Kamala Harris Asks Jack Dorsey to Suspend Donald Trump's Twitter Account

California Senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Wednesday, CNBC reported. She asked him to remove President Donald Trump’s account, highlighting a number of the President’s recent Tweets.

In a letter to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, the senator from California pointed to a series of tweets from the president referring to the whistleblower who filed a complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine. Harris said Trump’s tweets were an attempt to “target, harass” and “out” the whistleblower. Harris also pointed to Trump’s tweet that “a Civil War” could break out if Democrats successfully remove the president from office. She said the tweet suggests “that violence could be incited should Congress issue formal articles of impeachment against him.” “Time to do something about this,” Harris tweeted to Dorsey. She included Trump’s tweet calling the impeachment inquiry a “COUP.”

Google Will Tell Users if Their Password has Been Hacked

Google has updated its password manager to tell users if their password has been compromised, Wired reported. The feature, called Password Checkup, resembles those available from other password managers.

The feature, Password Checkup, is built into Google’s existing password manager, and tells you if you username or password has been compromised in a third-party data breach. Along with this service, Checkup will also tell you if your passwords are being reused across different sites, and recommend if your password should be strengthened. Password Checkup is built from a Chrome extension launched earlier this year. Google says the extension has been downloaded more than one million times, with nearly half of those users receiving a warning that their password was compromised. In the future, Password Checkup will be built directly into the Chrome browser by default – users will receive the feature without needing to install a separate extension.

Mark Zuckerberg Discusses Elizabeth Warren and TikTok in Facebook Staff Meeting

On Tuesday. The Verge published leaked audio of Mark Zuckerberg talking to staff during an internal meeting. It has now published further transcripts. They revealed the Facebook CEO’s thoughts on a number of issues, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and TikTok.

Question: With the recent FCC fine, investigation, and with the rise of politicians like Sen. Warren, I was wondering how personally worried you are about regulators coming in and breaking up Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg: Well, I think you want to separate out a couple of things. I’m certainly more worried that someone is going to try to break up our company. Now, there’s a separate question about, at the end of the day, there is the rule of law — which, for all of the concern about the direction the country is going in, as someone running a company that operates in a lot of different countries, I have to say one of the things that I love and appreciate about our country the most is that we have a really solid rule of law, which is very different from a lot of other places around the world.

 

Siri Will Work Better With Third-Party Messaging Apps

Apple said that later this year an iOS update will enable Siri to work better with third-party messaging apps. If you use the assistant to send messages, it will default to whatever message you use the most, instead of defaulting to iMessage or Phone. You can currently use third-party apps with Siri but you have to specify “Send this message via WhatsApp.”

For example, if an iPhone user always messages another person via WhatsApp, Siri will automatically launch WhatsApp, rather than iMessage. It will decide which service to use based on interactions with specific contacts. Developers will need to enable the new Siri functionality in their apps. This will be expanded later to phone apps for calls as well.

If Elizabeth Warren Wins Mark Zuckerberg Will Sue the Government

Mark Zuckerberg is scared of Elizabeth Warren over her plan to break up Big Tech monopolies, and a leaked audio recording reveals a rant in which he pledges to sue the government if she wins. You know, just your typical Tuesday stuff.

You have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies … if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. … But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

Deep Fusion Appears in Latest iOS Developer Beta

Apple’s Deep Fusion technology blends multiple photo exposures together in a way that gives you more details than regular HDR. It requires the A13 chip so it only works on the iPhone 11 models. It appeared in the developer beta that was released today.

On wide lens shots, it will start to be active just above the roughly 10 lux floor where Night Mode kicks in. The top of the range of scenes where it is active is variable depending on light source. On the telephoto lens, it will be active in all but the brightest situations where Smart HDR will take over, providing a better result due to the abundance of highlights…

The overall result, Apple says, results in better skin transitions, better clothing detail and better crispness at the edges of moving subjects.

This is some “next level” stuff for iPhone photographers, and I can’t wait to see comparisons of Deep Fusion: On versus Deep Fusion: Off photos.

YouTube Music Replaces Google Play Music on Android

YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music as the default music app on Android devices. It will come pre-installed on smartphones and be part of Android 10, Sky News reported.

The service – which has struggled to seize a significant portion of the music streaming market – will replace the relatively unsuccessful Google Play Music app. The move is more a matter of Google consolidating its estate of products rather than attempting to meet the standards of competitors. YouTube Music will come pre-installed on new Android smartphones and will be included in the next version of its operating system, which will simply be known as Android 10 after Google ditched its dessert-themed naming conventions.

App Store Prices Will Increase in Kazakhstan, Sweden

Apple released developer news today saying that due to changes in foreign exchange rates, App Store prices will increase in Kazakhstan and Sweden.

Once this change goes into effect, the Pricing and Availability section of My Apps will be updated. You can change the price of your apps and in-app purchases (including auto-renewable subscriptions) at any time in App Store Connect. For subscriptions, you have the option to preserve prices for existing subscribers.

See this PDF for a list of updated App Store pricing for these regions.

Facebook Refuses to Fact-Check Politicians

Facebook moves to hold politicians to lower standards than the rest of us, saying that politicians will be exempt from its fact-checking system.

Facebook uses independent third-party fact-checking organizations to help identity fake news, misleading claims and misinformation. However, it said posts made by politicians would not be fact-checked. It said it did not want to be the “referee” in political debates or prevent politicians’ posts from reaching their intended audience. However, it did not define who it counted as a politician.

Mark Zuckerberg won’t fact-check politicians but he’ll gladly take their political advertising money.

Apple News+ Now Available in Australia, UK

News+ is Apple’s new subscription service for news, and today it’s available for customers in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Apple News+ subscribers can access more than 150 publications in Apple News+, with a one month free trial available to test the service before having to pay the £9.99 (UK) or $14.99 (Australia) monthly fee.

Available magazines and publications in the UK include The Times and The Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan UK, more.

Magazines and publications in Australia include The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, more.

Apple, Amazon, and the Quest for Device Location

This article is a great example of false equivalence. By including both Apple and Amazon and writing about each company’s efforts with location technology, the reader is led to believe that we have to worry about both companies. But of course, that isn’t true. Apple has much better privacy practices, while Amazon barely knows the word.

It could be that with the privacy-focused techlash of recent years, both are treading carefully in the launch stages. Just look at how Amazon’s acquisition of mesh networking company eero was received earlier this year or the widespread interest in Huawei’s level of involvement with 5G networks. Location tracking in particular is currently the focus of much more granular controls in iOS 13 and Android 10 than ever before.

Here's to The Crazy Ones - 22 Years on

On September 28, 1997, Apple released the Here’s to the Crazy Ones commercial. 22 years on, Cult of Mac reflected on the iconic spot.

Narrated by actor Richard Dreyfuss, the TV spot starts out with an instantly memorable salute to counterculture ideals. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Dreyfuss intones. “The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers — the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Black-and-white images of more than a dozen 20th-century visionaries, from Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller to John Lennon and Martin Luther King Jr., flow past as masterful marketing copy praises the power of bold ideas. The spot ends with the powerful (and grammatically questionable) advertising slogan, “Think different.”

 

Spotlight Search Responds Immediately in iPadOS 13

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber was frustrated at the delay in Spotlight search when using an external keyboard with an iPad. He confirmed Saturday that this issue had been fixed in iPadOS 13.

A little birdie told me this would be fixed in iOS/iPadOS 13. And I’m happy to confirm that — so far at least — Spotlight search with an external keyboard hasn’t missed a keystroke for me yet. There actually are bug fixes in iOS 13, too.

Ming-Chi Kuo Says Mini-LED Displays Coming to iPad and MacBooks

On Sunday, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated his view that sometime between late 2020 and mid-2021 high-end iPad and MacBooks with Mini-LED displays will land. MacRumors took a look at the anaylt’s latest note.

LG Display will supply the Mini-LED display panels, while other Mini-LED component suppliers will include Epistar, Zhen Ding, Radiant Opto-Electronics, Nichia, Avary Holding, and TSMT, according to Kuo. Kuo believes the Mini-LED displays will allow for thinner and lighter product designs, while also offering good wide color gamut performance, high contrast and HDR, and local dimming, which dims the backlight behind areas of the screen that are displaying black while keeping the bright parts of the screen bright.

Hipstamatic Has a New App Called Hipstamatic X

To celebrate its 10th anniversary Hipstamatic will release a new app this Tuesday called Hipstamatic X.

The anniversary app will bring some of the simple, original analog charm of the first app as well as a stable of old-school cameras, from Pinhole to Tintype. It will also include a new Eazy Camera, which uses machine learning to automatically apply an appropriate filter. The app is currently available through TestFlight until Tuesday, when it is released for download on the App Store.

I look forward to downloading it. Before I became a VSCO girl I was a Hipsta boy.

Disney and Kano Partner for Star Wars Motion Sensor Kit

Disney has partnered with Kano, a company that makes coding kits for kids, on a new Star Wars motion sensor kit.

The Bluetooth-enabled motion sensor includes a circular case, printed circuit board with nine LEDs, and two tops that contain Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire iconography. Once assembled, it can be used to control lightsabers, Porgs and other Star Wars paraphernalia in a companion app that’s compatible with Windows 10 PCs, Macs, iPads and Amazon Fire HD 10 tablets.

Apple Hires David Smoley From AstraZeneca

Apple has hired David Smoley, former CIO from pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. He will report to Apple’s CIO so it doesn’t sound like this is a health-related hire.

Smoley is known for his early embrace of cloud computing. He has also served as the CIO of Flex Inc. and as an executive at Honeywell International Inc. and General Electric Co., according to his LinkedIn profile.

iPad 7 Teardown Show Little Change

iFixit posted its teardown of the iPad 7.  It found very little to differentiate if from its predecessor.

Well there you have it, the 10.2″ iPad 6 iPad 7 laid out after facing the business end of a teardown. This turned out to be a pretty light refresh! Just a size increase, the addition of a Smart Connector, and an extra GB of RAM. The display and digitizer still aren’t fused together, despite the addition of Pro-like features, which is something we’re very happy to see survive. Non-laminated, separately replaceable cover glass and LCD makes most screen repairs far less expensive. The LCD is simple to remove once you separate the cover glass/digitizer. As with all iPads, a solid barrier of very strong adhesive hinders all repairs. The Lightning port, a common point of failure, is soldered to the logic board. More adhesive holds nearly everything else in place. Battery and logic board replacements are particularly obnoxious.

 

 

 

Galaxy Fold is Available For Purchase in U.S.

After a five-month delay, and a lot of mockery, Samsung’s Galaxy Fold is finally available to purchase in the U.S. Techcrunch reports there are still some problems with the device.

Five months after originally planned, the Galaxy Fold goes on sale today in the U.S. The handset has had its share of setbacks, of course. The first round ran into problems from several reviewers for a variety of reasons. And as I outlined yesterday, I ran into my own issues with the reinforced version of the handset. Even in its current version, the Galaxy Fold is a fragile thing. That’s something Samsung has been abundantly cautious about disclosing, through a video pleading to “just use a light touch” and a lot of paperwork that ships with the device. I’ll be giving more thoughts on my time with the product in an upcoming write-up. In the meantime, however, anyone thinking of plunking down the $2,000 (and up) needs to factor that into the equation.

Hacker Claims New 'checkm8' Exploit Can Lead to Permanent Jailbreak

Twitter use axi0mX posted about how a new iOS exploit called checkm8 could lead to a “permanent unpatchable bootrom exploit” for iPhone 4s to iPhone X.

What I am releasing today is not a full jailbreak with Cydia, just an exploit. Researchers and developers can use it to dump SecureROM, decrypt keybags with AES engine, and demote the device to enable JTAG. You still need additional hardware and software to use JTAG.

I’m sure governments around the world will be in touch.

macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Patches a Security Hole

Along with iOS 12.4.2 Apple is releasing macOS Mojave 10.14.6, a second supplemental update with security fixes.

If you’re running an earlier version of macOS then you will instead find Security Update 2019-005 for macOS High Sierra and Security Update for macOS Sierra available as system software updates.

The security issue as shared here fixes CVE-2019-8641: A remote attacker may be able to cause unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.

Should Apple Buy Sonos?

Writing for TechCrunch, Darrell Etherington argues that Apple should acquire Sonos, a company known for its speakers.

From an outsider perspective, it’s hard to find two companies who seem more philosophically aligned than Sonos and Apple when it comes to product design and business model. Both are clearly focused on delivering premium hardware (at a price point that’s generally at the higher end of the mass market) and both use services to augment and complement the appeal of their hardware…

I’m not much of an Apple pundit but I’m not seeing the need for Apple to buy Sonos. I think it would’ve made more sense for this acquisition in the past, but Apple already has the HomePod. Aside from the price and platform-specific complaints, I don’t think I’ve heard anything bad about the sound quality.

Be Cautious of AltStore, the New Alternative App Store

There are reports of an alternative App Store that doesn’t require jailbreaking. It’s called AltStore, and it lets you download these alternative apps via a server you install on your Mac. While the developer says that the code for AltStore is open source, that doesn’t mean the apps within are. I urge caution about installing unknown apps outside of the App Store. If they can’t make it through the app review team, there’s probably a reason for that. For example, this quote from the blog:

From the beginning, AltStore was intended to serve as a way for developers to distribute entirely new apps that push the boundaries of iOS in ways not possible with Apple’s app review system.

Hopefully, “pushing the boundaries” doesn’t include apps full of malware.

Amazon Unveils Echo Buds Amid Host of New Hardware

Amazon unveiled a host of new and upgraded hardware at an event on Wednesday. The Verge has a rundown of what waas announced, including the new Echo Buds headphones.

The company announced 15 new products, including the Echo Buds truly wireless headphones, the Dolby Atmos-equipped Echo Studio speaker, and the Echo Frames, which have built-in microphones so you can chat with Alexa. A few of the announcements were minor revisions, like the Echo Dot smart speaker with an integrated clock, and the Alexa Smart Oven that can convection bake and air fry food items (in addition to being a regular microwave). But there were more than a few unexpected surprises, including the Echo Loop smart ring, the new, affordable Eero mesh Wi-Fi router, the Amazon Fetch pet tracker, and more.