Tech News Digest—Issue XLIV
Now here comes the second issue of my Tech News Digest, which are my comments to recent tech news. It occurs to me that the order of the entries may not make much sense. Basically they are in the order that I noted them in my Flipboard magazine. In the future I may categorize the comments.
The Target becomes the target. Another alarm that even for big corporations security is still a major concern. The news is still developing. At least Target will lose quite some because of this.
Former Windows Leader Steven Sinofsky Presents 10 Mega Trends In Tech For 2014
I in particular agree with the entry “owning stuff will be increasingly outdated”. Smarter living styles call for swiftness in every part in life, from shared rooms (like AirBnB), cars (like Uber), or who-knows-what-next. Time sharing of more essential services is making a trend.
Exclusive–Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer RSA
I believe this is shocking news to everyone, that NSA and RSA has a deal. It means that the confidence of your privacy is indeed doomed. Any of the online services you’ve used, be it chatting, email, online purchase, browsing, are subject to surveillance by NSA. There is no privacy at all. The news is still developing.
Between a quarter and a third of everything on the web is copied from somewhere else
I am surprised—not because the percentage is huge—but that it is way smaller than I expected. I bet the researchers did not consider the Chinese Internet.
It may be an encouraging story for the Android community. But being a headstrong Apple fan (with some opinions on the newest iTunes Radio), I am still concerned with the speed Android is catching up. Maybe things should not be to follow iOS, but to advance by a huge leap.
One chart that shows how you pay for free apps with your privacy
On the one hand, there is no privacy online. On the other hand, your privacy means money to others. Interesting.
Shazam’s iPhone app can now listen for songs and tag them automatically
The first thing I did after reading this news is to open Shazam and turn it off—well, it is off by default, so some criticism is saved.
An interesting, thought-provoking, and low-tech art project.
Everything you need to know about the YouTube copyright crisis and why you should care
In short, greedy people started to make others’ lives harder. It also means I may not find walk-through of some wonderful (and yet hard/tricky) games, such as the Badland for iOS.
Ho Ho No! Amazon Apologizes After Customers Lose Access to Christmas Content
This is the reason that I always have an issue with the pricing of electronic purchases. Similar for e-books; IMO, they shouldn’t be priced more then a third than the hard-copy since they cannot be resold (among other deficiencies).
Blocking someone used to mean that they could no longer follow you. But now it means you can’t see their Twitter activity, but they can see yours.
This news became interesting when Twitter reversed its decision almost on the same day. A perfect example for the fast turn-over in software/service distribution in the new era.