Jonathan Tarud

Bloomberg:

The third-largest U.S. wireless carrier unveiled what it claims is a patented customer-service program on Wednesday called Team of Experts. Subscribers who call or message for assistance will be assigned a group of employees to fix the issue.

This might sound like a corporate joke, but the few times I’ve had to interact with T-Mobile support has been via iMessage for business or their in app chat. My experience has been incredible so far.

For now, no matter how good your AI or chatbot is, a well trained human with full authority to get stuff done for you, will outperform any tech out there. Glad they are investing in customer support as a differentiatior.

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WSJ reporting:

The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users.

This sounds like an all around bad idea. Glad to hear some banks are walking away from these conversations.

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Good article from Mike Wuerthele writing for AppleInsider. For those that worry too much:

If you’re still worried about it, don’t sit on your router, and use your speaker function on your iPhone.

You can always buy tons of tin foil.

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Kate Conger reporting for Gizmodo:

Google’s unofficial motto has long been the simple phrase “don’t be evil.” But that’s over, according to the code of conduct that Google distributes to its employees. The phrase was removed sometime in late April or early May, archives hosted by the Wayback Machine show.

Being evil is now encouraged at Google?

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Isaiah Sarju’s post on HackerNoon:

VPNs are for everyone. This is why.

Yes. End of story. Stop reading and get one. Do it. Now.

Summarizes in relatively simple terms why you do need a VPN, especially if you use any type public Wifi.

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The researchers suggest, for example, that graphene could now be used to create new types of superconducting quantum devices for high-speed computing. Intriguingly, it might also be used to prove the existence of a mysterious form of superconductivity known as “p-wave” superconductivity, which academics have been struggling to verify for more than 20 years.

It amazes me how much research is being done on possible comercial applications for graphene. Everything from electronics to structures stronger than steel.

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Developing an in-house OS is fine as a bargaining chip during Android contract negotiations, but a new OS with no apps won’t resonate with customers when Android is available from every other OEM. Tizen hasn’t been able to compete with Android on smartphones, but Samsung has used it almost exclusively on smartphones and other “smart” electronics that don’t have much of an established app ecosystem.

How good of a bargaining chip could this be if it didn’t work for Windows OEMs back in the 90’s and Samsung recently. Google knows this. Not sure why Huawei doesn’t yet. 

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I did not know this about the iPhone camera:

As you may already know, existing iPhones start taking photos the moment you open the app. This is how Apple provides the camera with the ability to take photos instantly, with none of the delay (‘shutter lag’) you see with some digital cameras. The camera has already taken and temporarily stored a whole bunch of photos, and it simply keeps the last one taken as you press the button and discards the rest …

Additionally, there’s good info on what the camera does for the new Live Photos.  

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Here’s why you should never jailbreak your device and install random stuff:

Researchers from Palo Alto Networks have discovered that a piece of iOS malware successfully stole more than 225,000 Apple IDs and passwords from jailbroken phones, using them to make purchases from the official App Store.

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If you wanted to start a successful software company today, you wouldn’t want to follow Bill Gates’ playbook. Creating a new desktop operating system, and an expensive office suite of applications to run on top of it, won’t work in 2015. It worked for him in the 80’s and 90’s, but that was a different time.

Understand what others did, but don’t try to copy. It usually never works for many reason. I learned this the hard way.

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