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One impressive task that Apple showed off in its iPhone 12 announcement was the iPhone 12 Pro’s ability to shoot and edit 4K, HDR video at 60 frames per second (fps). As many tech reviewers have noted, this makes the iPhone 12 Pro faster at this particular task than most top of the line Intel computers, regardless of operating system. This is a fantastic feature to have on a phone, but what percentage of iPhone users will ever want to shoot or edit 4K HDR videos on their iPhone? A very small percentage, one very, very close to zero. The question arises, then, as to why Apple was so insistent on emphasizing two things in this presentation: 1) the astonishing computing power of this device and 2) it’s support for all variants of 5G communication. Apple did this because the iPhone platform is destined for much bigger, bigger tasks than simply performing the mundane tasks that 99.9% of its user base performs. The iPhone is destined to be the mobile computing platform of future devices like autonomous vehicles.

In these dismal times, immigration has become a deplorable political wedge issue exploited by politicians with grand dreams of becoming dictators in order to cow the meekest and most naive in their constituency to total subservience. Toward that end, the demagogues go so far as to identify the immigrants who would “most valuable” or “most compatible” with the fictional native culture they extoll. In this article, there is proof positive that immigration will never be an issue provided the state invests in its people. By investing in its people, every country improves its chances of success in the global marketplace. The success of BioNTech is proof that investing in immigrants and giving them equal opportunity is far more important than choosing the immigrants. Countries that denounce immigration do so quite literally at their own peril.

Source: The Husband-and-Wife Team Behind the Leading Vaccine to Solve Covid-19 – The New York Times

It was back in January when I described the battle lines that are being drawn between Microsoft and Apple on one side and Facebook, Google and Amazon on the other. In the past week, Apple has taken two major actions precisely along the lines I described: to prevent Google and Facebook from collecting data on Apple device users.

The first action was acknowledged by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself, stating that the next iteration of Apple’s iOS will obviate a substantial portion of Facebook’s data collection scheme.

The second action is Apple’s deployment of a search engine to replace Google on iPhones, possibly on iPads and Macs as well. Apple famously collects billions of dollars from Google in exchange for making Google the default search engine on Apple devices, but Apple’s displeasure with Google’s using that privilege to objectify Apple’s customers in order to reap billions upon billions more from Apple’s customers clearly outweighs this significant, but increasingly negligible, contribution to Apple’s bottom line.

For the record, I am bullish on AAPL and MSFT, both which I own, but it is critical to vote with one’s dollars in this era of unfettered, unlimited, unregulated and unrelenting surveillance perpetrated by unscrupulous companies operated by naïve or ruthless (or both) executives. Apple’s and Microsoft’s executive teams have shown a concern privacy. To be sure, this concern grows largely out of the threat that Google and Facebook present to Apple’s and Microsoft’s bottom lines, but these companies deserve credit for electing to take the high road instead of throwing in the towel and joining the data trawling industry. Apple and Microsoft deserve a lot of credit for choosing to be traditional companies that sell the customer a product. Google and Facebook are companies that sell the customers as a product!

Apple’s first stab at Google’s revenue stream came from the deployment of Apple Maps, and Siri in general gathers results from a number of search engines–especially Wolfram Alpha and Bing–to the exclusion of Google. Apple went after Facebook initially by eliminating all Facebook sharing buttons from system menus. The deployment of security measures that explicitly limit the data gathering capabilities of Google and Facebook opens a major battle in the privacy wars.

Anyone who whines that Apple’s actions constitute an abuse of platform to limit competition is clearly missing the point. Apple is staking a claim that the Google and Facebook models are not legitimate forms of business, and Apple is correct! (Tim Cook famously said that such a business “should not exist”.) It is not right to take the cynical economic route. It is much deeper than a matter of profits. Privacy and the misinformation campaigns that have come to dominate Facebook represent the greatest ethical challenge to the conduct of business in history. Facebook and Google do not comply with any moral or ethical standards of business. This lack of morals and ethics is the heart of the matter. Whom the customer patronizes, really matters. No on should patronize Facebook or Twitter. Google is a highly suspect actor, at best.

If you want to know how to kill your Facebook account, here is a guide.

Source: IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News “Cops Tap Smart Streetlights Sparking Controversy and Legislation”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” goes the old saw, and in the modern era, well-intentioned technology testifies to the veracity of the adage over and over again. In the particular instance, the city of San Diego installed public surveillance cameras expressly for the purpose of quantifying resources usage, but enabled the use of the video thus gathered to be used by law enforcement to investigate major crimes only. However, now that footage has been used against protestors and others who have not committed any major crimes, the city is risking losing the confidence of its voters.

City officials concede that they needed to consider the definition of a major crime more seriously, and now they are in a horrible position where they are doubted by their two most important constituents: the voters and law enforcement. On can only hope that a quasi-police state is not the outcome they elect to implement.