The company confirmed to Recode it is buying Turi, which earlier in life was known as both GraphLab and Dato, It grew out of the GraphLab open-source project, which companies such as Pandora used to power recommendations.
In addition to Turi, recent AI acquisitions by Apple include:
Perceptio, “a startup developing technology to let companies run advanced artificial intelligence systems on smartphones without needing to share as much user data.”
Vocal IQ, “the world’s first self-learning dialogue API — putting real, natural conversation between people and their devices.”
Emotient, “a startup that uses artificial-intelligence technology to read people’s emotions by analyzing facial expressions.”
An Apple ID and iTunes purchases have helped investigators find and arrest Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents (KAT). The U.S. government apparently identified an iCloud email address belonging to Vaulin, and sought a court order compelling Apple to offer iTunes purchase activity for that address.
While this case was not necessarily a strong example of law enforcement’s capabilities (this guy was just careless), keep the following in mind: Just because encryption is used (and we don’t know if it was or not by this person), authorities can still determine a lot just by examining call, messaging, and other connection-related metadata (update aka, traffic analysis).
Years ago, I worked on a network analysis project for the intelligence community. Even though the client never gave us details, it was clear they were confident that by knowing 1) who owns the accounts involved in any communications and 2) the patterns of those communications (frequency, length of time, location data, etc.), they had enough information to determine the threat posed by that activity. There is a lot law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies can do with the massive amount of information they already collect without a warrant, breaking encryption, or any illegal violation of privacy.
Plagued by counterfeits and unauthorized selling on the online shopping site, the sandals company will no longer supply products to Amazon in the U.S. starting Jan. 1. Additionally, Birkenstock won’t authorize third-party merchants to sell on the site, according to a letter the company sent to several thousand retail partners on July 5.
And from a previous piece on CNBC, also by Ari Levy:
Earlier this month, CNBC.com reported on the scores of legitimate sellers that are hurting because fraudsters are knocking off their products and utilizing tactics such as paying for reviews, jumping into their listings and taking advantage of loopholes in Amazon’s logistics system. For example, Amazon commingles inventory from distributors at its fulfillment centers, so authentic products and fakes can get mixed together.
This is all stunning and despicable, and I wonder if Jeff Bezos even gives a shit.
It’s curious why this isn’t a bigger story. Amazon’s reputation has been dinged for years, first by reports of its ruthless personnel management practices (whether or not many of those practices are ethical is up for debate):
But this could be much worse for Amazon. Are you going to feel confident buying something on their site knowing you might get a knock-off? And if you are a business, are you going to tolerate damage to your brand?
The dependence that so many businesses have on Amazon is a major reason why the company hasn’t suffered financially from the counterfeit surge. Amazon’s global network of warehouses and data centers, coupled with a highly sophisticated and efficient delivery system, have produced consistent sales growth and drawn the love of Wall Street. The stock is up 52 percent in the past year and is trading near $743.
Many companies have gone all-in with Amazon and are completely reliant on them as a commerce and fulfillment platform. Birkenstock is apparently in a better position than most. As stated in the latest CNBC piece, it is privately-held and is experiencing a revival in the market, so it can walk away from Amazon and see how things go.
I buy things on Amazon occasionally, but I look for alternative sources first, and I do that more frequently than I used to. And going forward… even more frequently.
Sen. John McCain warned Google and Apple executives Thursday that the Senate Armed Services Committee “has subpoena power” that could compel them to testify on why their encryption systems on newer smartphones are not accessible to law enforcement operating under court orders.
The Arizona Republican, who chairs the panel, said, “There’s an urgency” to finding a solution to the matter of protecting privacy while also not closing out police, prosecutors and intelligence agencies from lawfully pursuing criminals and terrorists.
At the start of the hearing, McCain noted that Tim Cook, president of Apple, declined to attend the session. “This is unacceptable,” he noted of Cook’s reluctance to appear, as the hearing neared its end.
McCain is grandstanding to put pressure on these tech companies, and he also may not actually be aware of the dangers in forcing companies to put back doors into their systems. McCain should speak with his GOP colleague, Senator Lindsay Graham, who has changed his opinion about encryption back doors now that he’s made the effort to learn more about it.
Some refresher pieces from security experts about the problems with back doors into systems to bypass encryption (spoiler: they always compromise security):
Apple developed the curriculum for Swift Playgrounds itself, based on what its own software engineers think is the best way to learn software engineering. This isn’t a purely academic exercise: Swift Playgrounds is designed to get you thinking like a coder, decomposing problems and applying logic. “It’s made by Apple, by the people who write the real software,” said Tim Triemstra, who handles product marketing for Apple’s developer tools, “so we’re teaching programming how it’s actually done.”
I haven’t tried it yet, but this is pretty cool for kids, and sounds like it is at least fun and maybe even useful for adults who want to get started learning Swift.
Things are bad, but I would posit that they have been this way for as far back into American history as you want to go. What has changed is the amount of information available to the average citizen. Thanks to cellphones and people employing social networking to spread news quickly, what goes on minute to minute has crossed the line into overload.
And (emphasis below is mine):
The despicable litanies of willfully ignorant denial and misinformation I have heard spouted in the last several days by pieces of shit like Rudy Giuliani all but ensure that things will get worse. The mainstream media outlets allow this utter crap to slide by unchallenged and, by doing so, legitimize falsehoods that could get people killed. Ratings-based, 24/7, for-profit media is the complete death of true journalism and a catapult for propaganda.
The reason this ratings-driven news industry succeeds is our own laziness, and we get what we collectively deserve. Very few of us seem to ask tough questions or do much critical thinking or even our own thinking. So many people want to be told what to think. So for all these folks, there is an entire industry waiting to serve whatever they want to believe, all day long. It’s not strange, then, that journalists too often shirk responsibility for accurate reporting and real analysis. They are satisfying demand. It is certainly not all news organizations and journalists, but it is becoming troublingly widespread.
And it happens on both sides, the political left and right. Willful ignorance has become universally desired. The actual truth is under-appreciated. And the robots, oh, the robots are coming.
Anyway, the focus on the media is not the primary theme of the Rollins article. The media’s loss of its shit and society’s acceptance of that is a theme I’m hung up on, so I pulled it out and highlighted it, maybe even dwelled a little. The article is really about prejudice and our split society:
If white America experienced a fraction of what black America deals with regarding law enforcement, incarceration, the court system, employment and countless other facts of life, they would immediately and collectively lose their minds.
We who are not in that America have had no idea what it’s like. But now, because of photo and video capabilities of mobile phones combined with social media, we are getting an awful glimpse.
Are you frustrated with some of the technology companies’ [reluctance] to take down extremist content from their sites? You testified recently about Twitter’s decision to block intelligence agencies from using its data-mining service, Dataminr.
I’m frustrated that [in certain parts of] the private sector, there’s insufficient understanding of just how serious the threat is to national security. Believe me, people here at CIA have fought their whole lives to protect liberties. [Censorship] is the last thing we want, but I I think a lot of these companies, because of their attitudes and their positions, are frustrating the rule of law.
What are their attitudes?
They’re going to develop certain types of technologies that are going to be impenetrable to anybody, and even if they —
What’s the attitude?
The attitude is that the U.S government is “them” — almost a we versus them. I think as American citizens, whether in the public or the private sector, there needs to be a recognition that the government has obligations to protect the general welfare and public security. Who do they think makes up the FBI and CIA and NSA? American men and women from every state, carrying out their responsibilities as faithfully as they can to protect their fellow citizens. Have mistakes been made? Absolutely. Are there some individuals who have abused their authority? Yes. But in the grand scheme of things, what the government can do to safeguard the country and protect its citizens is more [important].
The encryption debate seems to be dormant right now, but it’s hard to believe it will be out of the news for long. Clearly, people in the intelligence community have a huge responsibility made harder by encrypted data. But as Brennan himself acknowledges, very interestingly, there have been individuals (in government) who have abused their authority and mistakes have been made. Like Bloomberg’s recent editorial, Brennan sees this as an issue where the public should simply trust the government. After all, he says, employees of the FBI, CIA, and NSA are all just “American men and women from every state carrying out their responsibilities…”
Our principles in a free society once again align or collide with technology improvements (depending on your perspective). The choice: The government decides what private information from any of us is available to them (I’ll use the loaded but accurate term again – police state), or each of us has a right to protect our private information as we see fit.
The Notebook 7 Spin has a remarkable trackpad. It’s every bit as intuitive and responsive as the Mac trackpad (the gold standard). There are no misclicks. No accidental icon draggings. No “oops” right clicks when you meant to click left. The trackpad doesn’t feel buggy and the mouse doesn’t hop around the screen as if possessed. For a Windows machine it’s exceptional.
I’m sure it’s a good laptop. But it weighs five pounds, gets only six hours of battery life, has a gimmicky “HDR mode,” and a trackpad that doesn’t feel buggy like other Windows laptops. That’s what Apple should have given us?
