Facebook employee leaps to death from roof of corporate headquarters.

Daily Mail: Facebook employee jumps to his death from roof of company's Silicon Valley headquarters in apparent suicide.

A Facebook employee has died at the company's headquarters campus in Silicon Valley in what police call an apparent suicide.

Horrified bystanders in Menlo Park, California called 911 at about 11.30am on Thursday after an adult male jumped from the top of a four-story building on the 100 block of Jefferson Drive.

Paramedics rushed to Facebook's sprawling campus and rendered first aid, but the victim was declared dead on the scene.

The deceased individual has not been publicly identified pending family notification, but Facebook confirmed in a statement to DailyMail.com that he was an employee.

Zuckerberg may have to install suicide nets like Apple did in China to prevent employees from leaping to their deaths.

"Our AI wasn't programmed to identify suicidal tendencies."

72 different emojis to represent gay, straight & lesbian couples in 5 races.

RT: No, Apple, we don’t need 72 different emojis to represent gay, straight & lesbian couples in 5 races.

If I wanted an emoji to look exactly like me, I’d just send a photograph. But then, unlike Apple and Google, I understand that they are a symbolic shorthand, not a racist tool of oppression that ignores my identity.
[.]
Seventy-two new iOS emojis of couples holding hands, instead of a generic symbol. Thus, a blonde woman with a blond man, a blonde woman with a tan skinned man, a blonde woman with a light-skinned black man, a blonde woman with a dark-skinned black man, a dark-skinned black woman with a light-skinned black woman, a white man with a moustache with a white man without a moustache, and so on and on and on.

Various emojis via RT

So, anyone feeling excluded?

Parler CEO says Apple won’t let free speech app update unless it censors content. Apple relents.

Reclaim The Net: Apple app update bans Parler.

John Matze, the founder and CEO of free speech social network Parler, says that Apple has given him an ultimatum – ban “offensive” content off Parler or the Parler app will be banned from the App Store. Matze says he refused and now Apple is preventing Parler from updating its app.
[.]
Based on Matze’s claims, Parler won’t be able to push updates to its iOS app until the situation gets resolved which is unlikely if Parler stays committed to allowing “offensive” speech. This means the Parler iOS app will probably become unusable in September when Apple releases iOS 13, a new version of its mobile operating system, because app updates are usually necessary in order for them to continue working with the latest version of iOS.

Apple has relented, at least for now.

Breitbart: Parler Accuses Apple of Slow-Walking App Update.

Free-speech centered social media app Parler recently attempted to roll out an update to their iPhone app, a common event that many app developers do on a regular basis to add new features, fix bugs, update app elements, etc. But Parler found their update stopped dead in its track as Apple stated that it would have to review the app to determine if the update would be allowed to go ahead.

After Parler attempted to launch the update, company CEO John Matze says he was contacted by an Apple employee via the App Store Connect portal. The employee explained that the Parler app was likely in violation of the App store rule 1.1.1 which prohibits:

    ["]Defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or place a targeted individual or group in harm’s way. Professional political satirists and humorists are generally exempt from this requirement.["]
[.]
Last night, the app update was finally approved the delay.

Apple Führer Tim Cook

iTunes KILLED! Funeral planned.

Newshub: Apple pulling the plug on iTunes.

Apple iTunes' days are reportedly numbered, with chief executive Tim Cook looking to announce the retirement of the revolutionary multimedia software next week.

iTunes, the media player and store that led the way in popularising mp3 downloads and the digital storage of music, was launched in 2001.

However, it has recently been garnering criticism for moving away from its original music-based purpose and into films, television, games, podcasts, ebooks, and other features.

Now it looks to be killed off, with Bloomberg reporting that its retirement will be announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California on Monday (local time).

Apple will reportedly replace it with three apps - Music, TV, and Podcasts - for Mac, similar to its decentralised strategy on its iOS devices. It's unknown what will happen to movie downloading.

The Music app will take over for most of iTunes features, though as streaming becomes more popular, it has been speculated Apple will end mp3 downloads and focus only on its AppleMusic subscription services.

Do we add the killing of iTunes to the Clinton Body Count?

Your iPhone is spying on you while you sleep.

No one saw this coming. No one.

The Jeff Bezos Peoples' Republic via 9to5Mac: Washington Post finds 5,400 app trackers sending data from an iPhone.

Monitoring software used by The Washington Post on an ordinary iPhone found that no fewer than 5,400 app trackers were sending data from the phone – in some cases including sensitive data like location and phone number.

    "It’s 3 a.m. Do you know what your iPhone is doing?

    "Mine has been alarmingly busy. Even though the screen is off and I’m snoring, apps are beaming out lots of information about me to companies I’ve never heard of. Your iPhone probably is doing the same — and Apple could be doing more to stop it."
[.]
     [The] biggest concern is transparency: If we don’t know where our data is going, how can we ever hope to keep it private?

The same story at OregonLive mentions one additional detail not noted in the above article:

[My iPhone] was receiving a message that included my IP address -- once every five minutes.

3-year old locks dad's iPad until 2067.

Yeah...but since Global Warming Climate Change Global Warming should have killed us by now will have us all dead in three, eight, nine, ten, twelve years - does it really matter?

CNN: Wrong password locks iPad until year 2067.

That's what happened over the weekend to Evan Osnos, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

He put out a tweet -- or a cry for help -- letting the world know of the little situation his toddler put him in.

"Uh, this looks fake but, alas, it's our iPad today after 3-year-old tried (repeatedly) to unlock. Ideas?" Osnos tweeted. A photo of the iPad's screen noted the device was disabled. It also had this mind-blowing message: "Try again in 25,536,442 minutes."
[.]
Several others said no worries --- just wait out the 48 years. Because you know folks on social media are known for their patience.

So what does Apple suggest? Apple says you would need to perform a restore to use the device again (but you would lose the data on the device if you've never backed it up).

 Evan Osnos' iPad

The real shocker is that The New Yorker is still being published? Whaaaat...?

Tech News

ArsTechnia: A history of Japan's car industry.

Hit the link. Check out the image gallery of cars.

Extreme Tech: Best cars of the 2019 Chicago auto show.

Hit the links in the link for more images.

Technocracy: Self-driving cars are INCREASING urban congestion.

Self-driving cars will likely jam up downtown streets by cruising at slow speeds rather than parking, according to a new analysis published in the journal Transport Policy. Using game theory and simulated traffic models, report author Adam Millard-Ball found that the vehicles will be incentivized to circle streets rather than pay for parking.

According to Millard-Ball’s model, even as few as 2,000 self-driving cars in downtown San Francisco could slow traffic to less than 2 miles per hour.

- - -  
Tech Dirt: Italy tells EU to drop Articles 11 and 13 in copyright reform.

Italy... has now made a pretty clear statement that if the country is going to support the latest directive, it needs to protect the users of the web, and the only way to do that is to remove Articles 11 and 13.

Good for Italy!
- - -
ZD Net: Will Robot love fulfill emotional needs?

I wonder...how close are we to the era of when our robots will need shrinks?

- - -

Beta News: Spotify to ban ad-blockers.

Under the heading "the following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever" Spotify lists, among other things:

   - circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service[.]

- - -
TechSpot: Senate investigations into government workers use of VPNs.

Recent months have been filled with news of international cybersecurity concerns and foreign meddling, and now two US Senators are going after a new target – virtual private networks (VPNs) used by governmental employees.

Who are the two senators? Marco Rubio (Republican) and Ron Wyden (Democrat).

10,000 to one odds that, three weeks ago, there might have been two - at most - two senators, who know what a VPN is.  This is similar to when John McCain was convinced the 2016 presidential election was hacked, and he pretended to know about hacking, yet didn't know what an exit node is. Sputnik News:

When questioned by a Sputnik reporter following the hearing about the debunking of the Joint Annual Report by security experts, including the finding that 43 percent of the IP addresses attributed to ‘Russian hackers’ were generic web-browser Tor exit nodes, the Senator responded by saying that he had “no idea” what she was talking about.

Lawmakers getting involved in Tech. Again. You have better odds in uniting the properties of water and electricity.
- - -
Tech News World: Wireless carriers really selling our data.

AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have sold access to subscribers' real-time location data to aggregators, which in turn have sold it to about 250 bounty hunters and related businesses, Motherboard reported Wednesday.

In some cases, the data allowed users to track individuals to their specific locations inside a building.

- - -
Gizmodo: Washington state's snow-induced mayhem.

Yeah, and hey, Washington, your snows keep coming our way, hitting the central Midwest. So...stop it!
- - -
Computer World: Apple is disabling Safari's "do not track" feature.

The list of online entities who do not respect DNT requests includes all the usual privacy-eroding suspects, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Medium, Pinterest, and Reddit do honor these requests, which rather suggests you can find alternative ways to make a business.

Tech News

Beta News: Big data breach.

#1 database leak exposes 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords[.]

Yep. Everyone should update their current password of 'password' to something like 'qwerty123' or 'aDmin_678'.

ZD Net: Oklahoma govt breached big time.

An Oklahoma Department of Securities server allowed anyone to download government files[.]

"The data was exposed via an unsecured rsync service at an IP address registered to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), allowing any user from any IP address to download all the files stored on the server," the researchers say. 

Gizmodo: How to stop worrying about data breaches.

[A] rundown of the three most important pieces of crafting a healthy security routine and never sweating another password leak[.]

Nextgov: ID card manufacturer and service provider used by federal agencies have vulnerabilities.

...the system used by IDenticard, called PremiSys, which if exploited could allow an unauthorized person to gain access to secure buildings and disable locks, as well as exfiltrate user data or otherwise modify accounts using administrator privileges.

- - -
TechCrunch: Coming soon via the govt shutdown - Expiring HTTPS federal web sites.

Depending on the security level, most websites will kick back browser errors. Some won’t let you in at all until the expired certificate is renewed.
[.]
Eric Mill, a security expert [said] that fears over expired certificates have been overblown.

- - -
Fanbyte: Overwatch game charcter Soldier 76 gayness causing controversy.

...with the addition of Soldier: 76, the total number of queer characters is two out of a roster of 29. Making Soldier gay, more so than even Tracer[.]
[.]
But both characters suffer from the aforementioned Blizzard ethos of “experiences” over “story.”

- - -
How to make global warming climate change Alarmist's heads explode (like in "Scanners"). Tell them that Apple may scrap plans for their self-driving cars. Ubergizmo:

Apple is working on developing technology for self-driving cars.
[.]
However it seems like those plans could be scrapped[.]

Did you hear the collective heads pop? Messy! Clean-up crews being dispatched. This may take a while, folks. Your patience is appreciated.
- - -
New Atlas: The 2019 Detroit Auto Show. Lots of images to look at. Some nice, others, well - I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.
- - -
New Atlas: A DIY Tiny-House for around $10 Grand.
- - -
Tech Dirt: Irish Supermacs bitch-slaps "Big-Mac" in EU.

McDonald's Corp has lost its rights to the trademark "Big Mac" in a landmark European Union (EU) case ruling in favour of Ireland-based fast-food chain Supermac's, according to a decision by European regulators.

- - -
The below video at Digg, so yeah, it's Tech. Go "full screen" or watch at the link. Bet ya watch it more than once. Yep, their Best Friends! So darn cute.

How many Dems will condemn Tim Cook's earnings?

Answer to post title: None.

This Is Money: Apple boss Tim Cook's BIGGEST BONUS EVER.

Apple boss Tim Cook collected his biggest ever bonus just weeks before the iPhone maker cut production due to poor sales.

The 58-year-old trousered £12.3million in 2018, including a £2.4million salary and a £9.4million bonus.

It was a 22 per cent pay rise for a year that saw Apple post record revenue and profit.

But it came just weeks before it dropped a bombshell, saying demand for its latest iPhones failed to meet expectations.

I have no problem with any CEO making a ton of money. I do have a problem with corporations with business ties in countries that exploit and use forced child labor for mining cobalt and lithium and any other resource. Don't tell me these companies "don't know". Years ago, Apple had to install suicide nets in their China manufacturing facilities because workers preferred leaping to their deaths rather than work at their job.

Green Tech Media: The Hidden Risks of Batteries: Child Labor, Modern Slavery.

Shockingly, 40,000 children are estimated to be employed in artisanal mines in southern DR Congo, including in cobalt extraction. Verisk Maplecroft’s cobalt risk assessment -- part of its commodity risk service -- reveals that human rights abuses are widespread in the sector and can occur within both industrial and artisanal mines.

Bloomberg: 2018: Apple negotiating to buy cobalt direct from miners in DR Congo.

The price of cobalt has more than tripled in the past 18 months to trade above $80,000 a metric ton. Two-thirds of supplies come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there has never been a peaceful transition of power and child labor is still used in parts of the mining industry.

Apple isn't the only maker of electronics that obtains cobalt and lithium from countries and sources that use forced child labor. Conducting business with countries and companies that deliberately look the other way on all types of child labor is appalling and must be stopped. What is Tim Cook going to do about it? What are you/we going to do about it? Yes, there's lithium and cobalt in your, and my, lap top, desk top, IPad, phone and everything else. What degree of responsibility belongs to those of us who use these devices?

While all activity or work contains some degree of risk, (simply being alive carries with it the inherent risk of death), and while we can each rationalize what we do in life and assess various degrees of risk we are willing to take, profit should never come at the expense of human life and health. This is mantra to every reasonable, free-thinking individual. But it is held in absolute holy righteousness by The Left. So, why am I not surprised that The Left maintains a silent vigil on this issue when it comes to Tech?

One could correctly call the cobalt and lithium industry the "new" Exxon or Standard Oil. But The Left never will.

Tech News

Data breach at Amazon - ITPro Portal:

Amazon may have suffered a data breach that saw customer names and email addresses leaked.
[.]
...users confirmed on Twitter that they had gotten an email from Amazon, which the retailer later confirmed to be genuine, notifying them that the data has been shared, accidentally.

We don't know how it happened, exactly when it happened, or who the information was shared with / to. 

Who knew? No one saw this coming.
- - -
No one saw this coming either: Is your CPAP machine spying on you? ArsTechnia:

Tony Schmidt discovered something unsettling about the machine that helps him breathe at night. Without his knowledge, it was spying on him.

- - -

TechCrunch - Facebook an accomplice in 16-year-old girl sold for marriage in South Sudan.

A multimillionaire businessman from South Sudan’s capital city reportedly won the auction after offering a record “price” — of 530 cows, three Land Cruiser V8 cars and $10,000 — to marry the child, Nyalong Ngong Deng Jalang.

Disgusting. FB needs to be held accountable.
- - -
C|Net: Leather clad, luxury laptop:

Instead of taking a slim laptop and sticking it in a leather sleeve, as one might do with any other similar system, the leather case here is built right in. No, it's not Corinthian leather, but it's still pretty nice.

- - -
ZD Net - Everything you need to know about the cannabis industry:

...marijuana is one of the most exciting growth industries in the US as it becomes legal in some states, attracts investment, and becomes a vertical that can utilize multiple technologies ranging from the internet of things to cloud to analytics.

- - -
When to hire a cyber security expert? Tech News World:

[Cyber security] itself is increasing in importance, it remains a truism that many smaller organizations (and in fact, some mid-sized ones) don't have specialized security expertise on staff.

Is is too late for Amazon?
- - -
Time-travel into the past. 13 years ago, Microsoft trashes Linux. BetaNews:

Linux bashing is nothing new for Microsoft, which has set up a dedicated Web site to detail why customers should choose Windows Server over the open source operating system. This week at the IT Forum, Microsoft announced the results of a new study that shows Windows as more reliable and easier to manage than Linux.

What a joke. Keep releasing "patches", MS, for your wonderful OS.
- - -

'Smart Watch' tracker of children easy to hack. TechDirt: 

A location-tracking smartwatch worn by thousands of children has proven... you guessed it... rather trivial to hack. The MiSafes Kid's Watcher Plus is a "smart watch for kids" that embeds a 2G cellular radio and GPS technology, purportedly to let concerned helicopter parents track their kids' location at all times. But security researchers at UK's Pen Test Partners have issued a report calling the devices comically unsecure.

- - - 
Technology.Org - 64 SpaceX satellites ready to launch:

...the U.S. kicked around the idea of putting large reflectors in orbit during the Vietnam war, effectively abolishing night over southeast Asia. There have also been ideas to put advertising in space… though for now, you won’t have to worry about Pepsi or McDonald’s logos drifting through your astrophotos.

- - -
Five songs that could make you a dangerous driver. The Drive:

British car loan financier Moneybarn recently released a study outlining how our choice in music can affect our driving. It found that songs with tempos that exceed 120 beats per minute (bpm) can make people subconsciously drive faster, which makes them more liable to draw negative attention from law enforcement.
[.]
...the 12th most common song on driving (or riding) playlists, AC/DC's "Back In Black" has the misfortune of being the cliche soundtrack for Baby Boomers on Harley Davidsons. Again, it doesn't tip the scales for high-energy lyrical content, but its tempo of 188 bpm is eclipsed by just one song on the chart.

Make it so loud that my ears bleed! 
- - -
Bleeping Computer - Firefox 65 improvements in Content Blocking settings:

Firefox 65, Mozilla is overhauling how users can configure the Content Blocking settings. With this version, the previously confusing configuration is replaced by three different modes that a user can select that offer varying degrees of blocking and customization.

 - - -
Technocracy - Are Smart-Meters spying on you?

“What limits have been placed on data collection and permissions for data collection beyond monthly billing cycle totals?” [asks Smithfield Township supervisors in a] letter dated Nov. 14, to FirstEnergy’s president, regional president, state president, the state Office of Consumer Advocates and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. “The notice sent to our residents makes no mention of this, yet is it is of prime concern to us in order to protect and secure data of our residential households.”

- - -
Ubergizmo - Future Apple watches may monitor UV exposure.

Apple has filed for a patent that describes how future Apple Watches could come with a built-in UV sensors that are embedded around the frame of the Apple Watch. These sensors will alert the wearer when they’ve been exposed for too long.

Because...everything is dangerous and we need Apple to save us.

Tech News

Future of Life Institute - The Pledge Against Lethal Autonomous Weapons:

...we the undersigned agree that the decision to take a human life should never be delegated to a machine. There is a moral component to this position, that we should not allow machines to make life-taking decisions for which others – or nobody – will be culpable. There is also a powerful pragmatic argument: lethal autonomous weapons, selecting and engaging targets without human intervention, would be dangerously destabilizing for every country and individual.

- - -
The Seattle Times - Your passwords have probably been hacked and what to do about it:

An Australian security guru named Troy Hunt spends his days looking in dark corners of the Internet to add hacked data to this free site. It now totals half a billion exposed passwords and 5 billion hacked accounts. Hunt can hardly keep up.

- - -
I love her because Apple and Google hate her.  Gadgets Now:

[Apple CEO Tim] “lectured her on corporate tax”, according to the Wired. Once the decision was out, Cook allegedly in private said that it was “political crap.”

Fuck. Tim. Cook.
- - -
Tech News World - Is your Smart TV spying on you?

Did you know that fancy smart TV sitting in your living room, kitchen, bedroom or bathroom actually may be watching you?
[.]
If you are a marketer, you love it. You can get loads of user data for your marketing. However, if you are a consumer who cares about protecting your privacy, you feel invaded.

 - - -

Naked Security - hacker code leads to avatar gang rape:

...a whole lot of people unfamiliar with gaming rape culture found out earlier this month, when [an avatar] was gang-raped on a playground by two male avatars in the hugely popular, typically family-friendly game [Roblox].

- - -
(MF'g Google. SOBs). C|Net - Google tries to hi-jack DuckDuckGo.com:

Google owns Duck.com, which has been driving rival search engine DuckDuckGo up the wall for over six years. Because when you type "duck.com" into a web browser, you get Google.com. Doesn't make a lot of sense, yes?

- - -
Tech Dirt - India embraces net neutrality. U.S. run in opposite direction:

...the United States walks away from the concept of net neutrality, India just passed some of the toughest net neutrality rules in the world.
[.]
Facebook engaged in some shady behavior, at one point trying to trick Indian citizens into supporting its plans and opposing meaningful net neutrality protections. 

- - -
PC Authority: Game potions are classified as real drugs?

["Joy"] isn’t the first drug-related run-in with the Australian Classification Board that videogames have had. One of the last infamous interactions occurred when Fallout 3 attempted to be classified here, but needed to be altered to remove references to morphine in-game.

- - -

- - -

WccfTech: Vulnerability in Grammarly exposed user details:

To offer you writing assistance, Grammarly requires access to everything you type. From your social media posts to technical reports, everything is accessed by the extension to be able to catch the typos. However, this also means that any security flaw affecting Grammarly puts user data at risk of exposure.

- - -
The Outline - What really scares teens?

I took to Reddit, texted my friend’s younger brother, and enlisted a handful of people under 20 to watch my “favorite” Gen Z horror movies and the trailers for those upcoming films, and then tell me about their experiences.

- - -
The Drive - The $200,000 air-ride Hummer:

...just about everything aside from the H1's original frame saw an upgrade. Mil-Spec put a ton of focus into adding sound-deadening and making the Hummer much more livable than General Motors ever did. Now, the shop has come out with another build that ups the comfort ante by including air-ride technology.

- - -

Threat Post - Airport Ranking by the Most Risky Wi-Fi:

...WiFi security is often sacrificed by airport operators in exchange for consumer convenience, leaving networks unencrypted, unsecured or improperly configured[.]

- - -
HackRead - LabCorp suffers massive data breach:

...cybercriminals have managed to breach the security of America’s leading clinical laboratory and medical diagnostics center LabCorp that can put health records of not thousands but millions of patients at risk.
[.]
[LabCorp] is responsible for performing routine and specialty diagnostic tests including HIV tests, bloodwork and urine analysis.

- - -
WIRED - You can’t sue your way to a solution for global warming.

Facing billions of dollars in climate change-related damage in the coming years, New York was hoping to extract some money from the transnational companies that extract the oil that people burn for energy[.]

States, cities, municipalities - all most overspending and all desperately looking for more revenue money. There's no one else left to sue. May I suggest "drastic budget reductions"?
- - -
Technology Review - Google looking to help speed up quantum computing:

[Google's] Cirq, is a software toolkit that lets developers create algorithms without needing a background in quantum physics.
[.]
For now, developers can use Cirq to create quantum algorithms that run on simulators. But the goal is to have it help build software that will run on a wide range of real machines in the future.

- - -
Info World - Powering AI:

The range of innovative AI hardware-accelerator architectures continues to expand. Although you may think that graphic processing units (GPUs) are the dominant AI hardware architecture, that is far from the truth.

- - -

WHAT are they? Tech E Blog: The coolest cabins ever.

朋友; 伙伴; 同志 (Comrade) Cooks helps China Gov Censor Citizens

Apple  友; 伙伴; 同志 CEO Tim Cook  makes no apologies for promoting and buckling under to the Chinese government in censoring its internet. Quartz:

Apple removed dozens of virtual private network (VPN) apps from its Chinese app store, depriving many users of tools that are critical to jumping the country’s Great Firewall. The move marked a major capitulation to China’s censorship regime, and follows similar requests to block various apps and content in the country.

[.]

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, has defended his company’s compliance with censorship requests in countries like Pakistan and Thailand by arguing that it serves citizens’ best interests to “continue operating” rather than risk getting shut down for not blocking content.

Is this part of the reason they own $52.6 Billion in U.S. Treasuries?

And with Zuckerberg and Pakistan and Thailand, this is nothing new.

Remember Google, the "Do No Evil" company and how they promised, in 2007, to fight global internet censorship?

Then, January 2010, Google threatened to yank their business out of China if they couldn't resolve their censorship restrictions with the Chinese Government.

Come March 2010, Google shut down their China service, redirecting to its server in Hong Kong.

Eventually, Google gave up in January, 2013.

Even CNN  couldn't put a positive spin on Google in January, 2015. Same link, Google also kowtowed to censorship by the Turkish government.

By December of 2014, the Chinese Government pulled the plug  on Google Gmail, Google Drive and many other Google services.

Besides, Google is not evil, are they?

Or are they?

Well, they dropped the "Don't be Evil" motto, so maybe they are?

Dotcom companies certainly aren't the only industries that play ball with repressive governments.

Then again, dotcom companies, especially the search engine and social media platforms, are companies that exist in a special area, unlike companies in manufacturing or other industries that work within the confines of a country like China or Turkey who control unfiltered information available in their country.

Email and social media companies are specifically in the business of communication(s), speech and information. Ideally, yes, everyone om earth would have the freedom to have unfiltered access to the information available on the web. What are the ethical obligations, if any, of communication companies agreeing with governments who censor the information available to its citizens?

I'm not sure I have any answers right now. Do you?

Vault 7: Wikileaks shows Comrades at CIA can Access Macs and iPhones

Image located at www.monomakhos.com

The CIA has tools for hacking Macs and iPhones.

What's particularly interesting about the documents is that they appear to show that the CIA had the ability to exploit Apple hardware and software a full decade ago.

Not all of the hacks revealed in Dark Matter are quite so old, however. The user guide for Sonic Screwdriver, for instance, was updated as recently as November 2012. It shows how a Thunderbolt or USB port can be used to infect and access a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, right up to mid-2012 models.

Of course, this doesn't surprise you, does it? Every country seems to be ridiculously more paranoid about their own population than those of other countries, including their enemies.

Screwdriver and Screwdriver

Ars Technia has a wonderful article on the Sonic Screwdriver. (And no, we're not talking about the adult beverage containing Swarovski Alizé Vodka).

The following juicy bit from Tech News World, is simply diabolically clever:

The CIA's Embedded Development Branch developed malware that could persist even if the targeted computer were reformatted and its OS were reinstalled, according to data WikiLeaks exposed.

Recall the brouhaha over the so-called unlocked San Bernardino shooters' iPhone between Apple and the government?

Let me state this: that iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter was cracked so fast and so efficiently it would have made your head spin.

The fight between Apple CEO Tim "The Pinhead" Cook and the government was a dog and pony show. Apple didn't want their customers knowing their phones weren't secure and do you really think the government is going to let any company have such a degree of encryption that it can't be hacked? I have a nice shiny bridge in San Fran to sell you if you believe the above.

(The "Pinhead" reference to Cook is exactly that, btw - I think he's a pinhead who is a spot-light whore. And a poor CEO, but that's another story.)

"1984"  is taking it's sweet time in arriving. But with as quickly as technology is progressing  - ("...modem...modem..." anyone even remember them?) - we're nearing a generation of people who have no idea what a modem is/was.  "1984" is catching up to us, so quickly, that both the legality issues and privacy issues lag behind technological growth and advancement.

The Singularity is here. Welcome to 1984. Welcome to Big Brother.

If you have any questions, please direct them to The Ministry of Truth.

Additional  Reading on this subject at: 

C/NET: CIA Tools

Wired: How CIA can hack MACS

Heavy: Factory Fresh CIA Bugged Cell Phones