IBM

>I mean this seems very reasonable from Apple's perspective. They're trying to avoid their brand being tarnished by bad repair shops with questionable repair skills cutting corners with cheap and unsupported parts. Given how large the resale market is for Apple products I would even say that this is an extremely positive policy because as long as the machine boots you can be pretty darn sure your MacBook is just like you would get from an Apple store.

Apple's stance on "right to repair" is exactly about that. Introducing third parties into the ecosystem would drive down secondary market value for their products in a Gresham's law kind of way.

Apparently these reporters have some questionable history with their reporting.

https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1048322164653535232

https://twitter.com/RidT/status/1048349907487264768

Apple's denial references that report.

In what way does this story make them look bad? They're allegedly the victims of a state sponsored attack. It would only make them look bad if they were co-operating with the Chinese to enable this.

The entire market is selling off.

I was talking about the Senators.

If you watched the Senate hearing on privacy two days ago you'd have seen that they were remarkably on the same page about potential privacy legislation [1]. Facebook's continued fuck ups will only help the cause, and for that I'm grateful.

[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?451963-1/google-apple-amazon-t...

Brian Acton or anyone else feeling guilty about their ad-tech wealth: use your winnings to lobby for a federal privacy bill that is as strong and comprehensive as GDPR (and other EU privacy regulations).

The industry is moving to enact something that maintains the status quo [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-...

Guess he's just going to ignore this post:

Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple (2016)

https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

Trump is an aberration and will likely be out of office in 2020, worst case 2024. No one is going to blow up old alliances because of Trump. Every foreign capital is just trying to ride out the storm.

>It removes single point of failure scenarios. Economies and nations keeping each other more at arm's reach would help ensure the world acts in a more democratic fashion while simultaneously also providing insulation against the failing of any given nation's poor decisions - be those social, political, economic, or military.

This is completely ahistorical. You're describing the "balance of power" system that governed international relations and we know what happened: hundreds of years of European wars culminating in two world wars.

The US gets to unilaterally decide because they've underwritten global stability and security in the post-WW2 era. Europe being one of the biggest beneficiaries of that.

And this isn't even me being a jingoistic American, I was born in Canada.

There's good and bad to America being able to do things unilaterally. The bad is stuff like the Iraq War. But two examples of its good are the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which has global reach and has been used in enforcement actions against international businesses operating internationally, and more recently the Magnitsky Act.

Both of these are the best exports of American influence and require the US to be at the center of all things financial.

Sanctions are one of the most powerful tools in the US toolbox short of war. In fact it's more important than war when dealing with Great Power adversaries because they have nukes. The US should aggressively block any attempt to get around it.

Trump shouldn't have pulled out of the Iran deal, but preserving that power for the future is more important.

Here's a good article about OFAC, the Treasury Department group that handles sanctions:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sanctions-insight-idU...

>While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome.

The pretext of this feature is supposedly that people who share computers are accidentally signed into someone else's account and this solves that, but why should this be done at the browser level?

I have a hard time believing that anyone who uses the family computer doesn't have their own account in the OS, where their Chrome profiles will be kept separate. I also have a hard time believing that this isn't just about making sure every session is authenticated to make cross-device tracking easier/possible. It's why every Google app on iOS seems to want you to log in. I think my suspicion is probably correct since they're making it opt-out rather than opt-in (knowing most won't).

It absolutely isn't.

Industries are regulated because they don't naturally do what society wants. Regulation changes their incentives and behavior to make that happen.

A leopard can't change its spots and an ad-tech company is never going to design their products with preserving privacy first, because they can't [1]. It's like a body rejecting an organ transplant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design

The popularity of finance/banking declined after the financial crisis. It might not make a difference for people already in, but it definitely impacts recruitment for new grads.

Paging Max Schrems.

The rule has always been to wait for the first point update.

It's not GDPR. If anything, GDPR will help undo some of this as test cases in the EU are litigated.

I think the change happened shortly after Ruth Porat was brought on and the Alphabet reorganization was announced (Larry Page wanted to retire without having that be the headline). There was clearly a change in mandate to start monetizing more aggressively and you started seeing the ad load increase across all their properties. That all happened during a lull in Google's stock price. It started trending upwards after Porat signaled to investors that all the money pits would be cut back.

The decision to prosecute Google or Facebook on antitrust grounds is inherently political. It went in favor of Google during the Obama years when the FTC's political appointees overruled the FTC staff's recommendation to bring an antitrust case against them [1].

They'll still have to argue that case in court.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-...

Apple told Reuters that is not what's happening:

>Apple says the joint venture does not mean that China has any kind of “backdoor” into user data and that Apple alone – not its Chinese partner – will control the encryption keys.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

Apple definitely has leverage because we now know they have not made any "special accommodations" for China in their products and services. And as far as I know, iMessage remains unblocked unlike other encrypted services like WhatsApp.

That doesn't mean that Apple can do whatever they want. They've had to shut down iBooks and iTunes Movies within months of turning it on. They've had to remove VPN apps and the NYT's app from the App Store.

But they haven't had to fundamentally cripple the security of their products and services. And that's a meaningful concession they've obtained, because they're Apple.

>I’ll go one better: can you find an instance on record of Apple executives like Tim Cook criticizing Chinese government policies like they do the US government? Any instance of push back at all?

We know they pushed back on the data localization regulation because they said so in a statement to Reuters.

>so you think the Chinese government would really allow the sale of unbreakable end to end encryption domestically just because it's Apple?

Yes. Apple has even said this in court filings during the FBI legal fight [1]:

>Finally, the government attempts to disclaim the obvious international implications of its demand, asserting that any pressure to hand over the same software to foreign agents “flows from [Apple’s] decision to do business in foreign countries . . . .” Opp. 26. Contrary to the government’s misleading statistics (Opp. 26), which had to do with lawful process and did not compel the creation of software that undermines the security of its users, Apple has never built a back door of any kind into iOS, or otherwise made data stored on the iPhone or in iCloud more technically accessible to any country’s government. See Dkt. 16-28 [Apple Inc., Privacy, Gov’t Info. Requests]; Federighi Decl. ¶¶ 6–7. The government is wrong in asserting that Apple made “special accommodations” for China (Opp. 26), as Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world and follows the same standards for responding to law enforcement requests. See Federighi Decl. ¶ 5.

and Craig Federighi's declaration [2]:

>5. Apple uses the same security protocols everywhere in the world.

>6. Apple has never made user data, whether stored on the iPhone or in iCloud, more technologically accessible to any country's government. We believe any such access is too dangerous to allow. Apple has also not provided any government with its proprietary iOS source code. While governmental agencies in various countries, including the United States, perform regulatory reviews of new iPhone releases, all that Apple provides in those circumstances is an unmodified iPhone device.

>7. It is my understanding that Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a "backdoor" in any of our products and services.

>I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.

Apple has leverage in China because they indirectly employ millions of people.

>No, Apple obviously made a deal as they are totally dependent on China for manufacturing their phone as well, they have no leverage. The difference is, Apple's culture of secrecy seems to prevent their employees from leaking dissent externally, so whatever they did, the details aren't public.

Lol. I'm sure Federighi perjured himself because the Apple Cult is just that strong.

[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2762131/C-D-Cal-1...

[2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2762118-Federighi-De...

>No, the Chinese government now owns the servers with the key storage. They now have access to all the keys and user data.

>If the Chinese government is accessing all the user data because they requested Apple to put the user keys on their now-state-owned servers, then why does it matter if Apple controls the keys? You're still splitting hairs.

Apple said literally the opposite of this to Reuters and in this statement to 9to5Mac [1]:

>Last year, we announced that Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD) would become the operator of iCloud in China. As we said at the time, we’re committed to continuously improving the user experience, and our partnership with GCBD will allow us improve the speed and reliability of our iCloud services products while also complying with newly passed regulations that cloud services be operated by Chinese companies. Because of our commitment to transparency, there will be a series of customer communications over the course of the next seven weeks to make sure customers are well informed of the coming changes. Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems.

You seem to think there's some material difference by storing the keys or data in China. There isn't. China's power over Apple comes from the fact that they can block their access to operate in China. It's not technical or legal. Chinese iCloud data was just as vulnerable to requests from the Chinese government when it was stored in the US.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/10/apple-will-begin-storing-chin...

>Even if it does (which is unclear), do you think Apple will be able to refuse if the Chinese government asks for them? I wouldn't be surprised of "the laws and regulations of China" say that Apple is required to turn them over.

Apple says that they respond to valid legal requests, but that isn't any different than when iCloud data was stored in the US. If you thought that Apple would cave to any request for data from the Chinese before, then there's no material difference by storing Chinese iCloud data in China.

>Nobody said that Apple no longer retains control of the keys. The point is that the Chinese government has access to Apple user data and Apple is complicit.

The Chinese government has the exact same access to Apple user data as before, which is through Apple. Who controls the keys is what matters.

That report doesn't say that Apple no longer retains control of the keys.

Not according to Apple [1]:

>Apple says the joint venture does not mean that China has any kind of “backdoor” into user data and that Apple alone – not its Chinese partner – will control the encryption keys.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-icloud-insigh...

Ryan Gallagher seems to own this story like John Carreyrou did Theranos. Pretty much every scoop about Dragonfly has been reported by him.