Google Has Massive Trove of Detailed Health Records; Facebook ‘Facebug’ Activates Cam on iOS; Disney+ Is Live; IBM Says Mac Users Perform Better at Work

Google has hoovered up millions of detailed medical records. Arstechnica.com reports that they partnered with Ascension (the 2nd largest US health system) last year on the down low, and gained access to tens of millions of detailed medical records. ‘Project Nightingale’ has at least 150 Google employees getting access to the records….including diagnoses, lab test results, hospitalization records, and more. It contains patient names and birth dates, too. Neither Google nor Ascension notified patients or doctors of the deal. Ascension is a Catholic non-profit with 34,000 providers, 2600 hospitals, doctors offices, and other facilities in 21 states and D.C. Ascension says its goal was to improve patient care. Internal documents seen by the Wall Street Journal say the Google data mining actually identifies additional ways to generate revenue for patients…but you still love your health insurance and don’t want Medicare for all…right?

As if they didn’t know enough already, we’re back to cameras stealthily watching us, apparently. According to cnet.com, iPhone cams can be turned on in the background while your are looking at your Facebook feed. It happens while watching video…if you click to full screen, then return the video back to normal, a bug is created, and facebooks mobile layout moves slightly to the right. With the open space on the left, you can see that your phone’s cam activated in the background. The bug was first discovered November 2nd. The bug happens in iOS 12 and later. Going in and turning off permissions for Facebook gives a black screen, but the cam still seems to activate. Both Facebook and Apple have been notified.

For those under a rock or just waking from a Rip Van Winkle length sleep, Disney+ has launched its new streaming service today. Macrumors reports that it is available in the US over a wide range of devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Android smartphones, Roku streaming boxes, Amazon Fire TV, and more. It’s $6.99 a month or $69.99 per year. Your big Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel loving friends are already watching. I know someone who probably already watched the first episode of the Star Wars saga ‘The Mandalorian’ just after midnight!

IBM dropped a big item concerning productivity. Big Blue has, the last few years, given employees the choice of PCs or Macs. Now, 9to5mac.com reports that IBM’s research shows that 22% more Mac users exceed expectations in performance reviews as compared to Windows users. Also, they found that Mac users produced high-value sales deals at a 16% higher rate than PC users. In addition, Big Blue found that Mac users were 17% less likely to leave IBM compared to PC users. IBM presently has 200,000 Macs in service supported by only 7 engineers. They report that 200,000 Windows devices require 20 engineers.