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Amazon Creating 15,000 Jobs And Building New Giant Tower

Charlotte Henry ·

Amazon is set to create 15,000 new jobs in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle. The firm is also building a giant 43-story tower there, it’s biggest ever.

Planning for the 43-story tower, its tallest yet, is currently underway. Amazon’s plans for the proposed building, referred to as Bellevue 600, were unveiled last July. The building will have about 1 million square feet of office space and is expected to be completed by 2024. Amazon said it expects to bring the 15,000 jobs to Bellevue over the next few years. More than 2,000 employees currently work in Bellevue, and the company has about 700 job openings in the city.

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Most Apple TV+ Seven Day Trial Users Don't Buy it

Charlotte Henry ·

Flixed surveyed Apple TV+ users. It found that 72 percent of those who signed up for a seven-day trial people didn’t purchase it once that trial expired, iMore reported.

According to their report, they surveyed 1090 Apple TV+ trial users. 73% of those people signed up with a seven-day trial, only 21% got the free year that comes with an Apple device purchase. Half of those surveyed said their trial had expired. Of those whose trial was over, 72% said they did not purchase Apple TV+ after it had expired, with only 28% going on to become paying subscribers. Of the rest whose trials had not yet expired, nearly 60% said they would pay the $4.99 fee once the time came. In comparison to Netflix, only 19% said that the service was either a little or much better. The rest all said that Apple TV+ was either the same, a little worse or much worse than Netflix.

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Twitter iPhone and iPad Apps Get Update

Charlotte Henry ·

Twitter shared news of version 8.7.1  of its iOS app on Thursday. 9to5Mac noted a number of welcome updates. They included fixing the issue that meant users did not see polls whilst using the mobile version and updating some criticized layout features on the iPad.

Twitter says that it is rolling out version 8.7.1 of the Twitter for iOS app with a fix for a bug that meant polls would not appear for users on iPhone: “Having trouble seeing polls in Tweets on iOS? Updating your app to version 8.7.1 when it becomes available for you in the App Store should help! Thanks for bearing with us while we worked on this.” [It] also made a change to the Twitter app on iPad.

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Wacom Tablets Track Your Open Apps, Sending the Data to Google

Andrew Orr ·

Software engineer Robert Heaton discovered that his Wacom tablet was tracking every app he opened and sending that data to Google Analytics.

I suspect that Wacom doesn’t really think that it’s acceptable to record the name of every application I open on my personal laptop. I suspect that this is why their privacy policy doesn’t really admit that this is what that they do. I imagine that if pressed they would argue that the name of every application I open on my personal laptop falls into one of their broad buckets like “aggregate data” or “technical session information”, although it’s not immediately obvious to me which bucket.

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Kids Need End-to-End Encryption for Protection Against Corporations

Andrew Orr ·

In a report from the Financial Times (paywall), a letter signed by 129 non-profits, think tanks, and academics urge Facebook to reconsider encrypting its apps. They use the “think of the children” argument because encryption could enable more child sexual abuse. But Justin Myles Holmes says we should think of the children and enable end-to-end encryption for them, so their data isn’t used and abused by corporations precisely like Facebook.

If we fail to take action now, we risk a world in which unsavory actors – domestic and foreign – have built rich, comprehensive profiles for every one of our children, following the trajectories of their education, home life, consumer habits, health, and on and on.  These profiles will then be used to manipulate their behavior not only as consumers, but as voters and participants in all those corners of society which, in order for freedom and justice to prevail, require instead that these kids mature into functional, free-thinking adults.

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Apple’s Commitment to Privacy is Going Down the Drain

Andrew Orr ·

Vicki Boykis wrote yesterday about Apple’s privacy, current flaws, and how the company should do better (I agree!)

So, here we are, in 2020, with Apple in a bit of a pickle. It’s becoming so big that it’s not prioritizing security. At the same time, it needs to advertise privacy as a key differentiator as consumer tastes change. And, at the same time, it’s about to get canclled [sic] by the FBI, China, and Russia.

And while it’s thinking over all of these things, it’s royally screwing over the consumer who came in search of a respite from being tracked.

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iCloud.com on a Mobile Browser is Now Much Better

Charlotte Henry ·

iCloud.com on mobile browsers has had a bit of an overhaul 9to5Mac noticed that it has improved on both iOS and Android.

Reported by News Landed, native browser support for iCloud.com on iPhone and notably Android has a landing page with support for Photos, Notes, Reminders, and Find iPhone (interesting enough, not Find My). On iPad and likely other tablets, you get native mobile browser support for Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Photos, iCloud Drive, Notes, Reminders, Find Friends, and Find iPhone. Notably, on iPad it is natively pulling up the desktop site when visiting iCloud.com. On iPhone, requesting the desktop site doesn’t change anything from the new native iCloud.com experience with the four apps that are currently supported.

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Coronavirus Means Foxconn Will Assemble Less iPhones

Charlotte Henry ·

Foxconn employees returning to work will be quarantined for two weeks, following the coronavirus outbreak. Consequently, the firm admitted production, including of iPhones, will be down this quarter, AppleInsider reported.

In continuing efforts to restrain the potential effects of the Coronavirus, workers returning from outside Henan province will be sequestered and not allowed to work for 14 days. Furthermore, those returning to work that live near the factory will still be isolated for seven days, following the re-opening of the facility on February 10. Additionally, in a statement to Bloomberg on Wednesday morning, Foxconn has cut its revenue growth guidance. Previously, the company said it would see a sales increase of between 3% and 5% on the year, and now it expects a 1% to 3% increase.

 

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Steve Wozniak Says Steve Jobs Driven by Being an 'Important Person'

Charlotte Henry ·

In a podcast conversation picked up on by Cult of Mac,  Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak revealed that Steve Jobs “wanted to be that important person in life.” There were other telling anecdotes during the conversation with Guy Kawasaki too.

Woz just wanted to have fun, but Jobs was propelled by something else, Wozniak said on the podcast. “[He] was always looking for little ways to make a next step in money, [and] he wanted to be that important person in life,” Woz told Kawasaki. During the podcast, Wozniak talked about the early days of Apple and how success changed Jobs. “He got kind of strict,” Woz said. While Woz always liked to joke around, Jobs stopped doing so. Wozniak, meanwhile, told Kawasaki that he had no desire to be a rich guy. “I had told everyone I knew I was going to be an engineer at Hewlett Packard for life because I loved it and I didn’t want to ever be corrupted by big money,” he said.

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Huawei Equipment Backdoor Found in HiSilicon Chips

Andrew Orr ·

Hardware researcher Vladislav Yarmak found a Huawei equipment backdoor used in video recorders and security cameras.

To be clear, this security vulnerability is said to be present in the software HiSilicon provides with its system-on-chips to customers. These components, backdoor and all, are then used by an untold number of manufacturers in network-connected recorders and cameras.

It’s not a major threat, or anything people need to fret about, it’s just another indicator of Huawei’s piss-poor approach to security.

AKA do not let Huawei build your 5G infrastructure.