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News+: How to Stay Safe and Secure Online

Andrew Orr ·

In the latest issue of Mac Format magazine, Adam Banks writes a guide on how to stay safe online. This is a PDF version and on page 66.

Using a Mac makes you safer than average when going online. That’s partly because of Apple’s efforts to secure the operating system; partly because the Mac App Store gives you somewhere to get most of your third-party software safely. It’s also partly because bad actors – in the security industry sense, not the Hollyoaks sense – tend to be less interested in targeting macOS. But that doesn’t mean either you or your Mac can’t get fooled. Know your way around the common risks and basic protections to keep yourself out of harm’s way.

This is part of Andrew’s News+ series, where he shares a magazine every Friday to help people discover good content in Apple News+.

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Google's New reCAPTCHA is an Invisible Tracking Beacon

Andrew Orr ·

Google’s reCAPTCHA bot detector is now an invisible web beacon and currently on over 650,000 websites.

With reCaptcha v3, technology consultant Marcos Perona and Akrout’s tests both found that their reCaptcha scores were always low risk when they visited a test website on a browser where they were already logged into a Google account. Alternatively, if they went to the test website from a private browser like Tor or a VPN, their scores were high risk.

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DeepNude App That Could Undress Women Taken Offline

Andrew Orr ·

Yesterday Vice reported on an app called DeepNude. It used machine learning to turn a clothed photo of a women into a naked version. It has since been taken offline.

The developers have now removed the software from the web saying the world was not ready for it. «The probability that people will misuse it is too high,» wrote the programmers in a message on their Twitter feed. «We don’t want to make money this way.» The developers also urged people who had a copy not to share it, although the app will still work for anyone who owns it.

I mean, if we’re being pedantic, you can’t really misuse technology specifically designed for ill intentions unless you try to use it for good intentions, if that’s even possible.

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Trump Administration Talking About Banning Encryption

Andrew Orr ·

Politico reports that the Trump administration is in talks about banning encryption, or at least certain forms of it that law enforcement can’t crack.

The encryption challenge, which the government calls “going dark,” was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter…Senior officials debated whether to ask Congress to effectively outlaw end-to-end encryption, which scrambles data so that only its sender and recipient can read it…

Great. I can’t wait for Russia and China to intercept all of our insecure communications.

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A Green New Deal For Big Tech

Charlotte Henry ·

Under Tim Cook and Lisa Jackson’s leadership, Apple has prided its self on its contribution to tackling climate change. However, there is still a lot of tech firms could do. Fast Company looked at what they could learn from the Green New Deal.

Given that many corporations aren’t as focused on sustainability, the tech companies’ efforts to reduce emissions appear at first to be a good track record. But as the fight against climate change heats up, the big tech companies’ claims and commitments still are not enough to make an impact on a widening emissions gap… And while much of that growth in emissions can be attributed to a range of corporate bad actors, some leaders in the climate community think tech companies are not doing enough to use their clout and tech prowess to make real change.

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The Story of Sir Jony Ive's Apple Exit

Charlotte Henry ·

Sir Jony Ive’s departure from Apple had been rumored long before he confirmed it Thursday. Bloomberg News detailed his walk towards the exit.

Ive still only came to the office a couple of days a week, with many meetings shifting to San Francisco, according the people familiar with the matter. That helped him avoid the long commute from his home in the Pacific Heights district of the city to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Ive sometimes met with his team at the homes of his employees, at hotels, or other venues. The design executive even set up an office and studio in San Francisco to do much of his work. Ive also traveled frequently to London, near where he was raised. He occasionally missed out on Apple product launch events, an unthinkable absence several years ago.

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The Real Issue is Sir Jony Ive is Not Being Replaced

Charlotte Henry ·

Sir Jony Ive is leaving Apple. You might have heard about it. John Gruber gives his take over on Daring Fireball and highlights the key issue about the departure – design is now reporting to operations. (I know Gruber doesn’t like formal titles, which is fair enough, but I’m a Brit so I have to use them!)

It makes me queasy to see that Apple’s chief designers are now reporting to operations. This makes no more sense to me than having them report to the LLVM compiler team in the Xcode group. Again, nothing against Jeff Williams, nothing against the LLVM team, but someone needs to be in charge of design for Apple to be Apple and I can’t see how that comes from operations. I don’t think that “chief design officer” should have been a one-off title created just for Jony Ive. Not just for Apple, but especially at Apple, it should be a permanent C-level title. I don’t think Ive ever should have been put in control of software design, but at least he is a designer.

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Apple Takes Another Step Towards ARM-based Macs

John Martellaro ·

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Ian King report:

Apple Inc. hired one of ARM Holdings Inc.’s top chip engineers as the iPhone maker looks to expand its own chip development to more powerful devices, including the Mac, and new categories like a headset.

The company hired Mike Filippo in May for a chip architect position, according to his LinkedIn profile.

For Apple to divest the Mac of Intel CPUs while maintaining X86 compatibility will require some serious engineering skill. This looks like one step in the process.

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Twitter Starts Flagging Tweets From World Leaders That Break its Rules

Andrew Orr ·

In a blog post today, Twitter said it would start labeling tweets from Donald Trump government officials that break its rules against bullying and abusive behavior.

A critical function of our service is providing a place where people can openly and publicly respond to their leaders and hold them accountable.With this in mind, there are certain cases where it may be in the public’s interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules.

On the rare occasions when this happens, we’ll place a notice – a screen you have to click or tap through before you see the Tweet – to provide additional context and clarity. We’ll also take steps to make sure the Tweet is not algorithmically elevated on our service.