Amazon Prime Changed How we Shop online

To mark Amazon Prime DayRecode looked at the origins of the next-day delivery service. It outlined the dramatic effect it had on how people perceived online shopping.

The service, which launched in February of 2005, was a first of its kind: For an upfront payment of $79, customers were rewarded with all-you-can-eat two-day delivery on their orders. At the time, Amazon charged customers $9.48 for two-day delivery, meaning if you placed just nine of these orders in a year, Prime would pay for itself.  “[E]ven for people who can afford second-day shipping, this feels sort of like an indulgent luxury,” Bezos said of Prime, on a call with Wall Street analysts when he introduced the service in February 2005. Jeff Bezos’s letters to customers on the Amazon.com homepage announcing the Amazon Prime and Prime Video launches. With it, Amazon single-handedly — and permanently — raised the bar for convenience in online shopping. That, in turn, forever changed the types of products shoppers were willing to buy online.

Apple VPN as the Company's Latest Privacy Service

Michael Grothaus argues that an Apple VPN should be the company’s next privacy service.

The obvious existing bundle this VPN could slip into would be iCloud. Apple could offer an “iCloud VPN” service to all paid iCloud subscribers. And because Apple controls all the hardware and operating systems of the devices it makes, its VPN setup could be dead simple: if you’re signed into iCloud on your device, iCloud VPN is set up, running, and protecting your browsing activity from outsiders without you having to click a single button.

I’m not so sure I want an Apple VPN. Remember, this would mean that Apple could potentially know all of your network traffic unless they had a no logging policy.

Computing Pioneer Alan Turing the Face of New British Banknotes

Alan Turing will be the new face of the Bank of England’s £50 notes, BBC News reported. His codebreaking was crucial to the Allies victory in the Second World War. The new notes will enter circulation by the end of 2021.

The note was once described as the “currency of corrupt elites” and is the least used in daily transactions. However, there are still 344 million £50 notes in circulation, with a combined value of £17.2bn, according to the Bank of England’s banknote circulation figures. “Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today,” said Bank of England governor Mark Carney. “As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as a war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far ranging and path breaking. Turing is a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”

News+: Backpage.com Versus the Feds

Backpage.com was a website modeled after the classifieds section of print. People could use it to post ads, and it also had a thriving section for adult ads. But the Feds seized it and arrested the owners. Christine Biederman wrote all about it.

The government indictment that triggered Lacey and Larkin’s arrests, United States v. Lacey, et al, includes 17 “victim summaries”—stories of women who say they were sexually exploited through Backpage. Victim 5 first appeared in an ad on the platform when she was 14; her “customers” made her “perform sexual acts at gunpoint, choked her to the point of having seizures, and gang-raped her.” Victim 6 was stabbed to death. Victim 8’s uncle and his friends advertised her as “fetish friendly.” The indictment accuses Backpage of catering to sexual predators, of essentially helping pimps better reach their target audiences.

This is part of Andrew’s News+ series, where he shares a magazine every Friday to help people discover good content in Apple News+.

Shop Safe Online During 2019 Prime Day

2019 Prime Day will be held July 15-16, and Safe Smart Living put together some tips to help you stay safe when you shop online.

50 Million Americans are queuing up for Amazon Prime Day 2019. That’s a lot of credit cards swiped, personal data collected and online transactions, resulting in a huge potential threat for identity theft.

Apple Killing AR Glasses and 'Product Design Troubles'

A report from Digitimes has been making the rounds, claiming that Apple killed its AR glasses project. Jesus Diaz thinks that it speaks to Apple’s “product design troubles.”

The report came yesterday from Digitimes, which has a mixed track record through its sources in component and manufacturing companies. It contradicts Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst who in March claimed that supply sources confirmed that Apple may start producing AR glasses as soon as the end of 2019.

I want Apple Glasses to succeed, so I hope the report isn’t true. If Apple can pull off AR glasses that actually look like glasses, it would definitely be, to quote Steve Jobs, magical. I don’t think Apple is killing the headset entirely, but they might be setting it aside for now, like they did with the HomePod.

Minecraft Earth Registration Now Open

Speaking of Minecraft, registration for Minecraft Earth is now open for those who have iOS 10 or later.

Alas, since it’s a closed Beta, registering doesn’t guarantee you access — but in its FAQ about the Beta, the team notes that they’re planning to open it up to “hundreds of thousands of players” eventually, so your odds of getting in probably aren’t too bad. You’ll need to be over the age of 18, have a device running iOS 10/Android 7 or newer, and a Microsoft or Xbox Live account to get registered.

The registration page is here.

Playing Minecraft Helps Boost Creativity

It turns out all those hours you spent on Micecraft just might be good for you. New research, reported by Computing, revealed that playing the game can help boost creativity.

The study compared the effect of playing Minecraft, both with and without instruction, to watching a TV show or playing a more frenetic racing-based video game. “Those given the freedom to play Minecraft without instruction were most creative,” the researchers concluded. “It’s not just that Minecraft can help induce creativity. There seems to be something about choosing to do it that also matters,” added Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology. The research involved a total of 352 participants, with the Minecraft cohort split into two groups, one of which received instruction and was told to be as creative as possible.

Alexa-NHS Partnership Causes Privacy Concerns

Earlier this week, the UK’s National Health Service announced a partnership with Amazon to provide health information via Alexa-enabled devices. While such a move clearly has some benefits, unsurprisingly, it brought up privacy concerns too. Privacy International laid out some of the issues in a recent blog post.

While we welcome Amazon’s use of a trusted source of information for medical queries, we are however extremely concerned about the nature and the implications of this partnership. Amazon is a company with a worrying track record when it comes to the way they handle their users’ data, as we have seen from the recent scandal that revealed how they had contracted thousands of employees to listen in on users’ interactions with their Alexa device. Despite public outrage and campaigning, Amazon chose to ignore the concerns of their customers and maintain their default privacy settings that fail to protect their users. Our medical information is often the most sensitive data there is about us and a lot can be inferred from the questions we ask and the searches we make when we have health concerns.

Data Aggregator Claims Sign in With Apple Won't Have a Big Impact

Kazuki Ota, founder and CEO of data aggregator Arm Treasure Data, said that although Sign in With Apple will limit some tracking, it won’t eliminate it completely.

Treasure Data’s ID Unification feature can take attributes of multiple IDs and combine them into one profile across data sources. “Eighty to 90% of the work of creating this type of clean profile is actually having a lot of clean-up process of the data and also having a higher quality data,” Ota said. “It won’t be perfect, to be honest, because 100% clean data is almost an imaginary situation.”

I look forward to seeing the impact Sign in With Apple will have.

An Innovative Way to Save a Fallen AirPod

AirPods don’t come cheap, so it’s quite painful if you lose one. CultofMac reported on one users’ innovative way of saving their headphone, having dropped it on the subway.

[Ashley] Mayer says she is proud of herself for not “lunging after it and becoming the first ever AirPod-related subway death.” But she wasn’t willing to just give up on the missing bud. Mayer asked subway staff if the AirPod could be rescued, but the process would take two hours — and she would have to be present for the whole thing, she explains. So, a more inventive solution was required. Mayer took a trip to a local store and picked up a broom and some duct tape. The duct tape was applied to the handle to make it sticky.

Federal Reserve Chairman Says Facebook Libra "Cannot go Forward"

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that Facebook Libra “cannot go forward” until serious concerns are addressed.

“Libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability,” Powell said during his semi-annual testimony on monetary policy before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

“I don’t think the project can go forward” without addressing those concerns, he added later.

Being pessimistic, I wonder if they are genuinely concerned about things like privacy, or just don’t want the competition.

AT&T Robocalls to Be Blocked in the 'Coming Months'

AT&T robocalls will be automatically blocked, the carrier announced. New customers have the service now, and existing customers will have it “in the coming months.”

AT&T’s Call Protect service does three things: it detects and blocks fraudulent calls entirely, flags telemarketers and spam calls as “Suspected Spam” when the phone rings, and allows you to maintain a personal block list to specifically block individual numbers.

It’s about damn time that carriers start using robocall-blocking technology. And I mean automatically; they all have their various blocking apps.

Fight Climate Change, Get a Free Nomad Lightning Cable

Get a free Nomad Lightning cable when you donate to the company’s Carbon Fund fundraising event. The minimum donation is US$5, which the company will use to plant trees. This is a steal because the cable on offer is normally US$24.95.

Every dollar donated plants a tree in Acre, a region of Brazil, that is being devastated by deforestation. We want to try to reverse this. Every ten trees planted captures around one ton of C02. Learn more about the project.

Comscore Firm Distributes Man-In-The-Middle Proxy Spyware to MacOS

Airo Security uncovered Man-in-Middle Software proxy spyware being distributed to macOS. It came via Comscore subsidiary firm VoiceFive.  In a paper released this week, researchers explained the issue, which put sensitive data at risk.

This Comscore spyware installs a proxy on ports 8888, 8443 and 8254, where it captures all machine’s SSL/TLS traffic of the user. The spyware is being installed as a bundled application that is offered along with the installation flow of other software products. It installs a local system certificate which any application then automatically trusts. If that’s not enough, it imposes a severe security breach by not generating a unique certificate for each machine on which it is installed but rather installs the exact same root certificate for all machines. This is a known bad practice, to say the least, and was in the heart of the infamous “Lenovo Superfish” case of 2015 issued at the time by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Nintendo Switch Lite Coming in September for $199

Nintendo unveiled its Nintendo Switch Lite today, coming in September and costing US$199.

Nintendo Switch Lite has integrated controls and is smaller than the flagship version of Nintendo Switch. It has no kickstand and, as a dedicated handheld gaming device, does not support video output to a TV. Therefore, it does not come with a dock or HDMI cable.

I love my Switch and its great to see a more affordable option.

Microsoft Surface by Sir Jony Ive

Speculation is rife about what Sir Jony Ive will work on after he has officially left Apple. On ComputerWorld, analyst Rob Enderle speculates that Sir Jony could end up designing a Microsoft Surface device. I think this is highly unlikely, for a number of reasons, but it is certainly an intriguing idea.

if I were to put something like this together, I’d co-brand it with Jony’s name so that buyers knew that if they wanted a product designed by Jony Ive, this was it. Regardless of whether you believe Cook’s position or not (I clearly do not), the fact is that with Jony gone from Apple and opening his own shop that future Jony Ive products are going to come from, his new customers won’t be his old employer. So, I’m anticipating a line of products from someone with name recognition. And since I’m suggesting that line be the Microsoft Surface, a “by Ive” name would be the most powerful way to achieve it. At the very least, an Apple customer would see a “Surface by Ive” name and at least consider it, where they might not even look twice at any other PC.

Zoom Web Server Will Be Removed in New Update

In an updated blog post, the Zoom web server will be removed in the next update, given recent information that it can be exploited.

JULY 9 PATCH: The patch planned for tonight (July 9) at or before 12:00 AM PT will do the following: 1. Remove the local web server entirely, once the Zoom client has been updated – We are stopping the use of a local web server on Mac devices. Once the patch is deployed, Mac users will be prompted in the Zoom user interface (UI) to update their client. Once the update is complete, the local web server will be completely removed on that device.

Uber Comfort Adds Leg Room, Quiet Drivers

A new Uber Comfort tier lets you ask your drive for silence, and uses cars that have more leg room, climate control, and more.

The move allows Uber to charge more for slightly better vehicles and higher-rated drivers that used to be lumped in with its budget UberX tier. This also lets Uber compensate drivers better if they’re willing to forgo the small talk or crank the air conditioning. “Uber Comfort should result in fares for drivers that are at least 20% higher than UberX (not including surge or promotions) for a trip with the same time and distance” an Uber spokesperson tells me.

Twitter Bans Dehumanizing Language Targeting Religion

Twitter is banning dehumanizing language aimed at religious groups. Users can no longer compare these groups to animals or other analogies.

Notably, though, the new rules do not address other groups that may be targeted by this type of hate speech. The company says it plans to eventually expand the policy to cover dehumanizing language that singles out others based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation, though it’s not clear how long that might take.

Marriott Set For Major GDPR Fine

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), announced its intention to fine Marriott after it suffered one of the biggest data breaches in history, BBC News reported. The announcement of the £99m ($125.23) fine came a day after ICO announced its intention to fine Britsh Airways a record £183.39 ($226.22 million).

Marriott International’s president, Arne Sorenson, said: “We are disappointed with this notice of intent from the ICO, which we will contest. Marriott has been co-operating with the ICO throughout its investigation into the incident, which involved a criminal attack against the Starwood guest reservation database. “We deeply regret this incident happened. We take the privacy and security of guest information very seriously and continue to work hard to meet the standard of excellence that our guests expect from Marriott.” The ICO said that Marriott had failed to properly review Starwood’s data practices and should have done more to secure its systems. “The GDPR makes it clear that organizations must be accountable for the personal data they hold,” said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.

YouTube to Return to Fire TV After Agreement

Google and Amazon appeared to have settled their streaming dispute. Consequently, users will once again be able to get YouTube via Fire TV. Wired reported that Prime Video will come as standard on Android televisions.

On Fire TV, the official YouTube app will show up in the ‘Your Apps and Channels’ and support playback in 4K HDR at 60fps plus Alexa voice control integration. YouTube Kids is coming later in 2019. Interestingly there’s no mention of YouTube on Amazon’s Echo Show smart display, one of the devices caught up in the tit-for-tat fight over the past few years between Google and Amazon. (We’ve asked Amazon to clarify this). As for Prime Video, it is already available on some Android TV models, such as Sony’s, but this new detente means that Amazon’s subscription service will now feature as standard alongside Netflix and the rest

Open ID Foundation Publishes Letter about Sign in With Apple

The Open ID foundation published an open letter to Craig Federighi regarding Sign in With Apple. Although the foundation praised Apple for the initiative, it worries that it strays too far from Open ID and opens users to security and privacy risks.

The current set of differences between OpenID Connect and Sign In with Apple reduces the places where users can use Sign In with Apple and exposes them to greater security and privacy risks. It also places an unnecessary burden on developers of both OpenID Connect and Sign In with Apple. By closing the current gaps, Apple would be interoperable with widely-available OpenID Connect Relying Party software.

Hong Kong Protesters Use AirDrop to Bypass Great Firewall

Hong Kong protesters have been using AirDrop has a way to get around China’s Great Firewall. They can send messages to Chinese people this way, like information on the protests, pro-democracy messages, and even information about the Tiananmen massacre of 1989.

“Did you know? Over the past month, Hong Kong has seen three massive rallies, with as many as 2 million people taking to the streets,” read one such AirDropped poster. “Don’t wait until [freedom] is gone to regret its loss. Freedom isn’t god-given; it is fought for by the people.”

WIN an iPhone 16 Pro Max!