The folks at Mind Chasers put together a constantly-updating list of Big Tech companies that spy on you, with examples.
Below is a listing of articles documenting various spying incidents, capabilities, and vulnerabilities that you may not already know. Maybe it will help drive home that our society has a big problem and make you think twice before you order your next connected device that’s built to spy on you.
This is a great resource to bookmark.
Nintendo finally released a Super Mario Party update. It’s not a major update but it fixes an annoyance some players had with Online Mariothon.
Fixed an issue with Online Mariothon in which ranking data was not displaying properly.
We have a deal on PDF Converter OCR 6 for Mac. This software allows you to make PDFs editable and searchable, while retaining the original layout, graphics, and hyperlinks. You can also scan 27 languages, merge multiple documents, and more. Our friends at Stack Commerce brought the price down on this app, too, and it’s now $15 for a lifetime license.
On Tuesday, a bunch of Kickstarter employees went public with their efforts to unionize under the name Kickstarter United. But senior employees are fighting.
We believe this effort to unionize is the result of consistent issues with internal communications. We hope well-intentioned, good faith dialogue with executives and a specific list of issues from unsatisfied coworkers can get us to a better place. We want to give this a try before resorting to something as extreme as a union.
The statement is from an internal memo circulated among the company, and lists various reasons against the union.
Air Power, Apple’s much speculated upon charging mat, could be with us by the end of March 2019. That is according to a report in DigitTimes. As MacRumors pointed out, the publication has a mixed record on predicting Apple releases. However, it does feel like a launch is getting nearer. There was even an updated picture of the product hidden in the new Air Pods page.
The report cites unnamed “industry sources” within Apple’s supply chain: ‘Lite-On Semiconductor, a maker of discrete and analog IC components, is expected to see its second-quarter revenues register a double-digit sequential growth as it will soon kick off volume shipments of GPP (glass passivated package) bridge rectifiers needed for Apple’s wireless charger AirPower, according to industry sources. The sources said that Apple’s AirPower wireless charger for iPhones, Apple Watch and AirPods is set to be officially launched in late March, which will significantly drive up Lite-On’s revenues for the second quarter of 2019.’ There are 10 days remaining in March including today.
Mark Thompson, president and CEO of The New York Times, explained in an interview his decision not to join the Apple News subscription.
We tend to be quite leery about the idea of almost habituating people to find our journalism somewhere else. We’re also generically worried about our journalism being scrambled in a kind of Magimix (blender) with everyone else’s journalism.
So far Apple hasn’t been able to convince either The New York Times or Washington Post. However, it sounds like the Wall Street Journal will be a player.
Apple will not be launching a Netflix competitor on Monday. That is according to Re/Code’s Peter Kafka. He reported that instead, the company will be looking to increase service revenue by helping others sell their streaming subscriptions. He also noted that Apple doesn’t have the back catalogue of content that the likes of Hulu, Netflix, Disney can offer.
One thing Apple won’t do is unveil a serious competitor to Netflix, Hulu, Disney, or any other entertainment giant trying to sell streaming video subscriptions to consumers. Instead, Apple’s main focus — at least for now — will be helping other people sell streaming video subscriptions and taking a cut of the transaction. Apple may also sell its own shows, at least as part of a bundle of other services. But for now, Apple’s original shows and movies should be considered very expensive giveaways, not the core product.
M.G. Siegler’s views on Apple are always worth reading. As we wait for the ‘It’s Show Time’ event on Monday, he looked at one of the most pressing issues the company is having to tackle – the cut it takes of purchases made through its platforms. He said that while it will add complexity, things like the 30% App Store cut need revisiting.
The 30% cut is under assault from multiple angles. Spotify is the most high-profile example — antitrust complaints tend to do that — but it was hardly the first or the only grievance in this regard. Multiple businesses across multiple sectors are now vocally complaining about such a cut — and some, from small developers, to the biggest of the behemoths like Amazon and Netflix, are balking at coughing up such a bounty to Apple. Meanwhile digital stores from other companies are revisiting their own cuts. Competition is doing its job.
The design, structure and syntax of a programming language can lead the average programmer into a minefield of unsuspected programming errors. Those errors lead to vulnerabilities.
But which languages are the most and least secure in the end?
To answer this question, the report compiled information from WhiteSource’s database, which aggregates information on open source vulnerabilities from sources including the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), security advisories, GitHub issue trackers, and popular open source projects issue trackers.
This TechRepublic article presents the list.
We have a deal on the Movavi Video Editor Plus for Mac. This movie editor lets you animate objects with keyframes, has more than 160 filters, has multitrack editing and built-in soundtracks, a montage wizard, transitions, and a lot more. Check out the full feature list in our deal listing. It’s $19 through our deal.
Apple has updated a bunch of its Mac apps today, including Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, and iMovie.
For all four apps, Apple has added a feature that detects media files that could be incompatible with future versions of macOS after Mojave. In Final Cut Pro and iMovie, these files will be converted to a compatible format, while just highlighted in Motion and Compressor.
LONDON – Apple has reportedly acquired Italian start-up Stamplay. AppleInsider reported that the deal is worth $5.6 million. The company provides developers with a backend from which they can run their app in the cloud. It likely attracted Apple’s interest as a way of helping iOS app developers.
Using a web-based editor, the service can combine together multiple APIs for payments, notifications, messaging, and other elements, with Stamplay handling the majority of the coding. Newspaper Il Sore 24 Ore reports the acquisition is valued at 5 million euro, with the purchase requiring the founders to become Apple employees, though it is unclear if it is an acquihire or a complete acquisition of the business. Founders Nicola Mattina and Guiliano Iacobelli grew the company to have three offices in Rome, London, and San Francisco, and has received about 800 thousand euro in funding. The company also won Visa’s “Everywhere Initiative” project in 2016, gaining it work from the card company.
An official AirPower image was hidden in the source code of the updated AirPods page, it has emerged. 9to5Mac found the image, which showed an iPhone XS and new AirPods being charged on the as-yet unreleased charging mat. AirPower was not one of the products Apple released during the first half of this week. Indeed, a release date is still unknown.
Many were expecting an AirPower announcement today, following the iMac, iPad Air and iPad mini, and second-generation AirPods, but that didn’t happen this morning at the same time as the prior announcements. We aren’t sure when Apple is planning to announce the mat’s actual release, but clearly the AirPods page was specially designed to be able to incorporate the AirPower mat when it is official. And the change of image asset certainly indicates continued development on the product.
The iPad mini reviews are starting to flood in. In his, Lance Ulanoff noted, somewhat disappointedly, that many features from the old version of the device remain. There is even still a mechanical home button. However, he liked the significantly increased power of the upgraded device. He also though the iPad mini is an excellent tool for augmented reality.
Put simply, there are zero design surprises in the new iPad Mini. It’s still just 0.24 inches thick and 0.66 pounds. (The chassis measures 8×5.3 inches.) My hand is large enough that I can easily wrap my fingers around it, but the Mini is also light and thin enough that it’s quite easy to hold with just two fingers squeezing a single corner. That exquisitely svelte design (thinner even than the 0.3-inch-thick iPhone XS) belies some astonishing power. Because even though Apple didn’t mess with the iPad Mini’s body, it replaced most of the components.
Some of the first iPad mini reviews are coming out, and so far it sounds like Matthew Panzarino is happy with it.
I include that context here because, though the iPad Pro is a whole ass computer and really capable, it is not exactly ‘fun’ to use in non standard ways. That’s where the iPad mini has always shined and continues to do so. It really is pocketable in a loose jacket or coat. Because the mini is not heavy, it exercises little of the constant torsion and strain on your wrist that a larger iPad does, making it one-handed.
We have a deal on a lifetime subscription to Mondly, the language-learning platform. Mondly uses speech recognition and only gives positive feedback if you speak clearly and correctly. You can choose 5 of 33 languages to learn in your own native tongue. A lifetime subscription is $59 through our deal, a price drop from when we ran this deal last year.
Activision is bringing Call of Duty: Mobile to iOS and Android. It will launch later this year as a free download.
The game will include classic Call of Duty multiplayer modes such as Team Death Match and Free-For-All, and fan-favorite maps like Nuketown.
There is no pre-order app on iOS but you can do it on this website.
Employers are finding an ever increasing number of ways to keep tabs on what their staff are up to. You might think this would trigger an employee revolt. Yet, aside from some high profile examples, that is not the case. Fast Company explored why workers do not seem to mind being monitored.
While the specter of employers widely abusing workers’ privacy looms large, it doesn’t seem to be much of a real issue in most offices, factories, and shops across the country. “Concern is very broad but not very deep,” says Lewis Maltby, the president of the National Workrights Institute and a longtime advocate for protecting the civil liberties of employees. When he hears from workers, he notes, it’s typically not because management is poking around into private matters; it’s because their personal information was erased without any warning when they left their job and their employer reclaimed a company-owned cellphone.
Here’s a question to ask yourself: Would you let Apple collect more of your data to improve its services? The company already collects some stuff, but it doesn’t seem to be enough for services like Siri. Mark Sullivan’s answer to that question is yes.
Everyone is waking up to the fact that big tech companies have been skimming personal data for years and not saying much about it. And don’t get me wrong, the tech companies deserve all the mistrust and scrutiny they’re getting. But I hope they get a second chance with user data, because there’s so much cool stuff they could do with it, especially in the age of AI. I think they might find that many of us would be fine with giving up more of our personal data–if we get more in return.
I think my answer is yes as well. I would love for Apple’s services to be more personalized to me. I just don’t want my data to be used for advertising. The premium price I pay in lieu of ads is for the hardware.
Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity company accused of having ties with the Kremlin, violated App Store rules and had its app removed. Now it says Apple uses its “position as platform owner and supervisor” to give itself special treatment.
From our point of view, Apple appears to be using its position as platform owner and supervisor of the sole channel for delivering apps to users of the platform to dictate terms and prevent other developers from operating on equal terms with it. As a result of the new rules, developers of parental control apps may lose some of their users and experience financial impact.
You can obviously tell I think this is hilarious. To be fair, developers getting sherlocked by Apple is a real thing, but having your app removed because it breaks the rules isn’t getting sherlocked.
LONDON – Google was hit by its third anti-trust fine from EU regulators Wednesday. EU competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said the company had stifled competition in the online advertising market and had to pay €1.49 billion ($1.69 billion), CNBC reported. Google’s rivals had claimed that the company placed Adsense ads on websites on the proviso that other advertising systems were not present not the same page.
Google’s Adsense pushes ads triggered by search engines embedded websites. Rival firms to Google had claimed the product was placed on websites with the understanding that no other systems could be on the same page. The Alphabet company has previously defended its use of the technology, claiming it has been in place since 2006, is now superseded, and is a minor product. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Google’s core advertising business saw revenue increase 20 percent from the previous quarter to $32.6 billion — the same rate of growth as the last quarter.
Pandora is now letting users select which algorithm their music is picked by. The music streaming service added 5 choices on top of its classic algorithm, The Verge reported. The new options, called Pandora Modes, are available to both free and premium account holders.
There are now 6 listening modes: My Station, which is Pandora’s original algorithm; Crowd Faves, which will favor the songs that get the most thumbs-ups by other users in that station; Deep Cuts, which will serve up lesser-known songs by an artist or in a genre; Discovery, which will play more artists that aren’t usually on that station; Newly Released, which will only pick the newest songs from an artist or in a genre; and Artist Only, which will let you binge entirely on a single artist’s catalog.
Intel’s newsroom reports: “Targeted for 2021 delivery, the Argonne National Laboratory Supercomputer will enable high-performance computing [HPC] and artificial intelligence [AI] at Exascale” The work is being done with sub-contractor Cray Inc.
This means 10^18 floating point operations per second, or exaFLOPS. Intel continues:
The Aurora system’s exaFLOP of performance – equal to a “quintillion” floating point computations per second – combined with an ability to handle both traditional high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) will give researchers an unprecedented set of tools to address scientific problems at exascale. These breakthrough research projects range from developing extreme-scale cosmological simulations, discovering new approaches for drug response prediction and discovering materials for the creation of more efficient organic solar cells. The Aurora system will foster new scientific innovation and usher in new technological capabilities, furthering the United States’ scientific leadership position globally.
The Argonne National Laboratory is in Lemont, Illinois.
We have a deal on Corel Painter 2019 for Mac and Windows. This painting software includes 36 new brushes, Auto-Painting Panels, and it allows you to use images, textures, and patterns as clone sources, and more. Our deal is for a license for up to 3 devices for $249.
