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The New-Campus Edition Friday, January 19, 2018

Apple Says It Will Decide New Campus Site Without An Auction, by Stephen Nellis, Reuters

Apple’s new campus is unlikely to be located in California, where the tech company’s headquarters are housed at its sleek “spaceship” Apple Park campus in Cupertino, or in Texas, where it has facilities in Austin that house customer service and some computer assembly operations, said Cook in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday.

“We’ve narrowed the list a lot,” Cook said of potential sites. “We wanted to narrow it so we prevent this auction kind of process that we want to stay out of.”

Apple Is Blocking An App That Detects Net Neutrality Violations From The App Store, by Jason Koebler, Motherboard

“I probably could have gotten away with calling it a speed test,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to lie to get it published.”

Because Wehe is basically just making requests to Choffnes’s server at Northeastern (which he controls), there is no reason to think that the data it returns is inaccurate, and Apple’s suggestion that people receive no benefit from knowing they’re being throttled would seem to ignore the widespread public outrage about the FCC’s recent vote to repeal net neutrality.

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Update: After this article was published, Apple told Dave Choffnes that his iPhone app, designed to detect net neutrality violations, will be allowed in the iTunes App Store. According to Choffnes, Apple contacted him and explained that the company has to deal with many apps that don't do the things they claim to do. Apple asked Choffnes to provide a technical description of how his app is able to detect if wireless telecom providers throttle certain types of data, and 18 hours after he did, the app was approved.

Office For Mac Finally Has Real-time Collaboration In 16.9.0 Update, by Samuel Axon, Ars Technica

Microsoft has released a major Office update for Mac. Update 16.9.0 finally brings long-anticipated real-time collaboration features and automatic cloud saving. Notably, the Mac version of this software is now built from the same codebase as the Windows version, which means that Office shares a codebase across all platforms for the first time in 20 years.

The Mac version of Office has often lagged behind Windows in features (some periods have been better than others). But this change could lay the groundwork for better parity moving forward. A shared codebase doesn't necessarily mean everything will be the same, but it does mean that supporting all platforms (Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android) will be simpler on Microsoft's end.

No, Apple Is Not Creating 20,000 Jobs Because Of The Tax Bill, by Jordan Weissmann, Slate

Apple has long paid an extremely low tax rate, and it is only really bringing its overseas profits “home” on paper. In reality, the company has always been able to access that money by borrowing against it at dirt cheap rates, which it’s previously done to fund dividends and buybacks for its investors. The specific investments Apple announced today, such as the more than $10 billion it plans to spend on new data centers to support its growing cloud-based businesses like Apple Music, are things it likely would have needed to do not matter what happened in Washington.

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Apple did not announce a $350 billion investment in the U.S. economy today. It’s not even clear Apple announced it was actually increasing its domestic investment. It certainly did not announce that it was creating jobs because of Trump’s economic magic. The company announced its tax bill and, in the same breath, made some promises about capital expenditures in the states. Then it let the press and conservatives fill in the blank. I guess it’s a clever strategy, if you’re quietly trying to pander to this White House.

Stuff

Apple Overhauls App Store Web Interface With New iOS-like Design, by Chance Miller, 9to5Mac

The new redesign takes cues from the all-new App Store in iOS 11, which offers larger images, a focus on curation and reviews, and more.

It’s Time For Apple To Build A Less Addictive iPhone, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

Deeper control over notifications is something iOS desperately needs at this point.

Develop

Leading European Technical Colleges Adopt Apple’s Everyone Can Code Initiative, by Apple

Apple today announced 70 colleges and universities in Europe have adopted Everyone Can Code, a comprehensive program designed by Apple to help everyone learn to build mobile apps. These colleges and universities are adopting Apple’s App Development with Swift curriculum, helping to create opportunities for all students and equipping them with the skills they need to pursue careers in the booming app economy.

Notes

The Man Trying To Fix Mount Everest's Towering Poop Problem, by Sarah Emerson, Motherboard

More than 26,000 pounds of human excrement is dumped at Mount Everest’s Base Camp annually. There, it remains, fetid in blue barrels (equipped with toilet seats!), until Sherpa porters can transport it to Gorak Shep, a frozen lakebed that’s become Everest’s ad-hoc landfill.

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“You can’t keep putting [excrement] in open pits near water sources and not expect to see an environmental problem,” Porter said.

Their solution? Convert all that waste into usable power with something called a “biogas digester.”

Bottom of the Page

My guess of the new office being likely to be in Texas was wrong. (I did not watch that ABC video.)

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Aren't there scientists working somewhere to invent some genetic modifications or something that will allow us humans to live without needing to poop?

Or would that rob too much attention away from Facebook?

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Thanks for reading.