Apple Pay Is Already Bigger Than All Competitors Combined, Says CEO Tim Cook


Tim Cook.

Tim Cook. Paul Sakuma/AP Photo



LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Citing figures from partners Visa and Mastercard, Apple CEO Tim Cook says that his company’s week-old digital payments service, Apple Pay, is already more successful than all other smartphone payment services combined.


“Visa and Mastercard. We talked to these guys today, and they told us that if you sum up everyone else that’s in contact-less mobile payments at the point of sale, we’re already number one,” Cook said on Monday evening at the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJD conference in Laguna Beach, California. “We’re more than the total of the other guys.”


Apple unveiled Apple Pay last month, alongside the company’s first wearable, the Apple Watch, and the service went live last week, with the arrival of the latest iPhones.


Many others have offered similar services, from PayPal to Google. But Apple is in a unique position to finally expand smartphone payments to a mainstream audience. With the iPhone, the company controls both the hardware and the software needed to operate a mobile payments service, and it has the clout to establish the necessary partnerships with credit card companies, banks, and merchants. At launch, Apple had established partnerships with all the major credit cards companies—American Express, MasterCard, and Visa—and it said that the service would be accepted at more than 220,000 merchants locations.


That said, we’ve already seen some push back from certain merchants. According to reports, drugstores chains CVS and Riteaid have blocked Apple Pay, apparently because they want to roll out a competing service, and Cook acknowledged that there are still difficulties ahead. “I think it’s a skirmish,” he said. “We have a lot more to go. We have a lot of merchants to sign up. We have a lot more banks to sign up. And we have the whole rest of the world. We are only in the U.S. right now.”


Before Cook took the conference stage, Jack Ma, founder of China ecommerce giant Alibaba, said he was interested in establishing a partnership between Apple Pay and his company’s payments services, Alipay, and Cook indicated that he and Ma would be discussing such a think in the coming week.



Alibaba CEO Jack Ma Vows To Pour Cash Into Silicon Valley


Jack Ma.

Jack Ma. Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images



LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — Alibaba founder Jack Ma says that his company—the Chinese ecommerce giant that recently debuted on Wall Street—is set to expand its investments in the U.S. tech market.


“We’ve invested a lot in this space and we’re going to invest more,” Ma said on Monday evening at the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJD conference in Laguna Beach, California, referring Alibaba’s recent launch of a stateside ecommerce site called 11 Main. “If I come to USA, I want to thank USA. I got my inspirations from Silicon Valley…It’s our time to come here and invest in Silicon Valley.”


With its $25-billion debut on the New York Stock Exchange this past September, Alibaba became one of the most valuable tech companies on the planet, and Ma took his place as China’s richest person—at least on paper. With services such as the Amazon-esque Tmall, the eBay-like Taobao, the online payments service Alipay, and the wholesale business-to-business commerce site Alibaba.com, the company dominates ecommerce in China—the fastest growing ecommerce market in the world—but Ma and company are aiming for more.


Alibaba has already invested in a wide range U.S. tech startups. Earlier this year, it launched a “beta” test version of a 11 Main. And on Monday, Ma indicated the company will continue to make similar investments stateside. “It’s just a start,” Ma said of 11 Main.


Part of his aim, he said, is to help U.S. companies play a greater role in the Chinese market. “How can I sell more American small business products to China?” he said.


As he interviewed Ma on an outdoor stage at a Laguna Beach resort, Wall Street Journal editor Dennis Berman asked Ma if he’s interested in acquiring eBay or PayPal, and Ma demurred. But when Berman asked whether Alibaba would somehow dovetail its Alipay online payments service with Apple Pay, the new payments service from Tim Cook and company, Ma said he was “very interested” in such a partnership.


Apparently. Apple CEO Tim Cook feels much the same way. Following the interview with Ma, Cook took the stage, and he indicated that Apple and Alibaba would be discussing a partnership in the coming week.



Automatic’s App Will Teach Teen Drivers Without Spying on Them


License+, a new driver program from Automatic, is built on communication, not consequences.

License+, a new driver program from Automatic, is built on communication, not consequences. Automatic



If we can be real for a moment, it is maybe a little insane that we let 16-year-olds drive. Teenagers crash cars a lot, and it’s hard to imagine today’s panoply of harmless-seeming smartphone distractions making new drivers any safer. Of course, you can’t mention this to a 16-year-old, because God, Mom, I passed the driving test, didn’t I? The government trusts me so why don’t you? That gets to what’s smart about Automatic’s new driver program. It doesn’t try to catch youngsters being bad drivers. It just gives them a chance to prove they’re being good ones.

License+ comes as an update to the Automatic app, available today. It lets new drivers enroll in a 100-hour program, using the company’s http://ift.tt/1wwioQG">car-tracking dongle to give drivers a score based on behavior like observing the speed limit and braking properly. In addition to supplying new drivers with the app’s standard audio feedback, License+ also has badges and medals for various safe driving achievements, like racking up 20 hours of highway driving, or going 10 days without slamming on the brakes.


Parents only get abstracted GPS data on their web dashboard.

Parents only get abstracted GPS data on their web dashboard. Automatic



The most noteworthy thing about the program is the way it flips the model for this sort of thing on its head. Parents understandably like the idea of tracking their kids behind the wheel, and most products have been based on this sort of monitoring approach. When Automatic talked to parents about what they were looking for in a new driver product, more than a few made it clear they were interested in NSA-level surveillance.


But Automatic didn’t think that’s really what parents wanted. “The reason people say monitoring is because that’s what’s on the shelves, that’s what people know,” says Steve Bishop, the designer who led the development of License+. What parents really desired, the company suspected, was a way to make sure their kids were learning how to drive responsibly.


To this end, tracking and monitoring systems can be detrimental. These punitive products make for an adversarial relationship between new drivers and their parents. Worse, they’re designed for parents, not drivers. “They often don’t address the teen at all. They’re completely left out of the equation,” Bishop says.


Automatic wanted to do something different. “The big insight was to focus on communication rather than consequences,” Bishop says. That meant creating something that would be attractive to teens and their parents alike.


Drivers can earn badges and medals for various skills and achievements.

Drivers can earn badges and medals for various skills and achievements. Automatic





You can see this approach in the way License+ treats parents and drivers differently. Teens, for example, get access to fine-grained GPS data through Automatic’s smartphone app. Parents only get to review the data through a web dashboard, where it’s abstracted to the city-level. In other words, the software still offers an overview of activity behind the wheel, but it won’t let parents bust their young driver for being at a girlfriend’s house when they said they were at band practice. “We want to treat the teens the same way we do with adults and give them a modicum of privacy,” Bishop says.

This is a small but powerful design decision. Automatic’s dongle offers an unprecedented level of detail on drivers’ activity, but in this case, the company’s designers realized that withholding some of that data was the only way to get the interaction they wanted. Similar thinking informed the 100-hour time frame for the program. Automatic could’ve let parents set this number themselves, or they could’ve made it so that youngsters had to stay under the program’s yoke until certain achievements were garnered, but instead, they intentionally opted for a hard stop. It serves both parties.


“The parent knows they’ve got 100 hours to coach their teen,” Bishop says. “But the teen knows this isn’t forever.”



How Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Compares to Other Streaming Dongles


firestick-inline

Amazon



Today, Amazon got into the streaming-stick game with the announcement of the $39 Fire TV Stick, an HDMI-port plugin for your HDTV that will replicate much of the functionality of the full-size Fire TV. Existing Amazon Prime members can preorder the stick for just $19 in the next couple of days, but it won’t ship until November 19, according to Amazon’s site.


It’ll have a few differentiating factors compared to the rapidly expanding field of streaming sticks. Those include a dual-core processor that should mean zippy reaction times, more onboard storage than its competition, and second-screen treats for Amazon tablet users that include X-Ray sync with onscreen content. Like the full-size Fire TV box, the stick will also offer faster load times for Amazon’s streaming content via the “ASAP” feature, and it’ll come with a free month of Prime.


But how does it compare to the Google Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick, which will be the new micro-streamer’s obvious competitors? They’ll all fit in your pocket, but here’s how they’ll fit into your life.









































































































Fire TV Stick Chromecast Roku Stick
Price $39; $19 for Amazon Prime members through Oct. 29.$35$50
Connectivity Dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/nSingle-band (2.4GHz) 802.11b/g/nDual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n
Comes with remote? Yes.No.Yes.
Does the remote come with batteries? Yes.N/A.Yes.
Will this streaming stick stream Styx? Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Plex, Amazon Music)Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Plex, Google Play Music)Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Slacker, Amazon Cloud Player)
App store Amazon Appstore. You download apps directly to the stick from its onscreen interface.Google Play Store. You download compatible apps to your phone, tablet, or laptop and “cast” from your device to TV.Roku Channel Store. You download apps directly to the stick from its onscreen interface.
What’s missing? HBO Go, Rdio, Vudu.Amazon Instant Video—although you can stream it to your TV from a browser using the Google Cast extension in Chrome.Nothing, it has all that and a bag of chips.
Does it have a channel devoted entirely to 1950s sex-education videos? No.No.Yes.
Storage 8GB + 5GB free storage on Amazon Cloud Drive2GB256MB
TV input HDMIHDMIHDMI
Do I have to plug it in? Yes, via included USB cable/charger.Yes, via included USB cable/charger.Yes, via included USB cable/charger.
Does it have HBO Go? No.Yes.Yes.
Can I watch HBO shows anyway? Yes. Amazon Instant Video has a lot of HBO shows, such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Eastbound & Down.Only on HBO Go.Yes. On both Amazon Instant Video and HBO Go.
Why would you buy it? Loads Amazon content quickly due to ASAP; you have an HDX tablet or Fire Phone you want to “fling” stuff from; you want a free month of Amazon Prime; has good CPU and audio specs.You want a quick and easy way to use your TV as a big second screen for anything you watch on your mobile device or laptop.You want the best overall streaming selection.
Why wouldn’t you buy it? You don’t use Amazon services much and/or you already pay for HBO.You’d like a polished streamer experience and/or want to use a real remote.You want to mirror your laptop screen on your TV and/or you have less than $50.
Star sign Capricorn/Aquarius cuspSagittariusTaurus


ACLU Calls Schools’ Policy to Search Devices and ‘Approve’ Kids’ Web Posts Unconstitutional


the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students.

The Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students. Getty Images



A school board in Tennessee is being accused of violating the constitutional rights of students over a policy that allows school officials to search any electronic devices students bring to campus and to monitor and control what students post on social media sites.


The broadly written policy also allows schools to monitor any communications sent through or stored on school networks, which would essentially allow the school to read the content of stored and transmitted email.


The policy (.pdf) is intended to “protect students and adults from obscene information,” “restrict access to materials that are harmful to minors” and help secure the school’s network from malware.


But parts of the policy are so broadly written, they constitute clear violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They say the policy oversteps the school’s authority and exhibits “a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitutional rights” of students.


Disciplinary actions for failing to follow the rules are also problematic, the groups say. Under the policy, failure to comply can result in “loss of network privileges, confiscation of computer equipment, suspension … and/or criminal prosecution.”


The Tennessee policy would allow authorities to seize and search a device for no compelling reason.


The groups note that denying students access to school computers and networks that are needed for their education essentially denies them the right to an equivalent education that other students obtain. Requiring students to sign an agreement essentially waiving their constitutional rights is also not permissible.


The two groups sent a letter (.pdf) today to the Williamson County Board of Education after parent Daniel Pomerantz complained that he was forced to agree to the policy. He initially refused to sign the policy at the start of the school semester, but relented after the school prohibited his 5-year-old daughter from using the computers at Nolensville Elementary School without the agreement.


Daniel Pomerantz is accusing the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students.

Daniel Pomerantz is accusing the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students. Pomerantz Family



“The first time they were using the computers [in her classroom], they told her she had to go sit aside and do something else and she started to cry and complain,” Pomerantz told WIRED. “It was not a pleasant experience as a family. They told her it was all because of me, that [because] I wouldn’t do this was why she couldn’t learn on computers with all the other students.”


There are 41 schools in the Williamson school district, and the policy affects all 35,000 students.


The policy contains a number of points that on their face seem designed to protect the privacy and safety of students. For example, students must provide consent before their photo, name or work can be posted on a school web site or in a school publication. Students are also required to report any “electronically transmitted attacks” made by others.


But the sections pertaining to the school’s Bring Your Own Technology policy and other parts go too far, the civil liberties groups say. Students in grades three through twelve are allowed to bring their own electronic devices to school—smartphones, laptops, tablet computers, and eReaders—as long as they’re used for educational instruction purposes and the students use only the school’s Wi-Fi network to access the internet with the devices. Students in classes below the third grade are not allowed to bring computers, but are provided computers in class and still need to have their parents sign the agreement.


In the case of students who do bring devices to school, the policy allows the school to collect and examine any of the devices at any time for purposes of enforcing the policy, investigating student discipline issues, and “for any other school-related purpose,” a term not clearly defined in the policy. This would essentially force students to submit to “suspicionless searches” of their property.


The policy also gives school officials authority to determine if a student’s off-campus speech is “inappropriate.”


Courts have ruled that a school can conduct a search when there are reasonable grounds to suspect a student has broken the law or the rules of the school and when the search is narrowly tailored and conducted for a compelling purpose, such as deterring drug sales and use on campus. But the Tennessee policy would allow authorities to seize and search a device for no compelling reason. Searches, particularly of smartphones, can contain a lot of private and sensitive information not only about a student but about his or her family, opening students to embarrassment. The policy, however, does not define a “school-related purpose” nor does it specify whether authorities can extract data from the phone or how extracted data can be used.


Under the policy’s rules for using social media, students are not permitted to post any photos of other students or employees of the school district without permission from a teacher. But the policy also gives school officials authority to determine if a student’s off-campus speech is “inappropriate.”


Nolensville Elementary School.

Nolensville Elementary School. Handout



“Personal social media use, including use outside the school day, has the potential to result in disruption in the classroom,” the policy notes. “Students are subject to consequences for inappropriate, unauthorized, and illegal use of social media.”


But this policy amounts to prior restraint of speech by “allowing school officials to censor student speech in and out of school,” the ACLU of Tennessee and EFF note. The groups cite a Third Circuit Court ruling from 2011 that found that a school did not have the authority to punish a student for creating an off-campus MySpace profile of his principal that was considered lewd and offensive.


A section of the policy that pertains to network security provides that the school can monitor all network activity, and that student email accounts “are filtered for content and monitored by authorized personnel.” Furthermore, it says that a “mobile device management (MDM) client may be installed on their personal device for the purpose of managing the device while on the WCS network.”


“We want the schools to recognize that there are limits on their powers to search or monitor.”


This policy incorrectly assumes that “students have no reasonable expectation of privacy to data and communicates stored on or transmitted” through the school’s network, the civil liberties groups say. They cite a 2006 ruling involving a woman in the Navy, which found she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails she sent over a government server even though a banner advised her that she had no expectation of privacy and that her use of the government network was subject to monitoring.


Tom Castelli, legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, says it’s possible the school district didn’t intend to over-reach and just made a mistake.


“We hope this was just a case of they wanted to create a comprehensive policy and what they inadvertently created was something that covers more than maybe they intended,” he told WIRED. “That’s our hope that once we bring it to their attention that they’ll work with us to create a policy that fits what they need [while] not infringing on the rights of the students…We want the schools to recognize that there are limits on their powers to search or monitor…so they’re not thinking it’s okay to do these things.”


Castelli went on: “We want to nip an infringement in the bud before it happens.”



Stores Are Shunning Apple Pay, But They’ll Soon Change Their Minds


Apple Pay

Apple Pay. Alex Washburn / WIRED



Well, that didn’t take long. Apple Pay launched only a week ago, and it’s already unmasking major strife in the retail industry.


According to The New York Times and others, Rite Aid and CVS both blocked the use of Apple Pay over the weekend. Though neither company is saying why, one likely reason is a competing mobile payments app that a group of big retailers have been developing on their own.


But it’s a battle the stores won’t win.


Retailers including Walmart and Gap, as well as Rite Aid and CVS, are part of a consortium called Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, that have created an app called CurrentC. Apparently, CurrentC relies on scanning QR codes at the checkout counter, which makes it sound old-timey from the start compared to Apple Pay’s simple wave of the phone.


But ultimately, the real problem for retailers isn’t dated design. It’s the impetus behind the decision to try to go its own way in mobile payments. Shutting out Apple and its user experience expertise isn’t about doing what’s best for customers. It’s about what retailers perceive to be best for their bottom lines.


Cutting Out Credit Cards


Retailers have long had a love-hate relationship with credit card companies. On the one hand, credit cards make buying stuff easier, which retailers like. On the other hand, credit card companies charge merchants fees for every transaction, which they hate. And when you’re Walmart or CVS or Rite Aid, those fees add up. As what amounts to a new way to swipe a credit card, Apple Pay does nothing to change this dynamic. CurrentC, meanwhile, connects directly to users’ checking accounts, which cuts out the credit card companies and their fees. If only retailers could get lots of people to use their app, they could finally stick it to Visa and Mastercard.


But cutting out a frenemy isn’t a compelling starting point for creating a first-rate user experience, especially when design isn’t a core competency of your business. Shoppers don’t care about the behind-the-scenes woes that stem from stores and credit card companies not getting along. For Apple, by contrast, the bottom line and better design are perfectly aligned. The better the experience of paying with an iPhone, the more iPhones Apple sells. And the more iPhones Apple sells, the more people who will want to use them to pay.


It’s understandable that many retailers would initially balk at Apple Pay. Letting Apple colonize their checkout counters means ceding a degree of control and potentially spiking their own product before it even launches. For now, retailers have a choice to make: more sales thanks to Apple Pay versus theoretical savings on credit card transaction fees if users embrace CurrentC.


Why Would Anyone Use It


But that math only works if anyone is using CurrentC. And without innovative design—or the option of using your existing credit cards—as incentives, retailers will have to look to more conventional nudges to get customers to embrace an unfamiliar product. But the cost to retailers of marketing, discounts, and other rewards needed to get people to pay attention to yet one more app could eat up any advantage that comes from curbing the fees they pay. “I’d argue the spend required to get consumers to use it will be larger than the cost savings,” payments industry veteran Dudas said.


In the end, Apple enjoys the same advantage that gives it so much leverage in so many contexts: It controls the hardware and the software. Anyone who has an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus has a way to pay at the counter. And with 10 million sold the first weekend, that’s a lot of people with that ability. Retailers will have to work a lot harder to get customers to bother with their own app. In the meantime, those that refuse Apple Pay will be missing out on potential sales. And if your business ultimately relies on getting people to buy more stuff from you, giving customers one less way to pay doesn’t really make sense.


Or maybe it doesn’t really matter. After all, how many people probably turned and walked out of a CVS this weekend because they couldn’t pay with their shiny new phones? They just did what everyone else is still doing, everyday, everywhere: They pulled out a credit card.



NY Senator Calls for Renewed Crackdown on Dark Web Drug Sales


Sen. Charles Schumer on Feb. 6, 2014.

Sen. Charles Schumer on Feb. 6, 2014. J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo



Three years ago, New York Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference to pressure federal law enforcement to crack down on the Silk Road, the anonymous online drug market that had only just come to light. Now, over a year since that contraband bazaar was seized by the FBI, Schumer seems to have discovered that the dark web drug trade didn’t simply end with Silk Road’s demise—and he’s not happy about it.


In an open letter published Monday, Schumer called on Attorney General Eric Holder to renew the Justice Department’s pursuit of illegal drug sellers whose business has thrived on the anonymous Internet. He cited a report from his local Long Island newspaper Newsday that counted 40,000 listings for illegal drugs on the dark web—the anonymous portion of the Internet obscured by software like Tor and I2p—compared with just 20,000 a year earlier. (In fact, a report two months ago from the non-profit Digital Citizens Alliance puts the number even higher, at 47,000.) In his letter, Schumer asks Holder to “conduct a comprehensive review of federal efforts to address the expansion of narcotics trafficking on the internet.”


“Over the last several years, we have seen a treacherous and rapidly growing avenue develop for criminals to carry out illicit activities,” Schumer’s letter reads. “Though the internet has become essential to many Americans’ day-to-day lives, it has also helped to facilitate an illegal market for dangerous narcotics including prescription drugs, cocaine, and even heroin. The ‘dark web’ has assisted in shielding these criminals from law enforcement.”


Schumer’s letter could signal renewed federal attention to dark net markets that have only diversified and flourished since October of last year, when 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht was arrested and later charged with creating and managing the Silk Road’s billion-dollar-plus drug trade. Only a month after that bust, a new “Silk Road 2″ launched to replace the original site. At last check, it offered more than 13,000 drug listings, according to the Digital Citizens Alliance.


More than a dozen other sites have since launched to compete with Silk Road 2, and many have matched or surpassed the Silk Road and its sequel in popularity among anonymous drug traders. One, called Agora, now offers more total product listings than Silk Road 2. Another, called Evolution, is on track to outpace the Silk Road 2 in total listings in the coming months. Both offer more drug listings than the original Silk Road ever did, as well as other illicit products that the Silk Road didn’t permit, including firearms. Evolution also sells stolen credit card information, a sort of fencing that wouldn’t have been allowed under Silk Road’s strict adherence to supporting only victimless crime.


In a press statement included with his letter to Holder, Schumer said that the splintering of the dark web drug trade has only made it harder to control. In fact, none of the major drug sites that have appeared since the original Silk Road arrests have been successfully shut down by law enforcement, though Dutch police did seize a one dark web market called Utopia shortly after its creation in February. Three Silk Road 2 administrators were arrested late last year, but they had been tracked in the original Silk Road investigation, and their identifying information was likely obtained from Ross Ulbricht’s seized laptop.


Schumer’s statement also mentions Tor and bitcoin as software used by the dark web sites, references that will no doubt raise fears of regulation among those tools’ users for both legal and illegal activities.


Ulbricht, who has been charged with crimes that include narcotics and money laundering conspiracy, faces trial in January. The judge in his case ruled earlier this month against arguments that the FBI had violated his privacy rights by hacking into the Silk Road server without a warrant.


“With your help, the Silk Road was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013, and I am pleased that DOJ is currently prosecuting its operator and holding him accountable. ‎Regrettably, however, new sites have recently sprung up in Silk Road’s place,” Schumer writes in his letter to Holder. “I look forward to working with you and the Department of Justice to stem the growth of this dangerous and unregulated marketplace, and I eagerly await your response.”



Automatic’s App Will Teach Teen Drivers Without Spying on Them


License+, a new driver program from Automatic, is built on communication, not consequences.

License+, a new driver program from Automatic, is built on communication, not consequences. Automatic



If we can be real for a moment, it is maybe a little insane that we let 16-year-olds drive. Teenagers crash cars a lot, and it’s hard to imagine today’s panoply of harmless-seeming smartphone distractions making new drivers any safer. Of course, you can’t mention this to a 16-year-old, because God, Mom, I passed the driving test, didn’t I? The government trusts me so why don’t you? That gets to what’s smart about Automatic’s new driver program. It doesn’t try to catch youngsters being bad drivers. It just gives them a chance to prove they’re being good ones.

License+ comes as an update to the Automatic app, available today. It lets new drivers enroll in a 100-hour program, using the company’s http://ift.tt/1wwioQG">car-tracking dongle to give drivers a score based on behavior like observing the speed limit and braking properly. In addition to supplying new drivers with the app’s standard audio feedback, License+ also has badges and medals for various safe driving achievements, like racking up 20 hours of highway driving, or going 10 days without slamming on the brakes.


Parents only get abstracted GPS data on their web dashboard.

Parents only get abstracted GPS data on their web dashboard. Automatic



The most noteworthy thing about the program is the way it flips the model for this sort of thing on its head. Parents understandably like the idea of tracking their kids behind the wheel, and most products have been based on this sort of monitoring approach. When Automatic talked to parents about what they were looking for in a new driver product, more than a few made it clear they were interested in NSA-level surveillance.


But Automatic didn’t think that’s really what parents wanted. “The reason people say monitoring is because that’s what’s on the shelves, that’s what people know,” says Steve Bishop, the designer who led the development of License+. What parents really desired, the company suspected, was a way to make sure their kids were learning how to drive responsibly.


To this end, tracking and monitoring systems can be detrimental. These punitive products make for an adversarial relationship between new drivers and their parents. Worse, they’re designed for parents, not drivers. “They often don’t address the teen at all. They’re completely left out of the equation,” Bishop says.


Automatic wanted to do something different. “The big insight was to focus on communication rather than consequences,” Bishop says. That meant creating something that would be attractive to teens and their parents alike.


Drivers can earn badges and medals for various skills and achievements.

Drivers can earn badges and medals for various skills and achievements. Automatic





You can see this approach in the way License+ treats parents and drivers differently. Teens, for example, get access to fine-grained GPS data through Automatic’s smartphone app. Parents only get to review the data through a web dashboard, where it’s abstracted to the city-level. In other words, the software still offers an overview of activity behind the wheel, but it won’t let parents bust their young driver for being at a girlfriend’s house when they said they were at band practice. “We want to treat the teens the same way we do with adults and give them a modicum of privacy,” Bishop says.

This is a small but powerful design decision. Automatic’s dongle offers an unprecedented level of detail on drivers’ activity, but in this case, the company’s designers realized that withholding some of that data was the only way to get the interaction they wanted. Similar thinking informed the 100-hour time frame for the program. Automatic could’ve let parents set this number themselves, or they could’ve made it so that youngsters had to stay under the program’s yoke until certain achievements were garnered, but instead, they intentionally opted for a hard stop. It serves both parties.


“The parent knows they’ve got 100 hours to coach their teen,” Bishop says. “But the teen knows this isn’t forever.”



How Amazon’s Fire TV Stick Compares to Other Streaming Dongles


firestick-inline

Amazon



Today, Amazon got into the streaming-stick game with the announcement of the $39 Fire TV Stick, an HDMI-port plugin for your HDTV that will replicate much of the functionality of the full-size Fire TV. Existing Amazon Prime members can preorder the stick for just $19 in the next couple of days, but it won’t ship until November 19, according to Amazon’s site.


It’ll have a few differentiating factors compared to the rapidly expanding field of streaming sticks. Those include a dual-core processor that should mean zippy reaction times, more onboard storage than its competition, and second-screen treats for Amazon tablet users that include X-Ray sync with onscreen content. Like the full-size Fire TV box, the stick will also offer faster load times for Amazon’s streaming content via the “ASAP” feature, and it’ll come with a free month of Prime.


But how does it compare to the Google Chromecast and the Roku Streaming Stick, which will be the new micro-streamer’s obvious competitors? They’ll all fit in your pocket, but here’s how they’ll fit into your life.









































































































Fire TV Stick Chromecast Roku Stick
Price $39; $19 for Amazon Prime members through Oct. 29.$35$50
Connectivity Dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/nSingle-band (2.4GHz) 802.11b/g/nDual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n
Comes with remote? Yes.No.Yes.
Does the remote come with batteries? Yes.N/A.Yes.
Will this streaming stick stream Styx? Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Plex, Amazon Music)Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Plex, Google Play Music)Yes. (Pandora, Spotify, Rdio, Slacker, Amazon Cloud Player)
App store Amazon Appstore. You download apps directly to the stick from its onscreen interface.Google Play Store. You download compatible apps to your phone, tablet, or laptop and “cast” from your device to TV.Roku Channel Store. You download apps directly to the stick from its onscreen interface.
What’s missing? HBO Go, Rdio, Vudu.Amazon Instant Video—although you can stream it to your TV from a browser using the Google Cast extension in Chrome.Nothing, it has all that and a bag of chips.
Does it have a channel devoted entirely to 1950s sex-education videos? No.No.Yes.
Storage 8GB + 5GB free storage on Amazon Cloud Drive2GB256MB
TV input HDMIHDMIHDMI
Do I have to plug it in? Yes, via included USB cable/charger.Yes, via included USB cable/charger.Yes, via included USB cable/charger.
Does it have HBO Go? No.Yes.Yes.
Can I watch HBO shows anyway? Yes. Amazon Instant Video has a lot of HBO shows, such as The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Eastbound & Down.Only on HBO Go.Yes. On both Amazon Instant Video and HBO Go.
Why would you buy it? Loads Amazon content quickly due to ASAP; you have an HDX tablet or Fire Phone you want to “fling” stuff from; you want a free month of Amazon Prime; has good CPU and audio specs.You want a quick and easy way to use your TV as a big second screen for anything you watch on your mobile device or laptop.You want the best overall streaming selection.
Why wouldn’t you buy it? You don’t use Amazon services much and/or you already pay for HBO.You’d like a polished streamer experience and/or want to use a real remote.You want to mirror your laptop screen on your TV and/or you have less than $50.
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ACLU Calls Schools’ Policy to Search Devices and ‘Approve’ Kids’ Web Posts Unconstitutional


the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students.

The Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students. Getty Images



A school board in Tennessee is being accused of violating the constitutional rights of students over a policy that allows school officials to search any electronic devices students bring to campus and to monitor and control what students post on social media sites.


The broadly written policy also allows schools to monitor any communications sent through or stored on school networks, which would essentially allow the school to read the content of stored and transmitted email.


The policy (.pdf) is intended to “protect students and adults from obscene information,” “restrict access to materials that are harmful to minors” and help secure the school’s network from malware.


But parts of the policy are so broadly written, they constitute clear violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They say the policy oversteps the school’s authority and exhibits “a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitutional rights” of students.


Disciplinary actions for failing to follow the rules are also problematic, the groups say. Under the policy, failure to comply can result in “loss of network privileges, confiscation of computer equipment, suspension … and/or criminal prosecution.”


The Tennessee policy would allow authorities to seize and search a device for no compelling reason.


The groups note that denying students access to school computers and networks that are needed for their education essentially denies them the right to an equivalent education that other students obtain. Requiring students to sign an agreement essentially waiving their constitutional rights is also not permissible.


The two groups sent a letter (.pdf) today to the Williamson County Board of Education after parent Daniel Pomerantz complained that he was forced to agree to the policy. He initially refused to sign the policy at the start of the school semester, but relented after the school prohibited his 5-year-old daughter from using the computers at Nolensville Elementary School without the agreement.


Daniel Pomerantz is accusing the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students.

Daniel Pomerantz is accusing the Williamson County School District with violating the constitutional rights of students. Pomerantz Family



“The first time they were using the computers [in her classroom], they told her she had to go sit aside and do something else and she started to cry and complain,” Pomerantz told WIRED. “It was not a pleasant experience as a family. They told her it was all because of me, that [because] I wouldn’t do this was why she couldn’t learn on computers with all the other students.”


There are 41 schools in the Williamson school district, and the policy affects all 35,000 students.


The policy contains a number of points that on their face seem designed to protect the privacy and safety of students. For example, students must provide consent before their photo, name or work can be posted on a school web site or in a school publication. Students are also required to report any “electronically transmitted attacks” made by others.


But the sections pertaining to the school’s Bring Your Own Technology policy and other parts go too far, the civil liberties groups say. Students in grades three through twelve are allowed to bring their own electronic devices to school—smartphones, laptops, tablet computers, and eReaders—as long as they’re used for educational instruction purposes and the students use only the school’s Wi-Fi network to access the internet with the devices. Students in classes below the third grade are not allowed to bring computers, but are provided computers in class and still need to have their parents sign the agreement.


In the case of students who do bring devices to school, the policy allows the school to collect and examine any of the devices at any time for purposes of enforcing the policy, investigating student discipline issues, and “for any other school-related purpose,” a term not clearly defined in the policy. This would essentially force students to submit to “suspicionless searches” of their property.


The policy also gives school officials authority to determine if a student’s off-campus speech is “inappropriate.”


Courts have ruled that a school can conduct a search when there are reasonable grounds to suspect a student has broken the law or the rules of the school and when the search is narrowly tailored and conducted for a compelling purpose, such as deterring drug sales and use on campus. But the Tennessee policy would allow authorities to seize and search a device for no compelling reason. Searches, particularly of smartphones, can contain a lot of private and sensitive information not only about a student but about his or her family, opening students to embarrassment. The policy, however, does not define a “school-related purpose” nor does it specify whether authorities can extract data from the phone or how extracted data can be used.


Under the policy’s rules for using social media, students are not permitted to post any photos of other students or employees of the school district without permission from a teacher. But the policy also gives school officials authority to determine if a student’s off-campus speech is “inappropriate.”


Nolensville Elementary School.

Nolensville Elementary School. Handout



“Personal social media use, including use outside the school day, has the potential to result in disruption in the classroom,” the policy notes. “Students are subject to consequences for inappropriate, unauthorized, and illegal use of social media.”


The Tennessee policy engages in prior restraint of speech by “allowing school officials to censor student speech in and out of school,” the ACLU of Tennessee and EFF note. A Third Circuit Court ruling from 2011 found that a school did not have the authority to punish a student for creating an off-campus MySpace profile of his principal that was considered lewd and offensive.


A section of the policy that pertains to network security provides that the school can monitor all network activity, and that student email accounts “are filtered for content and monitored by authorized personnel.” Furthermore, it says that a “mobile device management (MDM) client may be installed on their personal device for the purpose of managing the device while on the WCS network.”


“We want the schools to recognize that there are limits on their powers to search or monitor.”


The policy assumes that “students have no reasonable expectation of privacy to data and communicates stored on or transmitted” through the school’s network, which is incorrect the civil liberties groups say. They cite a 2006 ruling involving a woman in the Navy, which found she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails she sent over a government server even though a banner advised her that she had no expectation of privacy and that her use of the government network was subject to monitoring.


Tom Castelli, legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, says it’s possible the school district didn’t intend to over-reach and just made a mistake.


“We hope this was just a case of they wanted to create a comprehensive policy and what they inadvertently created was something that covers more than maybe they intended,” he told WIRED. “That’s our hope that once we bring it to their attention that they’ll work with us to create a policy that fits what they need [while] not infringing on the rights of the students…We want the schools to recognize that there are limits on their powers to search or monitor…so they’re not thinking it’s okay to do these things.”


Castelli went on: “We want to nip an infringement in the bud before it happens.”



Stores Are Dropping Apple Pay. But They ‘ll Soon Change Their Tune


Apple Pay

Apple Pay. Alex Washburn / WIRED



Well, that didn’t take long. Apple Pay launched only a week ago, and it’s already unmasking major strife in the retail industry.


According to The New York Times and others, Rite Aid and CVS both blocked the use of Apple Pay over the weekend. Though neither company is saying why, one likely reason is a competing mobile payments app that a group of big retailers have been developing on their own.


But it’s a battle the stores won’t win.


Retailers including Walmart and Gap, as well as Rite Aid and CVS, are part of a consortium called Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, that have created an app called CurrentC. Apparently, CurrentC relies on scanning QR codes at the checkout counter, which makes it sound old-timey from the start compared to Apple Pay’s simple wave of the phone.


But ultimately, the real problem for retailers isn’t dated design. It’s the impetus behind the decision to try to go its own way in mobile payments. Shutting out Apple and its user experience expertise isn’t about doing what’s best for customers. It’s about what retailers perceive to be best for their bottom lines.


Cutting Out Credit Cards


Retailers have long had a love-hate relationship with credit card companies. On the one hand, credit cards make buying stuff easier, which retailers like. On the other hand, credit card companies charge merchants fees for every transaction, which they hate. And when you’re Walmart or CVS or Rite Aid, those fees add up. As what amounts to a new way to swipe a credit card, Apple Pay does nothing to change this dynamic. CurrentC, meanwhile, connects directly to users’ checking accounts, which cuts out the credit card companies and their fees. If only retailers could get lots of people to use their app, they could finally stick it to Visa and Mastercard.


But cutting out a frenemy isn’t a compelling starting point for creating a first-rate user experience, especially when design isn’t a core competency of your business. Shoppers don’t care about the behind-the-scenes woes that stem from stores and credit card companies not getting along. For Apple, by contrast, the bottom line and better design are perfectly aligned. The better the experience of paying with an iPhone, the more iPhones Apple sells. And the more iPhones Apple sells, the more people who will want to use them to pay.


It’s understandable that many retailers would initially balk at Apple Pay. Letting Apple colonize their checkout counters means ceding a degree of control and potentially spiking their own product before it even launches. For now, retailers have a choice to make: more sales thanks to Apple Pay versus theoretical savings on credit card transaction fees if users embrace CurrentC.


Why Would Anyone Use It


But that math only works if anyone is using CurrentC. And without innovative design—or the option of using your existing credit cards—as incentives, retailers will have to look to more conventional nudges to get customers to embrace an unfamiliar product. But the cost to retailers of marketing, discounts, and other rewards needed to get people to pay attention to yet one more app could eat up any advantage that comes from curbing the fees they pay. “I’d argue the spend required to get consumers to use it will be larger than the cost savings,” payments industry veteran Dudas said.


In the end, Apple enjoys the same advantage that gives it so much leverage in so many contexts: it controls the hardware and the software. Anyone who has an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus has a way to pay at the counter. And with 10 million sold the first weekend, that’s a lot of people with that ability. Retailers will have to work a lot harder to get customers to bother with their own app. In the meantime, those that refuse Apple Pay will be missing out on potential sales. And if your business ultimately relies on getting people to buy more stuff from you, giving customers one less way to pay doesn’t really make sense.


Or maybe it doesn’t really matter. After all, how many people probably turned and walked out of a CVS this weekend because they couldn’t pay with their shiny new phones? They just did what everyone else is still doing, everyday, everywhere: they pulled out a credit card.



NY Senator Calls for Renewed Crackdown on Dark Web Drug Sales


Sen. Charles Schumer on Feb. 6, 2014.

Sen. Charles Schumer on Feb. 6, 2014. J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo



Three years ago, New York Senator Chuck Schumer held a press conference to pressure federal law enforcement to crack down on the Silk Road, the anonymous online drug market that had only just come to light. Now, over a year since that contraband bazaar was seized by the FBI, Schumer seems to have discovered that the dark web drug world didn’t just end with Silk Road’s demise—and he’s not happy about it.


In an open letter published Monday, Schumer called on Attorney General Eric Holder to renew the Justice Department’s pursuit of illegal drug sellers whose business has thrived on the anonymous Internet. He cited a report from his local Long Island newspaper Newsday that counted 40,000 listings for illegal drugs on the dark web—the anonymous portion of the Internet obscured by software like Tor and I2p—compared with just 20,000 a year earlier. (In fact, a report two months ago from the non-profit Digital Citizens Alliance puts the number even higher, at 47,000.) In his letter, Schumer asks Holder to “conduct a comprehensive review of federal efforts to address the expansion of narcotics trafficking on the internet.”


“Over the last several years, we have seen a treacherous and rapidly growing avenue develop for criminals to carry out illicit activities,” Schumer’s letter reads. “Though the internet has become essential to many Americans’ day-to-day lives, it has also helped to facilitate an illegal market for dangerous narcotics including prescription drugs, cocaine, and even heroin. The ‘dark web’ has assisted in shielding these criminals from law enforcement.”


Schumer’s letter could signal renewed federal attention to dark net markets that have only diversified and flourished since October of last year, when 29-year-old Ross Ulbricht was arrested and later charged with creating and managing the Silk Road’s billion-dollar-plus drug trade. Only a month after that bust, a new “Silk Road 2″ launched to replace the original site. At last check, it offered more than 13,000 drug listings, according to the Digital Citizens Alliance.


More than a dozen other sites have since launched to compete with Silk Road 2, and many have matched or surpassed the Silk Road and its sequel in popularity among anonymous drug traders. One, called Agora, now offers more total product listings than Silk Road 2. Another, called Evolution, is on track to outpace the Silk Road 2 in total listings in the coming months. Both offer more drug listings than the original Silk Road ever did, as well as other illicit products that the Silk Road didn’t permit, including firearms. Evolution also sells stolen credit card information, a sort of fencing that wouldn’t have been allowed under Silk Road’s strict adherence to supporting only victimless crime.


In a press statement included with his letter to Holder, Schumer said that the splintering of the dark web drug trade has only made it harder to control. In fact, none of the major drug sites that have appeared since the original Silk Road arrests have been successfully shut down by law enforcement. Though three Silk Road 2 administrators were arrested late last year, they had been tracked in the original Silk Road investigation, and their identifying information was likely obtained from Ross Ulbricht’s seized laptop.


Schumer’s statement also mentions Tor and bitcoin as software used by the dark web sites, references that will no doubt raise fears of regulation among those tools’ users for both legal and illegal activities.


Ulbricht, who has been charged with crimes that include narcotics and money laundering conspiracy, faces trial in January. The judge in his case ruled earlier this month against arguments that the FBI had violated his privacy rights by hacking into the Silk Road server without a warrant.


“With your help, the Silk Road was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013, and I am pleased that DOJ is currently prosecuting its operator and holding him accountable. ‎Regrettably, however, new sites have recently sprung up in Silk Road’s place,” Schumer writes in his letter to Holder. “I look forward to working with you and the Department of Justice to stem the growth of this dangerous and unregulated marketplace, and I eagerly await your response.”