The Indelible Bonobo Experience

WhatsApp, a messenger service for people with Android phones, violates internationally adopted privacy regulations, said the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. When someone installs WhatsApp on their phone, it searches through the user’s address book to find which friends who are also using the service. But when it’s done, WhatsApp retains all those phone numbers, even the ones from people who never signed up for the app in the first place. What’s more, the joint investigation by Canada’s privacy commissioner and the Dutch Data Protection Authority found WhatsApp uses unencrypted messages, “leaving them prone to eavesdropping or interception.” “Our investigation has led to WhatsApp making and committing to make further changes in order to better protect users’ personal information,” said privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, in a statement. However, Jacob Kohnstamm, Stoddart’s Dutch counterpart, added: “But we are not completely satisfied yet. The investigation revealed that users of WhatsApp - apart from iPhone users who have iOS 6 software - do not have a choice to use the app without granting access to their entire address book. The address book contains phone numbers of both users and non-users. This lack of choice contravenes (Dutch and Canadian) privacy law. Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp.” (via Canadian privacy commissioner blasts WhatsApp | News | Tech | Toronto Sun)

will there be a fine?

funnyordie:

Breaking Up With iPhone 3GS

Breaking up is hard to do — especially with your beloved old phone. Read the entire heartbreaking exchange here.

I have one of these puppies myself..

He makes reservations for three even when he only plans to dine with one. That way he doesn’t get stuck at a small table. He leaves room for dessert. He adores chocolate. (via Deep Thoughts With the Homeless Billionaire - Businessweek)

• Twelve years ago, Nicolas Berggruen sold his apartment, which was filled with French antiques, on the 31st floor of the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. He said he no longer wanted to be weighed down by physical possessions. He did the same with his Art Deco house on a private island near Miami. From that point on he would be homeless.
• Now he keeps what little he owns in storage and travels light, carrying just his iPhone, a few pairs of jeans, a fancy suit or two, and some white monogrammed shirts he wears until they are threadbare. At 51, the diminutive Berggruen is weathered, but still youthful, with unkempt brown hair and stubble. There’s something else he hung on to: his Gulfstream IV. It takes him to cities where he stays in five-star hotels. In London, he checks into Claridge’s. In New York, he’s at the Carlyle Hotel. In Los Angeles, he takes a suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills.
• His social calendar tends to be full no matter where he is. A dual citizen of Germany and the U.S. who speaks three languages, Berggruen makes a point of having lunch and dinner each day with someone intriguing. It could be an author, a famous artist, or a world leader.
• Every year, Berggruen throws a party at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood during Oscar week and invites all his friends. They rub shoulders with Hollywood types such as Paris Hilton, Woody Harrelson, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Berggruen can afford to live like this because he’s chairman of Berggruen Holdings, a New York-based private equity firm that buys troubled companies and fixes them up. Currently it owns more than 30, including an Australian farming operation, a British life insurer, a Portuguese book publisher, a German department store chain, and real estate development projects in Turkey, Israel, India, and Newark, N.J. According to its website, the privately held holding company’s annual revenue is $5 billion. It throws off $250 million in earnings each year. Berggruen’s personal worth is estimated byBloomberg Markets to be $2.5 billion.
• In 2009 he started the Nicolas Berggruen Institute, a think tank whose stated mission is to improve global governance, and promised to spend more than $100 million to further its goals. In California he’s pushing to overhaul the fiscally troubled state’s tax code, education system, and problematic initiative and referendum system. He would like to see greater political integration in crisis-plagued Europe, preferably under a single leader. He thinks it would be great if the Group of 20 nations become more of a permanent global policymaker.
• Nicolas Berggruen grew up in Paris. At a young age he immersed himself in French politics, history, and philosophy. Still, he didn’t care much for school. He attended the Institute Le Rosey in Switzerland, known as the “School of Kings” because so many alumni are members of royal families. Berggruen wasn’t destined to join them. He became a Marxist and refused to learn English, calling it the language of imperialism. The school asked him to leave. He ended up getting his high school diploma from the French government.
• Unexpectedly, Heinz Berggruen thought his rebellious son had a future in business. He arranged a summer internship for him with his friend Max Rayne, a British real estate developer and member of the House of Lords. His father was right: It turned out that Nicolas liked capitalism after all. Berggruen learned English and got his undergraduate degree from New York University in 1981. After graduating, he spent almost two years working for the Bass brothers in Philadelphia. As soon as he could, he returned to New York. “He was out every night,” says his friend Jonathan Bren, another veteran of the Swiss boarding school circuit. “A lot of people just thought he was a rich European party guy.”
• Berggruen believes at least part of the solution to Western political paralysis is the Asian equivalent of the smoke-filled room. “If you can do this behind closed doors, you can force or push decisions, which happens in autocracies like Singapore and China,” he says. “The disadvantage is that it’s not very transparent. The advantage is that the people in the room, even if they have ideological views that are not along the same lines, can come up with compromises and solutions.” With Nathan Gardels, one of the institute’s senior advisers, he’s co-written a book in which he explains this unorthodox notion. It’s called Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East.

the “frugal” billionaire: marxist, fascist or just “corporatist”? :)