Today only Woot.com is selling a refurbished 2017 MacBook with 512GB SSD and 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 for US$999.99.
Listen up! These MacBooks are Refurbished by Apple, but do not come with an Apple Warranty. In this case, we’re backing them with a 90 Day Woot Warranty.
Security researcher Linuz Henze found a macOS Keychain bug but won’t share it with Apple out of protest.
Henze has publicly shared legitimate iOS vulnerabilities in the past, so he has a track record of credibility. However, Henze is frustrated that Apple’s bug bounty program only applies to iOS, not macOS, and has decided not to release more information about his latest Keychain invasion.
It is odd that there isn’t a macOS bug bounty but I think withholding security information isn’t the way to go.
We have a deal on a lifetime license for the Award Winning Speed Reading Bundle, which includes 7 Speed Reading EX, Spreeder CX, and Vocab 1. All three apps are designed to help you read faster—they both run on Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS, while 7 Speed Reading EX also runs on iOS. The bundle is $19 through us.
Andrew Orr and John Martellaro make a grand entrance to discuss how Apple is currently annoying us and a new lawsuit about iPhone chargers.
The U.S. Navy has issued a solicitation asking for an appropriate service to turn 4,000 pounds of storage devices into ash.
The information stored on these devices is highly sensitive, as evidenced by the physical security requirements set forth in the solicitation. The incineration facility must have “at the minimum, secure entry, 24-hour armed guards and 24/7 camera surveillance with recordable date and time capabilities.”
Any interested destruction service has to be located within 10 driving hours of the White Sands Missile Range.
Kashmir Hill has experimented with cutting out tech giants from her life. In week 5 she found out what it was like to remove Apple.
In addition to abandoning all my iProducts, I am blocking myself from interacting with Apple in any way, using a custom VPN designed for me by technologist Dhruv Mehrotra. The VPN prevents my devices from communicating with the 16,777,216 IP addresses controlled by Apple, rendering iCloud and any Apple apps defunct.
It’s an interesting experiment, especially going so far as to block Apple IP addresses. I look forward to Ms. Hill’s next experiment: Blocking Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft all at once.
Sonos revealed a new range of indoor and outdoor speakers today, called the Sonos Architectural. There is a set designed for the ceiling, but the ones that really caught my eye are the Outdoor Speaker Pair. They look slick and should provide good sound quality outside of them, which is still not something to be taken for granted. All the news speakers work with the Sonos Amp, which means they support AirPlay 2. The Outdoor Speaker Pair costs $799 and is listed as «Coming Soon» for the time being.
Blockchain technology is sometimes presented as a cure-all – a technology that can improve everything from finance to health, and anything in between. While it may not be able to solve all the world’s ills, there is no doubt that it is a hugely powerful technology that can be used for a large amount of good. One field where the blockchain could have a profound effect is in artificial intelligence, as Yessi Bello Perez outlined on The Next Web.
Unlike cloud-based solutions, the data on a blockchain is broken up into small sections and distributed across the entire computer network. There’s no central authority or control point, and each computer, or node, holds a complete copy of the ledger – meaning that if one or two nodes are compromised, data will not be lost. All that takes place on the blockchain is encrypted and the data cannot be tampered with. Essentially, this means blockchains are the perfect storage facility for sensitive or personal data which, if processed with care with the use of AI, can help unlock valuable bespoke experiences for consumers.
AirPods were somewhat derided when Apple first released them towards the end of 2016. They looked silly, and surely they were going to fall out of your ear? As it happens, they have been a huge success, selling millions of units. Lance Ulanoff posted his take on the accessory’s success over on Medium, and it is well worth a read. He highlights how central AirPods could be to Apple’s strategy going forward.
Then, somewhere along the way, I started noticing other people wearing AirPods. At first it was just the occasional sighting, like spotting a green parrot in Brooklyn. However, I remember the moment when I stood in a New York City subway car and noticed more than a half dozen people wearing AirPods. Apple’s oddball product had broken through.
You might have heard of the term «phone tethering» before. In case you didn’t know what it meant, David Nield put together a guide explaining the term and how to use it.
We’re going to focus largely on wifi tethering here—creating a wifi hotspot from your phone or tablet—but you do have other options. If you’ve got a spare USB cable you can create a more stable connection between laptop and mobile device, or you can tether via Bluetooth, which is significantly slower but less taxing on battery life.
I’ll put an addendum here. Tethering depends on your carrier, and some carriers don’t allow it, like prepaid carriers. I used to use Net10 and I couldn’t use create a Wi-Fi hotspot.
