As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
Apple Pay already accounting for one percent of all digital payments
A study by research firm ITG suggest that Apple Pay — introduced only last month — is already accounting for one percent of all digital payments. The firm also noted that those using Apple Pay increased spending using mobile payments, and tended to use the technology frequently — resulting in a jump in sales at top merchants that accepted Apple Pay, such as Walgreens, Whole Foods and McDonald’s. Each of the three retailers grabbed double-digit shares of the Apple Pay pie.
Sony 'will not drop' N Korea film
Sony Pictures says it is looking at alternative ways to release film satire The Interview, cancelled in the wake of a cyber-attack.
2014 Is Ending, but This Wave of Technology Disruptions Is Just Beginning
The sun is setting on 2014, but we’re about to watch a new wave of technologies rise and remake the world. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Changes in technology are happening at a scale which was unimaginable before and will cause disruption in industry after industry. This has really begun to worry me, because we are not ready for this change and most of our leading companies won’t exist 15-20 years from now. Here are five sectors to keep an eye on:
1. Let’s start with manufacturing.
Robotics and 3D printing have made it cheaper to manufacture in the United States and Europe than in China. Robots such as Baxter, from Rethink Robotics, and UR10, from Universal Robots, have arms; screens which show you their emotions; and sensors that detect what is happening around them. The cost of operating these is less than the cost of human labor. We can now have robots working 24×7 and doing some of the work of humans. Over time, these robots will become ever more sophisticated and do most human jobs. The manufacturing industry is surely going to be disrupted in a very big way. This is good news for America, Europe, and parts of Asia, because it will become a local industry. But this will be bad for the Chinese economy — which is largely dependent on manufacturing jobs.
In the next decade, robots will likely go on strike, because we won’t need them anymore. They will be replaced by 3D printers. Within 15 to 20 years, we will even be able to 3D print electronics. Imagine being able to design your own iPhone and print it at home. This is what will become possible.
2. The reinvention of finance
We are already witnessing a controversy over Bitcoin. Many technology and retail companies are supporting it. Crowdfunding is shaking up the venture-capital industry and making it less relevant because it provides start-ups with an alternative for raising seed capital. We will soon be able to crowdfund loans for houses, cars, and other goods. With cardless transactions for purchasing goods, we won’t need the types of physical banks and financial institutions that we presently have. Banks in the United States seem to be complacent because they have laws protecting them from competition. But our laws don’t apply in other countries. We will see innovations happening abroad which disrupt industries in the United States.
3. Health care
Apple recently announced Healthkit, its platform for health information. It wants to store data from the wearable sensors that will soon be monitoring our blood pressure, blood oxygenation, heart rhythms, temperature, activity levels, and other symptoms. Google, Microsoft, and Samsung will surely not be left behind and will all compete to provide the best health-data platforms. With these data, they will be able to warn us when we are about to get sick. AI-based physicians will advise us on what we need to do to get healthy.
Medical-test data, especially in fields such as oncology, is often so complex that human doctors cannot understand it. This will become even more difficult when they have genomics data to correlate. Over the last 15 years, the cost of human genome sequencing has dropped from the billions to about a thousand dollars. At the rate at which prices are dropping, the cost of sequencing will be close to zero in a few years and we will all have our genomes sequenced. When you combine these data with the medical-sensor data that the tech companies are collecting on their cloud platforms, we will have a medical revolution. We won’t need doctors for day-to-day medical advice any more. Robotic surgeons will also do the most sophisticated surgeries. We’re going to disrupt the entire health-care system.
4. Now take the energy industry.
Five years ago, we were worried about America running out of oil; today we’re talking about Saudi America — because of fracking. Yes, fracking is a harmful technology; nevertheless it has allowed America to become energy independent and will soon make it an energy exporter. And then there is solar energy, which some people have become negative about. But it is a fact solar prices have dropped about 97 percent over the past 35 years, and, at the rate at which solar is advancing, by the end of this decade we will achieve grid parity across the United States. Grid parity means it’s cheaper to produce energy at home on your solar cells than to buy it from utilities. Move forward another 10 or 20 years, and it will costs a fraction as much to produce your own energy as to buy it from the grid. This means that the utility companies will be in serious trouble. This is why they are beginning to fight the introduction of solar. If solar keeps advancing in the way it is, it will eclipse the fossil-fuel industry. Solar is only one of maybe a hundred advancing technologies that could disrupt the energy industry.
When we have unlimited energy, we can have unlimited clean water, because we can simply boil as much ocean water as we want. We can afford to grow food locally in vertical farms. This can be 100 percent organic, because we won’t need insecticides in the sealed farm buildings. Imagine also being able to 3D print meat and not having to slaughter animals. This will transform and disrupt agriculture and the entire food-production industry.
5. Communications
Yes, even this industry will be disrupted. Note how AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have seen their landline businesses disappear. These were replaced by mobile–which is now being replaced by data. When I travel abroad, I don’t make long-distance calls any more, because I just call over Skype. Soon we will have WiFi everywhere, thanks to the competition between companies such as AT&T and Google to provide superfast Internet access. We will be able to make free calls over open WiFi networks.
***
In practically every industry that I look at, I see a major disruption happening. I know the world will be very different 15 to 20 years from now. The vast majority of companies who are presently the leaders in their industries will likely not even exist. That is because industry executives either are not aware of the changes that are coming, are reluctant to invest the type of money that is be required for them to reinvent themselves, or are protecting legacy businesses. Most are focused on short-term performance.
New trillion-dollar industries will come out of nowhere and wipe out existing trillion-dollar industries. This is the future we’re headed into, for better or for worse.
This column was adapted from Wadhwa’s talk on Big Think, watch it below:
Hacker wars in the Ukraine conflict
Virtual battle for eastern Ukraine
11 Perfect Gifts For The Instagram Addict In Your Life
Instagram has already blessed us with five new filters and other updates this holiday season. But if you’ve got friends who just can’t get enough of the photo-sharing network (and we all do), you may need even more Instagram-themed gifts.
And wow, there are a lot of them. People have created all sorts of ways to not only improve your Instagram photos, but to bring them out of your smartphone and into your real life. Instagram calendar, anyone? Here’s a sampling.
Elon Musk's Hyperloop Could Be Just 10 Years Away
Hyperloop, the ultra-fast tube transport dreamed up by SpaceX founder and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, could be ready for passengers in as few as 10 years.
In a 76-page report released on Dropbox on Thursday, a new startup called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies laid out plans for building Musk’s futuristic transportation system, which could cut travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco down to 35 minutes. The trip takes between three and four hours by Amtrak train, and more than six hours by car.
The system would carry passengers in pods moving as fast as 800 miles per hour, according to the white paper. The plan laid out by Musk — who has no involvement in the project, and did not help with the paper — has broadened beyond the two California metropoles. Hyperloop Transportation has drawn up maps with lines connecting every major U.S. city.
Housed within a newly-launched crowd-funding company called JumpStartFund, the startup offered wildly varying estimates for the cost of the project — anywhere between $7 billion and $19 billion.
Hyperloop CEO Dirk Ahlborn told The Huffington Post that the wide potential price range is due to the unpredictability of prices for materials and other expenses over the next decade. He said wealthy donors and investors are already approaching JumpStartFund, of which he is also chief executive, about pledging money.
He admitted his 10-year timeline might be ambitious. It does not account for the political opposition and regulatory hurdles that would undoubtedly dog a new form of public transportation being built up the coastline of the country’s most populous state.
“We’re working very close with the public and being very transparent,” said Ahlborn, a German-born entrepreneur based in Los Angeles.
If he finds it too difficult to build the inaugural Hyperloop in California, he may choose to build it in another country.
“For us, it’s mostly about building the Hyperloop,” he said. “We want to see it in the U.S., but if it makes more sense to do that somewhere else, then so be it. The goal is to build it.”
The other goal is to keep it cheap. While his plan envisions making luxury pods available, Ahlborn said the estimated ticket price for economy-class seats would be about $20 to $30. But he said rides would ideally be free — perhaps supported by ads, to take advantage of time spent with a captive audience of travelers.
As with air travel, Hyperloop plans to have luxury and economy class pods.
“You have the passenger for 30 to 40 minutes,” Ahlborn said. “This is not a venture for good, it’s a commercial company, so it has to make business sense. But we’ll see.”
In the meantime, recent publicity about the Hyperloop has drummed up interest. His team of about 100 engineers, who are paid largely through stock options, seems set to expand.
“I would say that, on average, we’re receiving 10 to 20 new applications per hour,” he said with a laugh.
Sean Penn Says Pulling 'The Interview' Gives ISIS 'A Commanding Invitation'
Sean Penn has joined George Clooney, Judd Apatow, Aaron Sorkin and Barack Obama in blasting Sony for its decision to pull “The Interview” from release. In a letter sent to Mother Jones, Penn noted that Sony’s move — which happened after the company reportedly put the fate of “The Interview” in the hands of theater owners, who decided against running the film — had given ISIS “a commanding invitation.”
“I believe ISIS will accept the invitation,” Penn wrote. “Pandora’s box is officially open.”
As with Clooney and Apatow, Penn noted that Sony’s decision set a disturbing precedent:
The damage we do to ourselves typically outweighs the harm caused by outside threats or actions. Then by caving to the outside threat, we make our nightmares real. The decision to pull ‘The Interview’ is historic. It’s a case of putting short term interests ahead of the long term. If we don’t get the world on board to see that this is a game changer, if this hacking doesn’t frighten the Chinese and the Russians, we’re in for a very different world, a very different country, community, and a very different culture.
Late Friday, Sony released a statement defending itself against claims that it had made a misstep in its handling of “The Interview.”
Sony Pictures Entertainment is and always has been strongly committed to the First Amendment. For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees’ personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion.
The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation’s theater owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision.
Let us be clear – the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice.
After that decision, we immediately began actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform. It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so.
Read Penn’s letter over at Mother Jones.
Kim Jong-un vs. Kim Kardashian: Who's Winning The War For The Internet?
One is ranked No. 80 on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. The other is No. 49 on the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People. Both are hell-bent on nothing short of Global Worldwide Domination.
Weekend Roundup: New Code War Is Not Funny
It took an insolent Hollywood comedy mocking the surreal character of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to awaken us to the dangers of a new code war, a war in which geopolitical and geo-cultural battles will be duked out in cyberspace. As Alec Ross, America’s top digital diplomat when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, writes this week in The WorldPost, “the weaponization of code is the most significant development in warfare since the weaponization of fissile material.”
Other battles are also shaping up to determine the contours of our digital future. Lu Wei, China’s Internet czar, makes his case for sovereign rule over cyberspace. Amy Chang examines how the Chinese campaign for “Internet sovereignty” will rupture the World Wide Web.
This week’s Forgotten Fact notes the threat by North Korea’s culture and film minister to “obliterate” American and Japanese movie studios that make fun of North Korea, and recalls other bizarre threats by that country in the past.
In a WorldPost editorial, we argue that China’s one-party political system can only remain effective if it allows open expression “as an avenue of self-correction.” From yet another angle, Enrique Dans writes from Madrid about “the sorry tale” of Google News shutting down its Spanish edition instead of agreeing to demands of newspapers to pay for links to content.
WorldPost partners at Singularity University list the “8 Most Game-Changing Innovations of 2014.” We also publish this week “The World’s Most Influential Thinkers of 2014″ in conjunction with the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in Zurich.
Writing from Mexico City, Mexico’s former foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, argues that falling oil prices have hit Venezuela’s ability to subsidize Cuba, thus forcing its opening to the U.S. Falling oil prices combined with sanctions imposed by the West on Russia over Ukraine have sent the ruble reeling downward, undercutting Vladimir Putin’s strongman posture. Writing from Moscow, Ivan Sukhov chronicles the unraveling of Russia’s social system. Russian economist Sergei Guriev writes that even Russians are fleeing the ruble.
The look-the-other-way tolerance of jihadis in Pakistan has backfired badly, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, writes in the wake of the Taliban massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar this week. Writing from Karachi, Beena Sarwar also argues that Pakistan must discard its “good Taliban, bad Taliban” distinction. Bina Shah writes that, with everything from a surge of rapes in India to the kidnapping of schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, women have been “the ultimate battleground” in 2014. U.N. envoy and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown writes from Kinshasa that unaffordable school fees are stymying education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Writing from Amman in the aftermath of the Peshawar school attack, Jordan’s Queen Rania laments the spread of extremists who have “hijacked” Islam and calls for her fellow followers of the faith to condemn them. Writing from Nairobi, jurist George Kegoro writes that Al Shabaab in Kenya, like the Islamic State in the Middle East, is seeking to establish a “caliphate” through terror against non-Muslims.
Writing from Beijing, Dragonomics Managing Director Arthur Kroeber says the West must get rid of its illusions about China becoming democratic. President Xi, he observes, heads a strong, not fragile, party-ruled state that is here to stay. Former Hong Kong Governor and Oxford Chancellor Chris Patten hopes the West can get over its “obsession” with recent failures and stand up to “illiberal” states like Russia and China. Cheng Li and Lucy Xu explain why the Obama Administration is reluctant to embrace Xi’s idea of a “new type of great power relations” that implies equality between China and America. WorldPost China Correspondent Matt Sheehan looks at the daily life of a Muslim migrant family trying to make it in Beijing.
Writing from New Delhi, Pawan Khera notes the significance of the just concluded U.N. Summit in Lima, Peru on climate change where, for the first time, developing countries have agreed to take on the burden of carbon reductions just as the rich nations have in past agreements. Writing from Berlin, parliamentarian Phillip Missfelder calls for applying the principle of sustainability to Germany’s foreign as well as environmental policy.
Finally, to get a handle on the scale of the despair, WorldPost’s Middle East correspondent in Istanbul, Sophia Jones, reports on a new video produced by the U.N.’s Refugee Agency that asks what would happen if Manhattan’s 1.5 million people — which equals the number of child refugees from the Syrian war — disappeared. She also reports on a triumph of music amid the misery by telling the story of a child prodigy pianist and Syrian refugee, Tambi Asaad Cimuk, who is headed to Carnegie Hall.
WHO WE ARE
EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels is the Associate Editor of The WorldPost. Katie Nelson is the National Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost’s editorial coverage. Eline Gordts is HuffPost’s Senior World Editor. Charlotte Alfred and Nick Robins-Early are Associate World Editors.
CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.
The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.
Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the “whole mind” way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.
ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council — as well as regular contributors — to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.
From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.
MISSION STATEMENT
The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.
We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.
New Stonehenge Discovery Hailed As 'Most Important In 60 Years'
Archaeologists studying Stonehenge and its environs say they’ve unearthed the remnants of an untouched, ancient encampment that dates back 6,000 years–a find that could rewrite British prehistory.
“This is the most important discovery at Stonehenge in over 60 years,” Professor Tim Darvill, a Bournemouth University archaeologist and a Stonehenge expert who was not involved in the new discovery, told the Telegraph. And as he told The Huffington Post in an email, the discovery overturns previous theories that “Stonehenge was built in a landscape that was not heavily used before about 3000 B.C.”
But if scientists are buzzing about the discovery, they’re also bummed about a new government plan calling for the construction of a new tunnel underneath Stonehenge.
The discovery was made during a dig at Blick Mead, a site about 1.5 miles from Stonehenge. Researchers found charcoal dating back to 4,000 B.C. and evidence of “possible structures,” according to a statement released by the university. They also unearthed burnt flint and tools, as well as the remains of aurochs–ancient cattle that served as food for ancient hunter-gatherers.
The researchers plan further analysis on the artifacts but say they’re worried the tunnel construction could damage the site and get in the way of their work.
“Blick Mead could explain what archaeologists have been searching for for centuries–an answer to the story of Stonehenge’s past,” David Jaques, the University of Buckingham archaeologist who discovered the encampment, told The Guardian. “But our only chance to find out about the earliest chapter of Britain’s history could be wrecked if the tunnel goes ahead.”
Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument consisting of a ring of standing stones, is located eight miles north of Salisbury, England in Wiltshire. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 1986.
Sony CEO Says President Obama, Press 'Are Mistaken' About What Happened With 'The Interview'
Shortly after President Barack Obama called Sony Pictures’ choice to cancel the release of “The Interview” in the wake of threats made by hackers a “mistake,” the studio’s CEO, Michael Lynton, told CNN that critics of the decision don’t understand the full story.
“I think actually the unfortunate part is in this instance the president, the press and the public are mistaken as to what actually happened,” Lynton said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “We do not own movie theaters. We cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters. So, to sort of rehearse for a moment the sequence of events, we experienced the worst cyber-attack in American history and persevered for three and a half weeks under enormous stress and enormous difficulty. All with the effort of trying to keep our business up and running and get the movie out to the public.”
Sony’s lack of proprietorship became clear when major chains such as AMC Entertainment, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark withdrew plans to screen the film after hackers invoked Sept. 11 to threaten theaters that supported the film. At the time, Sony had no plans to cancel the release, instead reportedly urging theaters to make their own decisions. Sony’s statement, released Wednesday, said the reversal came “in light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film ‘The Interview.’”
“The movie theaters came to us one by one over the course of a very short period of time — we were very surprised by it — and announced that they would not carry the movie,” Lynton told CNN. “At that point in time we had no alternative to not proceed with a theatrical release on the 25th of December. [...] We have not caved. We have not given in. We have persevered. And we have not backed down.”
Lynton noted the requests for a video-on-demand release of “The Interview,” but he said no major VOD distributors have stepped forward. “We don’t have that direct interface with the American public, so we need to go through an intermediary to do that,” he said.
Lynton’s full interview airs tonight on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
Sony Pictures also released a statement about “The Interview” in conjunction with Lynton’s interview:
Sony Pictures Entertainment is and always has been strongly committed to the First Amendment. For more than three weeks, despite brutal intrusions into our company and our employees’ personal lives, we maintained our focus on one goal: getting the film The Interview released. Free expression should never be suppressed by threats and extortion.
The decision not to move forward with the December 25 theatrical release of The Interview was made as a result of the majority of the nation’s theater owners choosing not to screen the film. This was their decision.
Let us be clear –- the only decision that we have made with respect to release of the film was not to release it on Christmas Day in theaters, after the theater owners declined to show it. Without theaters, we could not release it in the theaters on Christmas Day. We had no choice.
After that decision, we immediately began actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform. It is still our hope that anyone who wants to see this movie will get the opportunity to do so.
Undercover Video Reveals Harsh Conditions Inside Apple Supplier Factory
An Apple supplier is violating the company’s standards for worker treatment in its Chinese factories, according to a new video report from the BBC.
The video, captured by an undercover reporter who got a job at a factory run by Pegatron, a Chinese manufacturer making Apple products, renews some longstanding safety and health concerns about the workers making Apple goods. The report raises issues similar to those in a New York Times investigation of Apple’s Chinese suppliers nearly three years ago, which found that “[e]mployees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week,” and that some workers “say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk.”
After the Times report, Apple said it had hired an outside company to audit factories.
The BBC found several issues during its undercover reporting:
First, the undercover reporter has his ID confiscated after getting the job, according to the video. Workers are required to hold IDs in China:
In a required health and safety examination, workers shout the answers, apparently making it difficult for anyone to fail, according to the video:
Workers are instructed to check boxes indicating that they will work standing up, and work nighttime shifts, according to the video. Shifts can run up to 16 hours at a time, and one undercover reporter — the BBC did not say how many were sent in total — said he had to work 18 days in a row after being denied time off, according to the video:
The BBC reporter said workers would sleep next to their equipment. Apple reportedly told the BBC that nap breaks are not unusual:
Pegatron spokeswoman Ming-Chun Tsai told The Huffington Post via email that “we are looking into the program’s allegations fully.”
Chris Gaither, a spokesman for Apple, referred HuffPost to a letter from Apple Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams that has been published by several news organizations.
The letter is a lengthy rebuttal to the BBC’s claims. For the most part, it focuses largely on issues raised in the BBC’s report that are unrelated to factory conditions — namely, allegations that Apple uses tin from dangerous, illegal mines in Indonesia that exploit child labor. Williams said he was “appalled” by conditions in Indonesia, but that the company wanted to “stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution.”
In response to the video of the Pegatron factory, Williams said that Apple is committed to improving conditions, writing, “The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have ever performed, no matter how sophisticated the company we’re auditing. We find problems, we drive improvement, and then we raise the bar.”
Sorry Google, This Isn't About SOPA, It's About You
This week came news — via the leak of Sony documents — that State Attorneys General have opened up an investigation against Google. And that the movie industry has provided them with evidence to back up claims that Google is facilitating content theft, while others have shown that Google is making it easy to illegally buy drugs and steroids, stolen credit card and counterfeit passports and other fake documents.
And Google is shocked, shocked, to find that a group I oversee – the Digital Citizens Alliance – has been supported by the movie industry, and that we’ve demonstrated that Google is falling short of its promise to “don’t be evil.” Instead, Google wants to frame the State Attorneys General efforts as an attempt to resurrect the SOPA-PIPA battle to combat piracy.
Sorry, Google, this is about you, not SOPA-PIPA. For the record, I didn’t support the SOPA-PIPA legislation when it was being debated and haven’t changed my view. So, Google and Digital Citizens are on the same page about that legislation.
Google seems adamant against any form of blacklisting of dangerous websites. Except, of course, when it isn’t. In 2006, Google funded an initiative called Stopbadware that was operated by Harvard’s Berkman Center. I know, I helped Google launch the program that identified websites that exposed Internet users to computer viruses and other malware. Google-funded researchers reviewed the sites and if they found malware, then Stopbadware blacklisted them. Stopbadware has blacklisted over one million websites that it deemed dangerous.
Sadly, Google’s willingness to make the Internet safer seems to stop there.
Three years ago Google agreed to pay $500 million to make go away a Justice Department investigation that showed that the company helped overseas pharmacies illegally market prescription drugs in the United States. After that, why should we be surprised that State Attorneys General would be concerned about Google’s role in endangering their citizens?
Now, what the State Attorneys General appear to be focused on is not what SOPA-PIPA was about, but more specifically Google’s questionable behavior.
And that behavior is this: Google seems to oppose nearly all efforts to combat websites that promote the sale of illegally obtained drugs, content theft, scams, counterfeits or fake IDs, perhaps because in the past Google has stood to gain financially from these sites.
We know because Digital Citizens has worked on all of these issues, although about only 20 percent of our work has involved Google. And we’ve actually gone to bat for Google by condemning criminals counterfeiting their Google apps.
Google doesn’t like the fact that Digital Citizens gets funded in part by the movie industry. Actually, we get funding from lots of others as well, some of which are also concerned with your behavior, and others who care about online safety issues like unethical online pharmacies, counterfeit products and fake IDs.
For example, Digital Citizens pointed out that Google allowed drug dealers to promote Oxycontin, Percocet and other narcotics on YouTube; that had nothing to do with the motion picture industry. And when the media got interested, Google removed thousands of YouTube videos under pressure. And when Digital Citizens pointed out that Google was allowing illegal steroids to be marketed on YouTube, and the media got interested, the company once again removed hundreds of videos. And when Google was found to be allowing thieves to promote the sale of stolen credit cards on YouTube, Google hurriedly removed those videos as well.
See a pattern? In other words, Google only acts when shamed or pressured. And when it really feels the heat, it writes a big check, like it did with the DOJ.
For the most part, Digital Citizens doesn’t publicize our members because we do a lot of edgy stuff, such as sting operations where we videotaped online pharmacies offering to illegally sell narcotics to a 15-year-old or credit card thieves offering to sell us stolen credit cards. We also shed led light on the amount of illegal drug sales going on in the so-called DarkNet marketplaces.
This Sony hacker leak will come and go, as will juicy details of company emails. And here’s what we will be left with: serious concerns about Google’s willingness to protect consumers. Our reports exposed the fact that Google allowed criminals to promote drugs, counterfeits and stolen credit cards on its online properties – and worse, that Google made money by selling ads in conjunction with those activities.
State Attorneys General are independent law enforcement officials who take a lot of information from interested parties, then make up their own minds if there is a case to pursue. And I admire them for it. When State Attorneys General took on the tobacco industry a decade ago, they heard from interested parties about behavior that endangered their citizens. That’s their job, and they do it well.
So Google, no matter how you spin it, your willingness to help criminals and other bad actors is under scrutiny. And it will continue to be so until you change your behavior and live up to your promise to be a great company.
Directors Guild Of America Defends 'The Interview,' Wants To See It Released
The Directors Guild of America agrees with President Barack Obama and the rest of the chorus criticizing Sony Pictures’ decision to cancel the release of “The Interview” following terrorism threats.
DGA President Paris Barclay released a statement on the group’s website Friday. He indicated that he would like to see “The Interview” receive some sort of distribution:
As the events of the past weeks have made painfully clear, we are now living in an age in which the Internet can enable a few remote cyber criminals to hold an entire industry hostage. This unprecedented situation demonstrates that even basic rights such as freedom of expression can quickly fall prey to those who would misuse and abuse the Internet to steal from, intimidate and terrorize our industry and our nation, and stands as an excruciating illustration of the heightened need for the federal government to increase its efforts to protect our society against cyber crimes, terrorism and all of its implications.
We hope that instead of the “chilling effect” on controversial content, this incident becomes a rallying point for all of us who care about freedom of expression to come together and champion this inalienable right. We stand by our director members Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and hope that a way can be found to distribute the film by some means, to demonstrate that our industry is not cowed by extremists of any type.
Earlier on Friday, Obama held a press conference in which he called Sony’s decision a “mistake.” Obama and Barclay’s comments reflect similar sentiments from Judd Apatow and many others within the Hollywood community.
Here's What James Franco Has Been Up To Since Sony Pulled 'The Interview'
Hollywood responded with outrage on Wednesday after Sony canceled the release of “The Interview,” scheduled for Dec. 25. But the film’s stars, Seth Rogen and James Franco, have remained silent since preemptively nixing all press appearances on Tuesday.
Franco (or “Flacco,” if you’re Obama telling the nation that Sony made a “mistake“) has been a busy boy. The actor/writer/director/poet hasn’t let Sony’s decision — which could set a deeply troubling precedent for future films and freedom of expression — slow him down.
Here’s what James Franco has been up to since Sony canceled “The Interview”:
1. He saw Emma Stone on Broadway in “Cabaret.”
#Emmastone kills it in @cabaret!!!!
#alancumming is so good I started smoking and slapped his ass.
❤️Bye NYC!❤️
— James Franco (@JamesFrancoTV) December 17, 2014
2. He celebrated Hanukkah with Lady Gaga.
Happy Hanukkah ❤️ @ladygaga + me.
A photo posted by James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) on Dec 12, 2014 at 9:55pm PST
3. He partied with Marina Abramovic, Courtney Love and MoMA PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach.
Holiday party with klaus and the ladies: #marinaabromavic @ladygaga @klausbiesenbach @courtneylove
A photo posted by James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:00pm PST
4. He promoted his other film, “Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha.”
BOOM BOOM, My film students do it again!! This time from USC!!! #donquioxte at #palmspringsfilmfest GOOOOOOOOO TROJANS!!!!!
A photo posted by James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) on Dec 12, 2014 at 9:28am PST
5. He turned the tables on a paparazzo.
Look at this poor guy… He has to follow me around all day and harass me with his stupid camera to make a living. #nightcrawler
A photo posted by James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) on Dec 12, 2014 at 10:43am PST
6. He made a cameo for the final episode of “The Colbert Report.”
Goodbye @thecolbertreport We love you!!!!!
Uma foto publicada por James Franco (@jamesfrancotv) em Dez 12, 2014 at 9:33 PST
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What To Watch On Netflix With The Whole Family Over The Holidays
It’s the holidays, which means spending lots of time with family and spending even more time with Netflix. But when deciding what to watch, you may want to avoid anything too inappropriate (your grandma may not be a fan of the Quaalude-induced chaos of “The Wolf of Wall Street) or too dark and gory for the cheery season (i.e. “American Horror Story”).
After you get through Netflix’s best Christmas TV episodes, here are the best movies to watch with the whole family that aren’t the same old holiday classics:
Petitioners Demand Sony Release 'The Interview,' Stand Up To Terrorist Threats
Want to see “The Interview”? So do a lot of other would-be moviegoers, dissatisfied with Sony Pictures’ decision this week to scrap the controversial film (which depicts the assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un). And some have whipped up online petitions in an attempt to change studio executives’ minds.
Sony’s decision — made following terror threats sent by the hacker group responsible for breaching the corporation’s computer systems in November — was met with plenty of criticism this week. On Friday, President Barack Obama said Sony “did the wrong thing.” Writer and producer Aaron Sorkin called the ordeal “an unprecedented attack” on free speech, while celebrities posted reactions on Twitter in various shades of disgust.
The hackers, of course, were pleased with the company’s decision. The group, which the FBI has claimed is connected to North Korea, released a statement calling the decision “very wise” and suggested additional leaks would not be made unless the studio “made additional trouble.”
For those who would like Sony to do just that, options are limited. The studio, which not even George Clooney could convince industry leaders to defend, has said it has no plans to release the film in any form. But petitioners hope Sony might listen to the voice of the people.
From Change.org: “Please release ‘The Interview’ and stop letting terrorists decide which movies Americans get to see.”
From the statement:
When Sony and the major theater groups declined to release “The Interview” because hackers threatened us and told them not to, they literally negotiated with terrorists. And, as even a cursory knowledge of modern American cinema would tell you, negotiating with terrorists is bad.
Add your signature here.
From We the People: “Urge Sony pictures to release the film ‘The Interview’ and protect our 1st Amendment.”
From the statement:
We want our government to defend our first amendment by urging Sony to release “The Interview” and offer protection to movie goers as well as those involved in the production of the movie.
The White House is expected to respond to any We the People petition that receives more than 100,000 signatures within 30 days. You can also add your signature here.
Will signatures get anything done? We can’t say. Although their exact impact remains unquantified, online petitions have achieved results in the past.
And besides, there’s always the (very, very) slim chance Sony lets Gawker screen the film instead.
What is FBI evidence for North Korea hack attack?
Why the FBI linked North Korea to the Sony hack attack
Thanks for reading our digest. Opinions in the articles above are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Digital Workshed ltd.