Apple engineer Ivan Krstić spoke on far more than Apple’s new bug bounty program at the Black Hat security conference, and delved into the inner workings of iOS hardware and software security features both in iOS 9 and the forthcoming iOS 10.

Security is such an important issue these days. It’s a great move for Apple to speak publicly about what they are doing to make its products secure.

Apple, in emailed comments, said it did not oblige Russian resellers to fix prices for its products.

“Resellers set their own prices for the Apple products they sell in Russia and around the world,” the company’s press office said.

It just doesn’t make any sense that Apple would be involved in price fixing.

Vindu Goel, writing for the New York Times:

In the primordial days of computing, IBM machines were so common inside corporations that there was a running joke in the industry: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

These days, the same could be said about Apple. Even IBM is promoting Apple gear.

And:

For Apple, which is struggling to reverse declining sales of its iPhones and Macs and has seen overall revenues drop for two quarters in a row, the corporate market is a surprising bright spot. Sales of high-end iPads to business customers in particular have been strong. Nearly half of all iPads are now bought by corporations and governments, according to the research firm Forrester.

“Apple is stronger in the enterprise market with its devices than it is with consumers,” said Frank Gillett, an industry analyst at Forrester.

Partnerships with more traditional enterprise entities like IBM, Cisco, and SAP are starting to bear fruit. Tim Cook is definitely playing the long game.

Check Point today disclosed details about a set of four vulnerabilities affecting 900 million Android smartphones and tablets that use Qualcomm chipsets. The Check Point mobile threat research team, which calls the set of vulnerabilities QuadRooter, presented its findings in a session at DEF CON 24 in Las Vegas.

Be safe Android people. There is a safer way.

I just opened up sponsorships for September on the site, at a lower price for a limited time. If you want to get your product in front of The Loop readers, get in touch.

Digg:

Around the world, more than half of people – estimates vary from 60 to 75 per cent – speak at least two languages. Many countries have more than one official national language – South Africa has 11. People are increasingly expected to speak, read and write at least one of a handful of “super” languages, such as English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish or Arabic, as well. So to be monolingual, as many native English speakers are, is to be in the minority, and perhaps to be missing out.

Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia.

Could it be that the human brain evolved to be multilingual – that those who speak only one language are not exploiting their full potential?

One of my biggest schooling regrets is not sticking with French in junior and high school. So many of us in Canada and the United States don’t speak a second language. To this day, I wish I could speak French or Italian. I’m working on the rudiments of Portuguese in preparation for a trip I hope to take next April.

Looks like The Muppet’s character, Beaker.

BBC:

A number of Olympians – including the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, Michael Phelps – have been photographed with large red circles on their skin. What are they, and why is everyone suddenly going dotty over them?

When I was in high school, we just called these hickeys.

The short story – For the past year and a half I’ve collected wi-fi names that caught my attention all around Berlin. Click on the green markers on the map to read the wi-fi names exactly where I found them, along with my unrequested comments/interpretation/research on their meanings.

Some of these are funny—the comments certainly make a big difference in understanding the names.

AT&T has settled with the FCC over a “cramming” investigation that found the carrier allowed scammers to place unauthorized charges onto customer bills, and collected a fee from the sham companies involved in the scheme.

And carriers wonder why we don’t trust them.

After a few weeks of exploration, the studio and I settled on a composition and I was tasked with painting the finished poster. I used the Procreate app on my iPad Pro to do the preliminary sketches and for blocking the basic colors of the poster. I then exported these layers into Adobe Photoshop and began detailing the artwork at a much higher resolution.

This is really impressive. The iPad Pro can be used for many things from creative endeavors to daily work—as technology continues to move forward, the possibilities are almost endless.

Fast Company:

When I met Apple Music marketing chief Bozoma Saint John at Apple for an interview, she had just come from a photo shoot and she looked, well, fabulous. While she was wearing high heels (which put her up at around 6-foot-2 or so) and a shimmering blue dress, I’d soon learn that the fabulous has little to do with clothing. She practically radiates warmth and energy.

Saint John was relatively unknown in tech circles until she demoed Apple Music at the company’s developer conference in June. Now, a few weeks later, she’s the one part of the show many people remember.

Along with their excellent piece on Apple today, Fast Company also had an interview with Apple Music’s head of global consumer marketing, Bozoma Saint John, who has got to have the coolest name in technology right now.

Clickbait headlines are exactly why I support independent writers instead of organizations that lower themselves to using such tactics. Usually, clickbait offers nothing more than a tantalizing headline—nothing to backup the reason you clicked on it in the first place. It’s a frustrating practice, but when we become aware of what’s going on, we can support the people, and sites, that treat us, the readers, with respect.

Merger mania is all the rage in tech, where it’s beginning to feel like the late 1990s and early 2000 bust era all over again. But this time there’s a notable difference that speaks to the fundamental value being created in this second dot-com boom. Companies are being scooped up for billions instead of being shuttered.

It’s true, and stunning, when you consider how much companies are selling for these days.

Hulu is moving to an all-subscription model, eliminating the ad-supported service that has let users watch thousands of TV episodes in the nine years since it first launched.

I tried Hulu in the past and just didn’t find it compelling. Like many, I’m waiting to see what Apple can pull together.

Updated every Friday, Release Radar gives you up to two hours of the newest drops from the artists you follow and listen to the most, sprinkled in with some new discoveries based on your recent listening habits. Release Radar is the perfect complement to New Music Friday, which connects you with hot new artists you may not know about yet. You’ll soon find your personalized Release Radar playlist in the New Releases for You section within Discover on mobile and desktop.

Good idea—focus on your favorite artist’s new music instead of just a genre.

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has raided the offices of Amazon.com Inc’s local unit on suspicion of pressuring retailers to offer products at lower prices than on rival sites, the Nikkei business daily said on Monday.

Isn’t this what Amazon does in every country it operates, including the U.S.?

This is a long read, focused on Tim Cook’s management style and the path down which Tim is taking Apple. There is way too much to quote to truly capture the article, but here are two tidbits.

The first is on the way Tim is perceived as a boss, reflected in the disastrous Apple Maps rollout:

This continual learning process is central to the way Cook manages Apple. He accepts the inevitability of flaws, but relentlessly insists that employees pursue perfection. “I twitch less,” says Cue cheerfully when I ask about the difference between Jobs and Cook. “No, no, no, just kidding! Steve was in your face, screaming, and Tim is more quiet, more cerebral in his approach. When you disappoint Tim, even though he isn’t screaming at you, you get the same feeling. I never wanted to disappoint Steve, and I never want to disappoint Tim. [Other than them,] I have that feeling with, like, my dad.”

And:

Perhaps the best example of this continuous improvement at work under Cook is the company’s rehabilitation of its Maps app, which was universally scorned after its introduction in September 2012. Apple Maps’ miscues were legion: Bridges seemed to plunge into rivers; hospitals were located at addresses actually belonging to shopping centers; directions were so bad they confused airport runways with roads.

And:

the company did more than just throw numbers at the problem. Cook also forced his execs to re-examine, and change, the way they worked with development teams. Famous for being secretive, Apple opened up a bit. “We made significant changes to all of our development processes because of it,” says Cue, who now oversees Maps. “To all of us living in Cupertino, the maps for here were pretty darn good. Right? So [the problem] wasn’t obvious to us. We were never able to take it out to a large number of users to get that feedback. Now we do.”

There’s a lot more on Apple Maps and the culture change that came with that learning process.

The second anecdote involves the thinking behind the difficult problem of following up one of the most successful products of all time.

It’s entirely possible that Apple will never introduce a product as universally desired as the iPhone. That doesn’t mean it won’t continue to be a great company. “The iPhone entered a market that was the biggest on earth for electronic devices,” Cooks tells me, as we’re wrapping up our interview. “Why is that? It’s because eventually, everyone in the world will have one. There are not too many things like that.”

Then Cook makes another one of his points that can get lost if you don’t understand the care he takes with every word. “It’s hard to imagine a market defined in units—not revenues—that’s that big.”

In terms of unit sales, yes, there may never be another iPhone. But in terms of revenue, well, look at the industries that Apple is just now entering, or is rumored to be pursuing. Media and entertainment is a $550 billion global market. Global car ownership is a $3.5 trillion business. Annual global health spending is more than $9 trillion. And while Apple may not currently dominate any of these arenas, remember that analysts once thought Apple would have a hit on its hands if it could garner 1% of the mobile phone business.

Fantastic read.

MacRumors:

In addition to predicting an all-new Apple Watch 2 with a GPS, barometer, larger battery, and more, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today claimed that upgraded first-generation Apple Watch models with faster TSMC-built processors and superior waterproofing will likely launch in the second half of 2016.

Kuo said the upgraded Apple Watch 1 models will not have a GPS, barometer, or other larger additions reserved for the Apple Watch 2, nor will the waterproofing improvements be as significant, suggesting only an incremental refresh of internal hardware. The watches are said to retain a similar form factor.

Obviously, this is a rumor. Something I’ve wondered since the original Apple Watch announcement: Will there be an upgrade path for my Apple Watch 1?

The fervent Ronnie James Dio fans who gathered to watch a group of the late singer’s former bandmates close out Germany’s mega-sized heavy-metal festival Wacken Open Air Saturday night got a big surprise: a theatrical performance by Dio in hologram form.

I am a huge Dio fan, but I find this a bit creepy.

The Daily Telegraph:

Extraordinary footage has emerged of the sophisticated sting that saw photographer Brett Costello robbed on the beach in Rio.

The brazen thieves stole a carry-on luggage case full of expensive equipment on the busy cafe district on Ipanema Beach in the middle of the day.

CCTV vision of the brazen theft at the Aussie coffee shop Kraft Cafe reveals Costello was targeted by a three-person gang of thieves, who look anything but opportunistic criminals.

I feel so bad for this photographer. He was obviously targeted by the team of thieves. It goes without saying to always keep an eye on your stuff when traveling and try to travel with a companion who can watch your gear when you get distracted. In a bizarre twist, he spotted his stolen photo vest on someone trying to enter the archery venue.

EarthSky:

The prediction is for 200 meteors per hour seen on the peak night, August 11-12 (evening of August 11, morning of August 12). That’s about double the usual rate. To see the maximum number of meteors, you’ll need to be watching when the radiant point, in the constellation Perseus, is overhead.

These showers are always an incredible experience, especially if you can get away from city lights to see the maximum possible meteors.

Vox:

Some 11 billion tons of stuff gets carried around the world each year by large ships. Clothes, flat-screen TVs, grain, cars, oil — transporting these goods from port to port is what makes the global economy go ’round.

Now there’s a great way to visualize this entire process, through this stunning interactive map from the UCL Energy Institute. The researchers assembled data from the thousands of commercial ships that moved across the ocean in 2012. They then worked with the data visualization studio Kiln to make this map.

This is an incredible visualization. Play around with the map and toggle the types of ships and shipping routes on and off.

This is Colossal:

Merging two of the ultimate pastimes—books and puzzles—the Codex Silenda has to be physically solved in order to read it. And no, these aren’t simple word games and math problems, but rather deviously complicated mechanical puzzles crafted from laser-cut wood that are embedded within each part of this 5-page book. The solution to each puzzle physically unlocks the next page. As the reader moves through the book a short story is also revealed, etched on pages opposite the puzzles.

This looks gorgeous but my patience for such things is very limited. I know I’d turn it into kindling before I got past the first page.

The Telegraph: >On this day 25 years ago the world’s first website went live to the public. The site, created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was a basic text page with hyperlinked words that connected to other pages. > >Berners-Lee used the public launch to outline his plan for the service, which would come to dominate life in the twenty-first century. > >Berners-Lee wanted the World Wide Web to be a place where people could share information across the world through documents and links navigated with a simple search function.

To help explore great websites for information, networking, entertainment, shopping, etc., you may use internet directories like 세상의모든링크.

Wow. I’ve been doing a podcast for more than 22 years. I didn’t realize I had started so soon after the web went online.

This seems to indicate that despite all the negative rhetoric often seen written in forums and on social media about tuning software it seems 9 in 10 preferred a tuned vocal in this case.

I don’t think listeners mind pitch corrected vocals, I think they mind overuse of pitch correction.