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Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

Apple’s New AI: Is Tim Cooked?

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Image by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay

So, Apple has at long last stepped into the AI game, and appropriately named at least part of their offering Apple Intelligence, a designation that, in our mind, harkens to ‘Army Intelligence,’ ‘Military Intelligence,’ and in Apple’s case, rightly so.

Apple’s AI solution is a partnership with OpenAI, who last week announced the addition of Paul M. Nakasone, a retired US Army general and former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), to its board of directors. FYI, as the National Pulse reported, “Prior to his departure from the NSA, Nakasone authored an op-ed advocating for the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The FISA legislation reauthorized a controversial provision that allows the government to spy on Americans without a warrant as long as they’re communicating with noncitizens in a foreign country.

“Not everyone is thrilled about Nakasone’s new role at the AI firm, which will also see the former general seated at OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee,” Futurism reported. “The NSA has long been associated with surveillance of US citizens, and AI-embedded technologies are already renewing and escalating existing surveillance concerns. With that in mind, it might be unsurprising that former NSA employee and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the OpenAI appointment’s outspoken detractors. Read More...

The Apple iPad Commercial: That’s Not What’s Meant By ‘Crushing It’

The Apple iPad Commercial: That’s Not What’s Meant By ‘Crushing It’

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

“Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted last week, proudly showing off his company’s latest product – and setting off a media and Twitter/X firestorm.

In the commercial, the company that has long been the standard bearer for providing creator tools showed a hydraulic press pulverizing a number of the physical tools on which its very core market – artists – depends: musical instruments (including an upright piano), cans of paint, an 80s arcade game, a sculpture, to name a few.

“You destroyed all the creative tools and effort of humans. Worst. Commercial. Ever,” was just one of the comments in the Twitter/X feed. Read More...

Web 2.5: A Dangerous Crossroads

Web 2.5: A Dangerous Crossroads

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Image by Lisa Johnson from Pixabay

Web 3 is not about to take over any time soon, especially given the damage that FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have done to reinforced the public’s view that crypto (an element of Web 3) is rife with fraud and no, we have idea why Bankman-Freed isn’t in prison (‘Why aren’t you in jail already?’ Internet erupts after Sam Bankman-Fried confirms participating in New York Times’ DealBook). Yet according to MSN, We’re Witnessing the End of Social Media, and while the Age of Social was supposedly about ‘connecting,’ it has mostly been responsible for the disconnections that have been going on between people and groups.

So, we seem to be in a strange tech stasis: a no man’s land between the last and the next phase of tech.

Even FAANG – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google stocks – isn’t FAANG anymore

Now it’s MAMAA – Meta Platforms FB, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple – although we propose MAMMAA, and although not stock related, Musk definitely belongs in the cabal mix and make no mistake about it: The Web 2 cabal is still alive and kicking – and not about to surrender their lead positions to the so-called next iteration of tech and yet a new crop of tech wunderkinds any time soon. Read More...

EPIC!!!

EPIC!!!

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Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

The news of the week was that the closely-watched trial between Apple Computer and Epic Games concluded. It was not a win all around, but it did deal “a massive blow to the walled-garden business model of Apple’s App Store.”

According to CNBC, “Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers…issued an injunction that said Apple will no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from providing links or other communications that direct users away from Apple in-app purchasing. Apple typically takes a 15% to 30% cut of gross sales.”

“Apple will now be required to allow developers to direct users to third-party payment processors, meaning developers can now collect revenue directly, and can no longer disallow developers from using account registration data to contact users outside the app,” Gizmodo reported. “…but it’s very far from a complete victory. Gonzalez Rogers ruled against the gaming company on every single other count, finding that while Apple violated California’s Unfair Competition law, the case did not establish Apple to be an illegal monopolist…It’s not clear, as of this moment, how wide the ramifications will be beyond the App Store specifically. Google, which also booted Fortnite from its Play Store in response to Epic’s moves, is facing a similar lawsuit that has yet to be resolved.” Read More...

The New Apple, to the Core

The New Apple, to the Core

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Apple recently announced that they’re going to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, “drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused, including by governments looking to surveil their citizens,” according to Yahoo News.  

Apple is all about protecting children, as we well know. After all, Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties, despite the company’s promises to hold itself to the ‘highest standards,’ report says. “Ten former members of Apple’s supplier responsibility team (said) the company has refused or has been slow to stop doing business with suppliers that repeatedly violate its labor policies when doing so would hurt its profits.”  

So, obviously Apple is not driven by protecting children, although claiming so does tend to pull at the heartstrings and move people to quickly surrender yet another aspect of their privacy/allow surveillance. As Matthew Green, a top cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University, pointed out in the Yahoo piece, “abuses could include government surveillance of dissidents or protesters…”What happens when the Chinese government says, ‘Here is a list of files that we want you to scan for,’” Green asked. “Does Apple say no? I hope they say no, but their technology won’t say no.”   Read More...

The Myth of the Gig Economy

The Myth of the Gig Economy

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Image by 1820796 from Pixabay

The so-called sharing/gig economy is under fire – in California, anyway, with State Assembly Bill 5 (AB5). “Under the new “ABC” test (which is part of the new law), an individual is presumed to be an employee, unless the company can prove all of the following: A) that the worker is free from control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact; B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed,” The National Law Review explains.

There’s very little genuine sharing going on in the so-called sharing economy. Sharing/gig economy unicorn DoorDash had to change its tipping model after it was discovered that tips that were meant to go to the workers were being kept by the company. Even after they promised to change that, Vox reported that DoorDash was still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop. Now it’s Instacart that’s in the crosshairs for taking that page from the Bad Behavior in Tech playbook. “’You have demonstrated a pattern of behavior as CEO of eviscerating our pay and pirating our tips,’” Instacart independent contractors wrote in an open letter to CEO Apoorva Mehta, ahead of a three-day walkout, Mashable reports.

Meanwhile, according to Forbes, California Destroys $1 Trillion Gig Economy With New Law. Read More...

Web 2.0 Is Now Correction 2.0

Web 2.0 Is Now Correction 2.0

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i2clipart.com

Apple announced a downturn in expected revenue, and the market choked. Which followed on the heels of the Facebook stock plunge as a result of its myriad privacy issues.

What happened? Let’s look at the Apple playbook: for years, Apple has released a new iOS ahead of the sales of a new phone. The new iOS slows down older phones, in order to induce people to buy the new one. Which might have a few new features, but not enough to warrant the purchase of a new phone, save that the older models are now artificially slower.

Planned obsolescence. Read More...

The Facebook Takedown and the Underlying Agenda

The Facebook Takedown and the Underlying Agenda

Wonder why Facebook is suddenly under attack from all quarters, given that the user information collected by Cambridge Analytica occurred well over a year ago, and that this was far from the first time Facebook had breached user confidentiality (although if you read the TOS, all your data belongs to Facebook, anyway)? Apple CEO Tim Cook, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, et al are all happily throwing Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg under the bus, so you might start wondering about the timing of all of this. And what you’re being distracted from otherwise noticing.

As Forbes says, Why Are We Just Finding Out Now That All Two Billion Facebook Users May Have Been Harvested? “The company acknowledged what (this article’s author) said many times before – likely the entirety of Facebook’s two billion public profiles (and quite a few private profiles) are archived in repositories all over the world by academics, companies and criminal actors, not to mention countless governments. The big story was not Facebook’s confirmation of this, but rather why the company took until (April 4, 2018) to confirm it.”

The Net Neutrality Factor

The tech cartel have been quietly attempting to reverse Net Neutrality, which, as we’ve said before and have written about and clarified in a past column, basically exempt the cartel/social media companies from being neutral and treating all content equally, via a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution. Read More...