts, totalling 414 KB
• Four stylesheets, totalling 315 KB
• Twenty frames
• Twenty-nine XML HTTP requests, totalling about 500 KB
• Approximately one hundred scripts, totaling several megabytes — though it’s hard to pin down the number and actual size because some of the scripts are “beacons” that load after the page is technically finished downloading.

Ads are necessary to keep things free, but the amount of crap that most modern websites are filled with is unnecessary.

Apple became the first company with a US$1 trillion market cap on Thursday, and CEO Tim Cook marked the occasion with a memo to employees for helping reach the milestone. Cook called the event a “Significant milestone,” and went on to say products and customers are more important than a number. He said,

Financial returns are simply the result of Apple’s innovation, putting our products and customers first, and always staying true to our values.

It’s true: Without products like the iPhone, and incredibly loyal customers, Apple wouldn’t be where it is today.