ExtraBITS for 1 May 2017
In ExtraBITS this week, Rogue Amoeba has a preliminary fix for tvOS 10.2 breaking their Airfoil app, it has been revealed that email cleansing service Unroll.me sold user data to Uber, and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has released a proposal that would reverse most Obama-era net neutrality regulations.
FCC Chairman Pai Seeks to Reverse Net Neutrality Rules — FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has released a 58-page plan that would roll back Obama-era net neutrality rules, most notably one that classifies ISPs as common carriers. His proposal will face an initial vote on 18 May 2017, and the FCC is taking comments until then. Last time the FCC sought public comment on net neutrality, it was flooded with 3.7 million submissions in favor of requiring broadband providers to treat all traffic equally, rather than selling preferential “fast lane” access to the highest bidders. Any
bets on how many comments the FCC gets this time?
Unroll.me Sold Its Users’ Email Data to Uber — Revealed in the recent New York Times profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was the fact that the popular service Unroll.me, which promises to help you unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and promotional messages, was selling email data to the ride-sharing company. At the Intercept, Sam Biddle explains how Uber was analyzing Unroll.me user email traffic to gauge the health of its main competitor, Lyft. If that bothers you, the article provides instructions for deleting your Unroll.me account.
Rogue Amoeba Releases Airfoil Satellite TV for Apple TV — We reported recently that tvOS 10.2 broke Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil utility, which lets you broadcast audio via AirPlay from any app. As part of their initial pass at fixing the problem, Rogue Amoeba has released the free Airfoil Satellite TV app for the Apple TV, which acts as an Airfoil receiver. Unfortunately, the app must be running in the foreground to receive audio, but Rogue Amoeba is already in the preliminary stages of restoring full Apple TV AirPlay functionality to Airfoil, with no
receiving app required.