MyAppleMenu

The Overtime-Interns Edition Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Apple’s iPhone X Assembled By Illegal Student Labour, by Yuan Yang, Financial Times

Six high school students told the Financial Times they routinely work 11-hour days assembling the iPhone X at a factory in Zhengzhou, China, which constitutes illegal overtime for student interns under Chinese law.

[...]

The students, aged 17 to 19, said they were told that a three-month stint at the factory was required “work experience” that they had to complete in order to graduate. [...]

When contacted about the students’ complaints, Apple and Foxconn acknowledged they had discovered cases of student interns working overtime and said they were taking remedial action. But both companies said the students were working voluntarily.

No, iPhone 7 Plus Can't Take Portrait Lighting Photos, But..., by Rene Ritchie, iMore

iPhone 7 Plus can't take Portrait Lighting photos in real-time the way iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X can. Taking Portrait Mode photos can already feel slow and can peg the A10 Fusion. iPhone 7 Plus try and replicate the process but it would be even slower — to the point of being a bad user experience. [...]

What Steve is referring to is something different. While iPhone 7 Plus and A10 Fusion can't take Portrait Lighting photos fast enough in real-time, they could apply the effect in post-production. (Though it may lose out on additional A11 Bionic-specific advantages, including around the face detection used to apply the effect.)

[...]

My guess is the company chose not to implement Portrait Lighting at all on iPhone 7 Plus if it couldn't do it fully and completely.

Skype Vanishes From App Stores In China, Including Apple’s, by Paul Mozur, New York Times

For almost a month, Skype, the internet phone call and messaging service, has been unavailable on a number of sites where apps are downloaded in China, including Apple’s app store in the country.

“We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law. Therefore these apps have been removed from the app store in China,” an Apple spokeswoman said Tuesday in an emailed statement responding to questions about Skype’s disappearance from the app store. “These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business.”

Why Is Apple Promoting The Louis C.K. App?, by Tess Cagle, Daily Dot

Apple TV users on Twitter pointed out that the promotion seemed inappropriate and ill-timed.

OSX.Proton Spreading Through Fake Symantec Blog, by Thomas Reed, Security Boulevard

The fake post promotes a program called “Symantec Malware Detector,” supposedly to detect and remove the malware. No such program actually exists.

Unfortunately, links to the fake post have been spreading on Twitter. Some of the accounts tweeting the link appear to be fake accounts, but others seem to be legitimate. Given the fact that the primary goal of the Proton malware is to steal passwords, these could be hacked accounts whose passwords were compromised in a previous Proton outbreak. However, they could also simply be the result of people being tricked into thinking the fake blog post is real.

Can A.I. Be Taught To Explain Itself?, by Cliff Kuang, New York Times

It has become commonplace to hear that machines, armed with machine learning, can outperform humans at decidedly human tasks, from playing Go to playing “Jeopardy!” We assume that is because computers simply have more data-crunching power than our soggy three-pound brains. Kosinski’s results suggested something stranger: that artificial intelligences often excel by developing whole new ways of seeing, or even thinking, that are inscrutable to us. It’s a more profound version of what’s often called the “black box” problem — the inability to discern exactly what machines are doing when they’re teaching themselves novel skills — and it has become a central concern in artificial-intelligence research. In many arenas, A.I. methods have advanced with startling speed; deep neural networks can now detect certain kinds of cancer as accurately as a human. But human doctors still have to make the decisions — and they won’t trust an A.I. unless it can explain itself.

Stuff

Scrivener 3 For macOS Is More Flexible And Powerful Than Ever For Long-Form Writing, by John Voorhees, MacStories

In version 3, Scrivener has added a powerful bookmarking feature that supplements the existing search functionality. Bookmarks are available in the inspector pane on the right-hand side of the app. Bookmarks can be associated with a project or an individual document and applied to documents in the current project, elsewhere on your Mac, or even on the Internet.

[...]

The update to Scrivener also extends the app’s metadata system. Metadata helps organize documents, research, and other aspects of a writing project by associating bits of information with items.

Top Apps For Introducing Your Kids To Music, by The Gazette

All children have a natural affinity for music, and whether they enjoy singing along to Swifty or the Biebster in the bath, or making their own racket, there’s heaps of evidence suggesting musical learning is beneficial.

[...]

Here are some cool apps for kids to explore the world of music.

5 Tips For Using An iPad In Your Kitchen, by Matt Elliott, CNET

The iPad is a versatile kitchen tool. It can act as cookbook, kitchen timer and unit converter. Here is a handful of tips to make the iPad the most helpful kitchen aid for the holidays -- or any night of the week.

Bottom of the Page

Siri cannot hear me when the iPhone is playing music?

~

Thanks for reading.