More details have come to light about Ring’s agreement with police in the US, and it just keeps getting worse

• We talked previously about how in exchange for promoting Ring’s video doorbells police could access a portal to show where cameras may be located and request user footage from a certain timeframe
• • Well apparently even if a user declines, police can go straight to Amazon with a request for the footage as long as it’s within 60 days and the video is in the cloud
  • • An officer talking to cybersecurity site Government Technology brought out one of my favourite lines: “If you’re a good upstanding person who is doing things lawfully, nobody has concerns”
• According to Gizmodo, another part of that deal has Ring tapping directly in to real-time 911 dispatch data, which it then uses to curate crime news for its app
• • Once a call is flagged their “in-house news team” reviews and reformats the info before pushing it as an alert to Ring users within a certain radius
• On top of all that, documents found by Motherboard and ArsTechnica show that Ring was offering police information on who was buying their cameras through the provided subsidies, including names, emails, and home addresses
• Bottom line here seems to be, be careful what you put in the cloud and be aware of who owns the clouds you’re using

Apple’s credit card, known as the Apple Card, is now officially available in the US

• The Apple Card is an Apple Pay focused credit card that comes with some interesting spending tracking features, decent cash back rewards, no fees at all, and a slick white titanium physical card if you so choose
• • The card is pretty minimalistic, only showing your name, the Apple logo, and the chip and magnetic strip
  • • The minimalistic card comes at a minor price though: Apple Support has already released an article talking about handling, care, and cleaning of the card that all sounds pretty unique for a credit card
    • • They say to store it in a wallet, pocket, or bag made of soft materials, and to place it in a slot without touching another card to prevent scratches
      • • So far not unreasonable
      • They then go on to say that it shouldn’t be kept in leather or denim, saying those fabrics may cause permanent discolouration, which kind of rules out how most of the population I’m aware of carries their cards
      • • So basically if you want your shiny new Apple Card to stay shiny and new, it’s time to buy a microfiber wallet
  • If you want to see your card number, expiry date, or even previous statements and balances you need to open up the Wallet app
  • Hopefully at some point they at least open up a web interface, in case your phone is lost or stolen and you need to access that information
• After a limited pilot now anyone with an iPhone can apply- just open up your Wallet app, tap the plus sign to add a card, and follow the prompts to sign up
• One thing to note here is that part of the terms and conditions has you agreeing to arbitration instead of a lawsuit if something goes pear-shaped, which can often favour companies over consumers
• • If you’re worried about that it’s dead easy to opt out though.
  • After you’ve got the card set up you just open it up in Wallet, tap the ellipsis, and then Message. This will let you text the help line that you want to reject arbitration and they’ll connect you with staff who can help
• All in all it seems kind of cool, and once it comes to Canada you can bet I’ll compare its interest rates and rewards to my existing credit cards

Samsung isn’t the only company having trouble getting a folding phone out there- Huawei is also delaying its foldable smartphone, saying it’s “unlikely to come out before November”

• The folding Mate X was originally announced for the middle of 2019, but has had a couple of delays now likely due to the bleeding-edge tech involved in folding screens
• The phone does look cool, with an 8″ display that folds around the front and back leaving only a 6″ display turned on when closed, but at $2,600USD I’d want something a little stronger than plastic protecting the rear display when it’s closed

• It’s a fantastic, stylized first-person shooter where time only moves when you do
• They’ve added optional gyroscope aiming and motion controls, to make things more intuitive and accessible whether you’re docked or in handheld mode
• And it’s running at a smooth 60fps, which is basically the minimum nowadays. Maybe my eyes are spoiled, but anything lower just feels choppy

Minecraft is adding BEES!

• Bees are cute, fuzzy, neutral mobs
• Don’t hurt them, they don’t want to hurt you
• If a bee does sting you, it will leave its stinger in you and eventually die, dropping nothing 🙁
• Bees love pretty flowers and spend their lives gathering pollen from them
• After gathering pollen, bees fly back to their home nest
• Bees help you by growing crops while carrying pollen back to the nest
• Bees can be bred using flowers
• Bees like sharing the location of their favorite flowers with other bees
• If a bee can’t find nectar, after a while it will return home for a bit
• If a bee doesn’t have a home nest, it will wander around until it finds one it can use
• Bees don’t like the rain and they sleep at night. They will go back to the nest in these cases

• Bee Nests spawn naturally in Flower Forests, Plains, and Sunflower Plains biomes
• When a bee visits this block and completes its journey undisturbed, the level of honey increases
• Max of 5 levels of honey
• Level 5 is quite…sticky
• Bees use nests and hives to share flower locations with other bees
• Sometimes bees that already know about a flower will choose not to use this information
• Bee Hives are crafted by players using honeycomb and wood planks
• Use a silk touch tool to get the block with the bees stored inside
• Bee Nests will be destroyed unless you use silk touch
• Use shears when at full honey to get honeycomb
• Use a bottle when at full honey to get a honey bottle
• Campfire smoke calms bees – place one underneath the nest / hive to keep them in chill mode
• Redstone-friendly!
• Bees like Bee Nests and Bee Hives the same amount! They don’t play favorites 🙂
• Added the Honey Bottle!

• Organic, gluten-free, delicious locally-farmed honey!
• Use an empty glass bottle on a hive or nest that is full of honey to get a bottle of honey!
• Drink it!
• ???
• Profit!
• Oh yeah, also craft it into sugar!
• Added Honeycomb!

• Shear a full-honey hive or nest to obtain
• Craft with wood planks to create a Bee Hive

• Dispensers can now fill bottles with water and honey
• Dispensers can now shear honey combs from Bee Nests and Hives

Slay the Spire is on Gamepass!

• Dynamic Deck Building: Choose your cards wisely! Discover hundreds of cards to add to your deck with each attempt at climbing the Spire. Select cards that work together to efficiently dispatch foes and reach the top.
• An Ever-changing Spire: Whenever you embark on a journey up the Spire, the layout differs each time. Choose a risky or safe path, face different enemies, choose different cards, discover different relics, and even fight different bosses!
• Powerful Relics to Discover: Powerful items known as relics can be found throughout the Spire. The effects of these relics can greatly enhance your deck through powerful interactions. But beware, obtaining a relic may cost you more than just gold…

Tidbits

• Webkit, the engine behind the Safari web browser, has announced a big new policy that’s great for consumers: user tracking will now be treated as a security exploit, and will be blocked accordingly
• • They go on to mention that no exceptions will be made, and they will block any attempts to circumvent their protections universally
• Insomniac Games, developers of Ratchet & Clank, Sunset Overdrive, and more recently Marvel’s Spider-Man, has officially been acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment
• • They’ve been developing PlayStation exclusives for years, but now that they’re an actual first-party developer for the platform it’ll be cool to see what comes next
• The Matrix is apparently getting a fourth film, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity
• • The movie will see Sense8 writers Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell joining Lana Wachowski in writing it, so I’m cautiously optimistic
• It sounds like Sony and Disney failed to come to a new agreement in how to share Spider-Man, so he seems to be out of the MCU once more
• • Sony released a statement saying they hope that might change in the future, but for now it sounds like Tom Holland will have to look elsewhere for his super team

Alan Recommends The Boys on Amazon Prime Video

• Based on the comic series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, and developed for TV by Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural
• It’s a dark comedy based in a world a lot like what I imagine what would happen if superheroes were real- they end up completely managed by a corporate PR machine, so we end up with just as many movies and tv shows but in this case they’re all marketing for real people
• So you end up with a lot of supers that are just arrogant and corrupt people, which is why the vigilante group The Boys exists to try and keep them in check
• It’s a solid adaptation with a lot of great differences that keep it fresh for fans of the comics while not just being changes for their own sake