Soli

I love this idea. I'd also like to see it allowed for areas where regular communications are usually killed but where you're likely still within a moderate range of other people, like National Parks, that even basic voice or text communication could relay out to a normal cell tower where a call could potentially be bad, thereby no longer needing to carry a sat radio with me for emergencies when I'm off the grid.

• https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-and-amazon-sue-songwriters-in-appeal-against-royalty-rise-in-the-united-states/

muadibe said:

Soli said:

seanismorris said:

What’s interesting is there is a movement to stop taking certain credit cards (Visa) because of high fees at retailers.

Visa is also raising rates...

They better watch out or they’re going to lose out to Apple Pay.

What’s not clear is how Apple Pay makes Apple money…

Apple makes money directly from purchases. They get a small portion of the service fee.

I assume they also collect data on purchases to better figure out how to target customers (internal only, of course, not to use like FB and Google for sale).

edit: 0.15%.

• https://merchantservicesltd.com/apple-pay/

If I remember correctly, Tim Cook said Apple has no idea what is purchased in ApplePay transactions. 

What, as in specific items, or no idea about amounts, number of cards used, or even when Apple Pay is used? I assume they don't know what, but probably know how often Apple Pay is used and may even get data on total amounts going through the financial institutions, if not directly, and would be very surprised if they don't know what's going with Apple Pay Cash as a service.

edit: They're certainly getting some data, even if specific card data isn't being funnel to them.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Adoption

seanismorris said:

What’s interesting is there is a movement to stop taking certain credit cards (Visa) because of high fees at retailers.

Visa is also raising rates...

They better watch out or they’re going to lose out to Apple Pay.

What’s not clear is how Apple Pay makes Apple money…

Apple makes money directly from purchases. They get a small portion of the service fee.

I assume they also collect data on purchases to better figure out how to target customers (internal only, of course, not to use like FB and Google for sale).

edit: 0.15%.

• https://merchantservicesltd.com/apple-pay/

avon b7 said:

Soli said:

There's absolutely no evidence that this was a working microphone that was eavesdropping on anyone and let's be clear that Alphabet is the one that announced the update that enabled the microphone, not a blogger that discovered nefarious activity. For those looking for a conspiracy you'll have to look harder. This is no different from countless other tech companies that don't disclose inactive HW for a variety of reasons.

I think in this particular case more could have been done to correct the error beforehand.

A team of people were involved in designing, testing and producing the hardware. It is reasonable to think that some of these people would have used the finished product or given it to friends and family. It is unreasonable to assume that none of these people saw that a key (and consumer facing element - even if inactive) got missed on the spec list or in the product documentation.

Also, this feature will have been in internal testing for a while before getting the go ahead to go live which would have provided more opportunities to catch the slip up.

I'm with you that I don't see anything nefarious but it should have got caught and clarified earlier IMO.

Apple Infamously released a Mac with hidden 802.11n WiFi and then only announced it after the driver was ready for a launch…and then charged you a fee for it which pissed people off even though they had purchased the machine despite nary a mention of that being a promised feature.

As I stated, this isn't uncommon and if you don't trust Google then Nest Secure was never an option for you anyway.

How many products do we have on our person and in our homes with microphones? From security cameras to personal digital assistants to PCs to phones to my Apple Watch I can think of at least 8 off the top of my head. And while I trust Apple to not spy on me the bigger risk will always be exploiting a bug as we recently saw with FaceTime Group Chat.

If I was running a company as valuable as Alphabet and I wanted to spy on people I wouldn't do it with an undisclosed, active microphone that could be found, I'd blatantly disclose the microphone (as all our CE already have) and then I'd have backdoor "bugs" built-in that people in-the-know could exploit so there's a level of deniability by the company. We accept bugs in SW and we accept that companies say "oopsie"and then close these holes once discovered.