Wired:

We have the phrase “scenic route” for a reason, and as Google’s driving directions increasingly become the only directions any of us ever think about checking, we risk losing sight of these alternate paths. That’s a shame.

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been dreaming and talking about this kind of functionality for years. As a motorcycle rider, we often don’t want to take the direct route. Show us the fun, twisty, windy, pretty roads instead.

The Verge:

Weird Al has a new album of parodies coming out, but you’ll probably want to look for them on the web rather than over the radio: eight songs off of the album are getting music videos, and they’ll be premiering over eight days. The first video came out and has Al singing “Tacky,” a parody of Pharrell’s unbearably catchy hit “Happy.”

Nirvana for all you Weird Al fans.

Salon:

Among the countless points discussed about this year’s World Cup…perhaps the most important looming question is whether this particular quadrennial tournament finally converted America into a nation of soccer fans.

Every four years, the World Cup masterfully demonstrates the fundamental differences between how America and the world respectively treat their athletes.

I don’t like to say “never” but there’s a fundamental difference between the way the American fan sees sports in general and “football” in particular and the way the rest of the world does. We go through this discussion every four years and nothing really changes.

New York Magazine:

Swisher’s power derives from her reporting — driven, in turn, by her deep sourcing — and from the sense, unnerving to executives, that she has a red phone with a direct connection to the perma-class of venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road who fund their companies and fill their boards and decide their fates.

People like talking to Swisher.

Interesting profile. I’ve talked to Swisher on several occasions and she is, in the simplest terms, “intense”. In a good way.

NPR:

If you’re going to pick up a pathogen on an intercontinental flight, it will probably be one hanging out on your seat or another surface, says Dr. Mark Gendreau, who specializes in aviation medicine at Lahey Medical Center in Peabody, Mass.

“When you look at most infectious diseases, the overwhelming majority are transmitted when you touch a contaminated surface,” he says. “You grab the door knob of the airplane bathroom, and then touch your eyes, nose or mouth.”

“But we’re not all doomed to get sick after a plane flight,” Gendreau says. “You can change behaviors when you’re traveling and substantially reduce the risk of catching anything.”

Ugh. One more thing to make air travel suck.

I love reading stories like this.

Fragmentation is the enemy of any operating system. When you have a wide spread in adoption, you end up with a problem for both the company (resources spent supporting multiple OSes) and developers (the more platforms you have to support, the higher your costs, the tougher to make money). Fragmentation is also the enemy of security. Hard to prevent malware when your users aren’t keeping up with your latest patches.

90% is a huge adoption rate. Android has some catching up to do here.

First came an auction for lunch with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Not to be outdone, Apple Senior VP Eddie Cue has upped the ante, throwing a MacBook Air into the mix, this time to benefit the NBA Coaches Foundation. With one day left, the current high bid is $40,000.

Here’s a link to the auction page. [Via 9to5mac]

The last week has been rough for Microsoft. It started with the publication of CEO Satya Nadella’s company-wide mission statement, an unfocused, meandering tome in dire need of editing.

And now this:

The reductions — which may be unveiled as soon as this week — will probably be in areas such as Nokia and divisions of Microsoft that overlap with that business, as well as marketing and engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. The restructuring may end up being the biggest in Microsoft history, topping the 5,800 jobs cut in 2009, two of the people said.

Sad for the people who lose their jobs, but good news for Microsoft if it helps get their ship back on course.

9to5mac:

Apple today has launched an interesting new service for iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore users in Japan with iPhones and iPod touches. The new service, called iTunes Pass (no, not that iTunes Pass), allows users to go to an Apple Store in Japan, purchase credit in-store for the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore, and have that money immediately applied to the Apple ID account instead of needing to receive a gift card and enter a redemption code.

Apple continues to do everything they can to simplify the process of adding money to your iTunes account. Have you ever used your camera to add a gift card to your account? It’s a magical experience.

Here’s one way to do this: On your Mac, go to the the iTunes store and click the Redeem link on the home page. Enter your password, if asked, then notice the Use Camera button in the center of the screen. Click it, then hold the gift card so the camera can see it.

Keep your eye on the screen. You can watch iTunes figure out where the card number is on your gift card. Once it finds it, iTunes digitizes and verifies the number, and adds the gift card amount to your account. Worth buying a gift card just to experience this.

Wired:

Instead of having a human poke around in your bag, the machine scans it for a variety of threats in just a few seconds.

You hold your ticket up to the machine, and it assigns you a pod. Close the door and walk around to the other side. In the time it takes you to get over there, the machine scans the bag for a range of threats.

There are some obvious issues with the embedded company video but those are easily remedied. It would be great to see these kinds of systems in place rather than the awful TSA procedures many of us have to go through now.

Remember last week when I chastised Reuters for being morons in writing the article about accessibility? My problem was that Reuters hacked up one of Tim Cook’s quotes to make it fit the story they had already written. Well, it turns out the National Federation for the Blind hated the story too.

Washington Post:

Airbus has filed a seat patent that appears to pack people in without all the clunky cushions and awkward folding tables…Its cushions are shaped liked bicycle saddles, and when the seats aren’t being used, they fold vertically to save space.

“Reduced comfort remains tolerable for the passengers in as much as the flight lasts only one or a few hours,” Airbus sagely calculates.

How cheap would the flight have to be for you to pay to sit in those torture devices for two hours?

Some great new plug-ins from my favorite audio company, Universal Audio.

iMore:

Everything you need to know about setting up and using Siri on your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad!

I’ll be sending this guide out to everyone I know who asks me how they can use Siri.

New York Magazine:

I’m part of the latest tech trend, a bona fide phenomenon in Silicon Valley that is inspiring the kind of pants-wetting excitement usually reserved for new iPhones and Grand Theft Auto games. I’m talking about smartwatches—the tech world’s quixotic attempt to mount minicomputers on your wrist.

I’ve been wearing two smartwatches for several days apiece, and so far, it’s been an enlightening experience. Though not necessarily a hopeful one.

Obviously it depends on what the particular smartwatch does but in my talks with “average” people, the headline answer so far has been “No.” That being said, it brings to mind the classic (and probably apocryphal) Henry Ford line of, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Kind of cool—it looks to be made from the same tolex that Marshall makes it amps with.

So Android isn’t safe when you’re using it and it’s not safe when you get rid of it either.

I’m sure everyone has seen the YouTube videos of these kids by now, but a new twist in the saga saw them sign a record deal with Sony.

There are a lot of pieces that make up this story. The linked post from Apple Insider focuses on the continuing threat inherent in fragmented and slow-to-update operating systems, such as Android and Windows. For example:

Last July, a U.S. Government report titled “Threats to Mobile Devices Using the Android OS” warned that Android “continues to be a primary target for malware attacks due to its market share and open source architecture,” and stated that this “makes it more important than ever to keep mobile OS patched and up-to-date.”

A year later, Google still reports that more than 53.4 percent of active Android users accessing Google Play are still using an “Ice Cream Sandwich,” “Gingerbread” or other editions of Android prior to 4.2 that still “have a number of security vulnerabilities that were fixed in later versions.”

A good read with lots of follow-up links.

In addition, here’s a link to the Malcovery blog post that broke the story, as well as this post by Krebs On Security that lays things out in a bit more detail.

Last week, Samsung was accused of using child labor, in direct contrast with statements made in their 2014 Sustainability Report.

Today, Samsung acknowledged that child labor was, indeed, used by at least one of its contractors:

Samsung Electronics said on Monday that it had temporarily suspended business with a supplier factory in southern China after allegations surfaced last week indicating the facility had illegally hired under-age workers to produce cellphone components.

The South Korean electronics giant said its own preliminary investigation found “evidence of suspected child labor” at Dongguan Shinyang Electronics, a South Korean-owned factory based in the city of Dongguan, one of the biggest manufacturing centers in China.

In a news release, Samsung said that the authorities in China were investigating the case, and that if the under-age workers had been hired illegally, the factory could be permanently barred from working with Samsung.

Samsung’s response:

“It is unfortunate that the allegation surfaced despite Samsung’s efforts to prevent child labor at its suppliers,” Samsung said in its statement.

The Globe and Mail:

What used to be poor man’s fare, the fallback meal of people too impoverished to afford anything else, is now a billion dollar business and a universal mark of luxury – with the result that a lobster that sells for $3.50 on the wharf can cost $60 and more on a restaurant plate in New York or Toronto or Shanghai, regardless of how many lobsters are pulled from the sea. How this happens is the life story of Larry the Lobster.

As a native Nova Scotianer, lobster, both as a delicious beachside meal and an economy sustaining industry, is near and dear to me. The story of how lobster gets from the ocean floor to the dinner plate is one not many people know and the economics of it is fascinating.

Vox:

In Brazil, “Tudo bom” roughly translates to “all good.” It’s used both as a question and an answer. Tudo bom? Sim, tudo bom. Just like the World Cup. The World Cup in Brazil has been both a blessing and a curse. The joy of sport but at what cost?

As the World Cup wraps up in Brazil today, there will be much soul searching in the country — not just with regards to the awful loss to Germany but whether or not the whole enterprise was worth it. Knowing many Brazilians, I think most of them will say yes it was.

Regardless, I think the relative success of the the 2014 World Cup bodes well for Brazil’s hosting of the Summer Olympics.

This past Friday, we posted a story titled China labels iPhone a security threat. Apple responded to the Chinese broadcaster’s accusations in a well crafted post on their site.

Here’s the full English-language post from Apple’s web site:

Your Location Privacy

Apple is deeply committed to protecting the privacy of all our customers. Privacy is built into our products and services from the earliest stages of design. We work tirelessly to deliver the most secure hardware and software in the world. Unlike many companies, our business does not depend on collecting large amounts of personal data about our customers. We are strongly committed to giving our customers clear and transparent notice, choice and control over their information, and we believe our products do this in a simple and elegant way.

We appreciate CCTV’s effort to help educate customers on a topic we think is very important. We want to make sure all of our customers in China are clear about what we do and we don’t do when it comes to privacy and your personal data.

Our customers want and expect their mobile devices to be able to quickly and reliably determine their current locations for specific activities such as shopping, travel, finding the nearest restaurant or calculating the amount of time it takes them to get to work. We do this at the device level. Apple does not track users’ locations – Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.

Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using pre-stored WLAN hotspot and cell tower location data in combination with information about which hotspots and cell towers are currently being received by the iPhone. In order to accomplish this goal, Apple maintains a secure crowd-sourced database containing known locations of cell towers and WLAN hotspots that Apple collects from millions of Apple devices. It’s important to point out that during this collection process, an Apple device does not transmit any data that is uniquely associated with the device or the customer.

Apple gives customers control over collection and use of location data on all our devices. Customers have to make the choice to enable Location Services, it is not a default setting. Apple does not allow any app to receive device location information without first receiving the user’s explicit consent through a simple pop-up alert. This alert is mandatory and cannot be overridden. Customers may change their mind and opt-out of Location Services for individual apps or services at any time by using simple “On/Off” switches. When a user turns “Off” location data for an app or service, it stops collecting the data. Parents can also use Restrictions to prevent access by their children to Location Services.

When it comes to using iPhone for traffic conditions, iOS can capture Frequent Locations to provide commute information in the Today view of Notification Center and to show you automatic routing for iOS in CarPlay. Frequent Locations are only stored on a customer’s iOS device, they are not backed up on iTunes or iCloud, and are encrypted. Apple does not obtain or know a user’s Frequent Locations and this feature can always be turned “Off” via our privacy settings.

Apple does not have access to Frequent Locations or the location cache on any user’s iPhone at any time. We encrypt the cache by the user’s passcode and it is protected from access by any app. In the interest of even greater transparency for our customers, if a user enters their passcode successfully, they are able to see the data collected on their device. Once the device is locked no one is able to view that information without entering the passcode.

As we have stated before, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.