Daily Pulse: A Massive Hack Attack, New York's $15 Minimum, Pushing the iPad Pro

Hack Attack: US prosecutors unveiled a 23-count indictment charging three men with a massive fraud-and-hacking enterprise that targeted 12 companies, including nine in financial services and The Wall Street Journal. The alleged crimes included "pumping up stock prices, online casinos, payment processing for criminals, an illegal bitcoin exchange, and at least 75 shell companies and accounts," write Jonathan Stempel and Nate Raymond of Reuters. The indictment includes the JP Morgan breach, the largest of a financial institution in US history.

#Stat: $5 billion: What Alibaba took in during the first 90 minutes of "Singles Day." That is the grand total Americans spent online on all-day on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, combined.

All the Way: The Obama administration will appeal to the Supreme Court lower court rulings that have prevented the enforcement an an executive order that might protect as many as five million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Twenty-five states sued to stop implementation, arguing that it would present an undue burden (for example, the cost of issuing driver's licenses). The Justice Department will argue, among other things, that states don't have standing to oppose border control policy, the exclusive province of the federal government.

Today in Self-Driving Cars: A bit of good news for Volkswagen — they poached "an expert in self-driving car technology from Apple," reports Jack Ewing for The New York Times. Officially, Apple doesn't have a self-driving car program (called Project Titan), so no idea what Johann Jungwirth had been doing in Cupertino. At VW, he'll report directly to CEO Matthias Müller, and "lead a newly created Digitalization Strategy Department."

Empire Raise: New York is increasing the state minimum wage to $15. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan is to raise the minimum in New York City to $15 by the end 2018 and the rest of the state by the end of 2021.

As leaked a week or so ago, T-Mobile will allow customers to stream video from 24 services that won't count against usage caps. They're calling it #BingeOn, and it is still bad for net neutrality.

A Good Day for Android: Apple unveiled the Music app for the enemy  — no music videos yet. And Google Maps is now available for offline navigation and search — Android only, so far.

The Tablet of Tomorrow: Apple's iPad Pro goes on sale tomorrow, and Tim Cook is trying very hard to position it as a PC substitute for the enterprise — an insinuation that remains elusive for Microsoft's Pro hybrid even after three years. Part of the reason is the value prop: Most companies won't pay for a premium version of a good enough tool, like a laptop. Neither will you, probably. As Jon Fortt said on CNBC today, the world hasn't exactly been clambering for a "bigger, heavier and more expensive" iPad (0:40 in the video below).

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Cover Art: United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara points to a poster board as he speaks at a news conference where he announced charges against three individuals for offenses related to the computer hacking of numerous financial institutions, financial news publishers, and other companies on November 10, 2015 in New York City. The charges against Gery Shalon and others include the largest theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution in history. Two of the charged individuals are in custody in Israel pending extradition while a third is still at large. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

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Daily Pulse: A Big A** iPad, The Apprentices, Don't Pick on Marissa Mayer

Apple officially unveiled what the company is calling the iPad Pro: At 12.9 inches it’s the biggest they’ve made in the five years since the first iteration, and in the opposite direction of the oh-so-yesterday trend to make tablets sleeker and more portable.

Now, the battleground is for full-on enterprise acceptance — not fun, games and consumption (though there is still, based on today's live demonstration, plenty of that).

The iPad Pro is clearly Apple’s long-awaited answer to Microsoft’s Surface Pro — a truly self-contained hybrid the company says has superior processing power to 90% of PCs, an (optional) smart cover with a physical keyboard — finally — and an (optional) stylus, the new $99 Apple Pencil. The total highest-end package tops out at about $1,340, but entry level — smallest onboard storage and no Pencil — will only set you back $968. The Surface Pro 3 bundle starts at $800 and tops out at $1,800.

As a value proposition it does get one re-thinking the need for a “separate” laptop and tablet — just as Microsoft has been pushing for years. But however you spin it — a touch-screen PC, or a tablet with an excellent keyboard — hybrids have an obvious appeal and seem a natural successor to both the notebook and tablets. 

There were also souped up next-generation iPhones — the 6S and 6S+. Faster processor, better camera and two really different things: 3D touch (what the tech press had been calling Force touch) — and Live Photos, which capture 1.5 seconds around your shot for adorable clips (activated with 3D touch, naturally).

Enough for a hardware upgrade? We’ll see. <re/code>’s Walt Mossberg, in a live standup with CNBC, said he thought the collection of improvement is more than enough.

Helping the upgrade cycle decision is a new program that amounts to a long-term iPhone lease which, starting at $32 a month, entitles you to a new model every year (which also seems to confirm that Apple will be coming out with a new iPhone every year for the foreseeable future).

There was a drive-by for Apple Watch, which started the festivities. No sales numbers (still), but the information it has a 97% customer satisfaction score, among an undisclosed number of customers. No new models, but some new bands — including a deal with Hermes — and Watch OS 2 is on its way.

I was disappointed with the Apple TV / Siri news, which seemed like just more lipstick on the pig of what the company long considered a hobby. It’s search across five pay video services (less ambitious than Google’s TV failure) and a new app platform, akin to Xbox and other consoles that have been infringing on the computer space for years. Siri’s integration is nice but underwhelming and in all it's not the bold assault on the connected home, as I had hoped.

As to the spectacle — this is an Apple event, remember – I'll give Jon Swartz andMarco della Cava of USA Today the last words: 

In a two-hour press event that made numerous nods to the enterprise market and the benefits of viewing video and game content on bigger digital displays, Apple stressed the bottom line: It has every intention of milking the iPhone juggernaut for the foreseeable future.

Glutton for punishment? Check out my live blog.

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That Was Quick: Wall Street was unable to keep up the positive mo. Despite a global rally which the US sparked yesterday, and a spike at today’s open, stocks closed sharply down. Today’s excuse: weakness in oil and other commodities.

#Quote

"This is the volatility that we're going to be in for the next few weeks between the Fed and China.”

— Peter Coleman, head trader at Convergex

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Square is pushing ahead for a Q4 IPO, Alex Barinka, Adam Satariano and Emily Chang report for Bloomberg, citing "people with knowledge of the matter." It is "pressing ahead ... even as Twitter’s board is considering whether Dorsey will remain CEO of the social-media company, where he is a top internal candidate for the role."

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On the Job Training: The US Labor Department announced it would award $175 million to 46 public-private partnerships to create 34,000 apprenticeships. The idea is to enable new entry points to careers that don’t require higher education, and is the realization of a pledge President Obama made in his 2015 State of the Union.

The program is part of a broader administration initiative which includes the creation of a panel, headed by Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden, to make community college free for many students. Unlike the apprenticeship program, that would require Congressional action to spend $60 billion over the next 10 years, so the idea for that is “to build momentum,” in the words of Cecilia Muñoz, the president’s domestic policy adviser.

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What do you really think? NYU Professor Scott Galloway is probably saying what a lot of people are thinking about the promise of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer versus the reality, but with a decidedly un-PC spin to his message.

"I don't think any board in America right now in technology that's as visible as Yahoo wants to be seen as not leaning in," Galloway told Tom Keane on Bloomberg TV. "She got a reprieve from death row because she's pregnant with twins."

There was more.

"We should put a bullet in the head of this story called Yahoo," he said. "It is time to euthanize this thing."

A board always needs to evaluate the value prop of the company’s CEO. It’s a very subjective matter but in Mayer’s case, the most obvious metric is no secret: Yahoo shares have doubled since her hiring was announced three years ago.

On the down side, Yahoo’s chief achievement under Mayer’s tenure is the spin-off of Alibaba, which is more a clever accounting gambit than a vision thing. Something you'd praise the CFO for, not really the CEO. And even that isn’t going exactly according to plan, since the IRS isn’t saying that it will necessarily treat this as a non-event for the tax purposes of shareholders — “something CEO Marissa Mayer has been trying to do ever since Alibaba went public a year ago,” writes my colleague Isabelle Roughol.

Still, professor, chill. Histrionics are great in a classroom or before a jury. But it’s no way to advise a $29 billion public company.

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Cover Art: A man uses the new Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro after an Apple special event at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium September 9, 2015 in San Francisco, California. Apple unveiled latest iterations of its smart phone, forecasted to be the 6S and 6S Plus and announced an update to its Apple TV set-top box. (Stephen Lam/ Getty Images)

The iPad-hacking LA School Students Deserve Scholarships

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles public school district confirmed that it would be giving an Apple iPad to each of its 640,000 students. The billion-dollar rollout (which includes other expenses alongside the tablets) would replace textbooks and "Dog ate my homework" excuses, assuming they use iCloud.

First of all, great idea. Second of all, they should have seen this next part coming.

Yesterday, The LA Times reported that 300 children at Theodore Roosevelt High School had already hacked their iPads—within days of receiving the devices. The tablets were issued with restrictions, so students couldn't use them for Facebook, Pandora, and similar recreational or social networking activities. But students cleverly figured out a workaround and spread the word among their classmates, who are now happily Tweeting away on the school's dime.

What was the LA school district's reaction? They halted the program.

What should they do? Start a coding curriculum and put these kids in charge.

Authorities tend to be terrified of the word "hacking." But some subversive behavior is extremely interesting from an education perspective. This kind of boundary pushing is how innovation happens in the real world; why shouldn't we encourage it at a young age?

The kids who hacked their iPads just completed an exercise in problem solving (and quite an easy one, I might add, from the simplicity of the workaround, which was to delete the user profile the school set up in the iPad settings). Giving them tools for intense computation and problem solving—like an iPad—and then setting them loose on real-world challenges will be a much more interesting (and effective) learning tool than what they're probably planning on doing with these devices, i.e. abstract algebra and making Keynote presentations.

If I worked at the LA school district, I'd set up a hacker curriculum where each week the students must complete harder and harder challenges. Each Monday, I'd lock down their iPads with increasingly difficult security, and tell them to post something on my Facebook wall by Friday. I'd have them build things in Hopscotch (awesome, iPad-based programming/edu-game), and hold class-wide IFTTT (If This Then That) challenges. We'd use Raspberry Pi as a springboard to learn Linux and more advanced programming. The final project would be to figure out how to change their grade in my spreadsheet from a remote computer.

We'd be subtly teaching kids lateral thinking, which will help them no matter what career they pursue, computer science or no. And there'd be no surprise when these kids go on to kick ass in the ever-competitive global employment marketplace we're about to dump them into.

Alternatively, the school district could give up on blocking social media and just make all the kids accept their teachers as Facebook friends. (Oof!) But whatever we do, let's certainly not punish ingenuity.

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What do you think?

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Shane Snow is Chief Creative Officer of Contently. He writes about media and technology for Wired and Fast Company, and tweets at@shanesnow.

(image via The Breakfast Club, hacked by author)