Senior Correspondent Arnold Woodworth's Weekly Web Wrap-up for November 1, 2015

Apple says IBM is saving $270 for every Mac it uses instead of a Windows PC

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-says-ibm-saves-270-for-every-mac-it-uses-instead-of-a-pc-2015-10

 

 

Think you know a lot about Apple? Our quiz thinks different

 

Arnold got 9 out of 10 answers correct.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-how-well-do-you-know-your-newtons-from-your-lisas-2015-10-27

 

 

In one chart: How Microsoft has trumped Apple since Steve Jobs' death

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-one-chart-how-microsoft-has-trumped-apple-since-steve-jobss-death-2015-10-27

 

 

 

The Inside Story of Apple’s New iMacs

 

There’s one thing that is conspicuously not in the new iMacs — a touch screen. While Microsoft and others now believe that multi-touch should extend to the desktop display, Apple believes this is dead wrong. “From the ergonomic standpoint we have studied this pretty extensively and we believe that on a desktop scenario where you have a fixed keyboard, having to reach up to do touch interfaces is uncomfortable,” says Schiller. “iOS from its start has been designed as a multi-touch experience — you don’t have the things you have in a mouse-driven interface, like a cursor to move around, or teeny little ‘close’ boxes that you can’t hit with your finger. The Mac OS has been designed from day one for an indirect pointing mechanism. These two worlds are different on purpose, and that’s a good thing — we can optimize around the best experience for each and not try to mesh them together into a least-common-denominator experience.”

 

https://medium.com/backchannel/exclusive-why-apple-is-still-sweating-the-details-on-imac-531a95e50c91#.piuq2jz85

 

 

 

11 mind-blowing facts about Apple that show just how massive the company really is

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/crazy-facts-about-apple-2015-10

 

 

 

People aren't really using Apple Pay

 

"It just seems to me that there's not much of a problem Apple Pay fixes," Rurik Bradbury said. "Paying with a credit card is very easy. It's a habit everyone has.”

 

"Apple Pay is trying to replace something which is not a problem for people so they don't really have much interest," Bradbury said.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/not-very-many-people-use-mobile-payments-2015-10

 

 

 

Apple blocks Chaos Computer Club content on its platform

 

http://www.osnews.com/story/28930/Apple_blocks_Chaos_Computer_Club_content_on_its_platform

 

 

 

39 photos of how Steve Jobs saved Apple from disaster and led it to rule the world

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-apple-history-in-photos-2015-1

 

 

 

Apple announced it will open up its cryptographic libraries to third-party developers in an effort to persuade them to build more robust security into their apps.

 

http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/29/apple-opens-up-its-cryptographic-libraries-to-third-party-developers/

 

 

 

Even when Samsung gets it right Apple still wins

 

Apple's new strategy of taking incremental market share from Androidappears to be working.

 

Samsung is losing market share, even though it is shipping more phones. Apple is simply getting to new customers faster than Samsung.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-v-apple-sales-and-revenue-statistics-2015-10?r=UK&IR=T

 

 

 

Will Apple replace my iPhone for free? Apple's policies for water-damaged, smashed or broken iPhone replacements | New scheme for fixing broken iPhones includes loan iPhone

 

http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iphone/will-apple-replace-my-iphone-apple-replacement-program-loan-iphone-3446015/

 

 

 

33 of the hardest questions Apple will ask in a job interview

 

Apple asks both technical questions based on your past work experience and some mind-boggling puzzles.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/hardest-apple-interview-questions-2015-10

The App 100: The world's greatest apps

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-app-100-the-worlds-greatest-apps-2015-10

Passwords often present a conundrum — the better they are, the harder they are to remember.

 a pair of researchers say they have solved this problem — using poetry.

they found that, with regards to both security and ease of remembering, using a rhyming poem of random words was the best.

http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-think-theyve-found-the-holy-grail-of-passwords-using-poetry-2015-10

 

 

 

Humans still have a major advantage over robots, and it's not changing any time soon

 

Manuela Veloso said:

“I can scramble eggs, I can cook squash, I can speak five languages, I can teach AI. In no way are we getting close to having a single robot, a single computer, a single mind that can do all of these things.”

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/manuela-veloso-on-competition-with-robotos-2015-10

 

 

Victory for Users: Librarian of Congress Renews and Expands Protections for Fair Uses

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/victory-users-librarian-congress-renews-and-expands-protections-fair-uses




DMCA Ruling Ensures You Can't Be Sued For Hacking Your Car, Your Games Or Your iPhone

There was a big win for the digital rights community today, with a ruling that ensured it was legal for anyone to tinker with their motor, their iPhone or whatever technology they’d purchased. But the freedoms will only last for three years, when the fight between anti-tinkering corporations and activists will resume, absent any major legislative changes.

Prior to today’s decision by the Librarian of Congress, car manufacturers, the most vocal being General Motors, had attempted to block an exemption, the proposed Class 21 in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that would allow anyone to play with the code that ran on vehicles they’d bought. It would do so by granting a degree of immunity from possible prosecutions using Section 1201 of the DMCA, which prohibited unlocking “access controls” in software.

“This ‘access control’ rule is supposed to protect against unlawful copying,” said EFF staff attorney Kit Walsh. “But as we’ve seen in the recent Volkswagen scandal – where VW was caught manipulating smog tests – it can be used instead to hide wrongdoing hidden in computer code. We are pleased that analysts will now be able to examine the software in the cars we drive without facing legal threats from car manufacturers.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/10/27/right-to-tinker-victory/



This 11-year-old is selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each
Girl makes Diceware passwords, rolled with real dice, written by hand, sent by mail.

If she kept busy at it full-time, Modi would be raking in about $12 per hour—fully one-third more than New York state’s $8.75 minimum wage, which is set to go up to $9.00 on December 31, 2015. As of now, she said she’s sold "around 30" in total, including in-person sales.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/this-11-year-old-is-selling-cryptographically-secure-passwords-for-2-each/




Coding Academies Are Nonsense

Note:  Coding Academies teach a “crash course” on how to write applications (apps) to get you a job fast.
This author is critical of them.

In 20+ years of professional coding, I’ve never seen someone go from novice to full-fledged programmer in a matter of weeks, yet that seems to be what coding academies are promising, alongside instant employment, a salary big enough to afford a Tesla and the ability to change lives.

The best advice for people wanting to learn code? Try before you buy, and by that, I mean figure it out for free. Otherwise, you might find yourself sideways on the career ladder and tens of thousands of dollars poorer. For a dying profession, that’s just not worth it

I see coding shrinking as a widespread profession. Not because software is going away, but because the way we build software will fundamentally change. Technology for software creation without code is already edging toward mainstream use.

Coding skills will continue to be in high demand until technology for software creation without code disrupts the entire party, crowding out programming as a viable profession.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/23/coding-academies-are-nonsense/





Europe's New Net Neutrality Law Draws Jeers

the rules have three major loopholes, Net neutrality supporters said: Providers can prioritize specialized services if they treat the open Internet equally; the rules allow "zero rating," which lets ISPs exempt apps from users' monthly bandwidth caps; and ISPs can implement traffic management measures and group some services into categories of traffic that can be sped up or slowed down when the ISPs want.

On the whole, European consumers do benefit from the new rules, but perhaps not as much as they could have, said Jeremy Malcolm

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/82674.htmlTom: