To Like or Not to Like
You Like Me, You Really Like Me Instagram has made a lot of tweaks to its user experience lately, like removing the following tab (simultaneously making it harder to stalk people and easier for us to like really embarrassing things) and changing the “explore” experience. But now it’s doing something that’s got opinions very …
California Dreaming
Fitbit is Dead. Long Live Fitbit. Last week we talked about the possible sale of Fitbit to Google’s parent company Alphabet. Well, it has now been confirmed that the struggling wearable company will be purchased for an eye-watering $2.1 billion. There are certainly plenty of people who think Google is actually looking to throw …
Watch and Listen
Minority Report Here at BiTE HQ we try to be positive about the integration of technology and human life, and that’s incredibly easy to do. Impossible things happen every day — jetpacks and commercial space travel, mind-controlled prostheses and bionic exoskeletons. Because technology is amoral, responsible engineers and scientists are working to ensure we use …
Copyright trolls, the NSA, and a Failing Zynga
Copyright troll smackdown, part II Hated “copyright troll” firm Prenda Law got its just comeuppance this week, when the 9th Circuit tore it a proverbial new one while hearing oral arguments against the ruinous sanctions imposed two years ago by Judge Otis Wright. Continuing their masochistic tour of US courts, Prenda’s principals unsuccessfully argued that …
Android Privacy, Facebook’s App Store, and the FCC
I’m in Ur Apps Privacy-minded Android users got a shock this week when Carnegie Mellon announced the results of a recent app privacy study. It turns out that dozens of popular apps track their users’ locations to within a 50-meter radius, approximately every three minutes. Yep, your apps know more about your whereabouts than your …
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Facebook, Twitter, Uber…all got kinda gross
If I’m not free to embarrass myself on Facebook, what is the world coming to? You’d think that after the fallout over their emotional manipulation experiment, Facebook would become the very model of discretion and privacy, and knock it off with the machiavellian shenanigans already. Just because they have access to staggering amounts of personal …
What is Apple thinking?!
Apple’s latest round of App Store capriciousness indicates a huge threat to their long-term future. Apple certainly has it’s share of naysayers and doom-predictors, and there’s no shortage of people who are waiting in line to give Tim Cook advice (or call for his replacement). In general, I would disagree with all of that. Tim …
AT&T (again), CAPTCHA’s fall, Microsoft’s latest fails
Big business v. small town We’re starting to think that AT&T is a firm believer in the “all PR is good PR” theory, since this is the second time in a single week they’ve made headlines for pretty sketchy behavior. After Wednesday’s interesting admission that they’re moving ahead with expansion plans regardless of the outcome …
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