Netflix is offering a small collection of its original movies and shows for free (via Engadget). Offerings include the movie Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, and the hit series Stranger Things and Love is Blind. The intention, of course, is to encourage those who may subscribe to other services into paying for Netflix too.
26,800mAh 5-USB Port Power Bank: $89.99
We have a deal on the Zendure A8PD, a 26,800mAh 5-USB port power bank. This device allows you to power up to 5 devices including your MacBook and Nintendo Switch, and it has a built-in LED readout for seeing how much capacity is left. The ports include 4 USB ports, with the 5th being a USB-C port that is reversible and acts both as input and output. And, it supports passthrough charging so you can charge four devices even while charging up the power bank at the same time. It’s $89.99 through our deal.
Apple Watch Notes App ‘Watch Notes’ Goes Free
Watch Notes by Flicktype is an Apple Watch notes app and it recently went on sale. It used to be US$2.99 and now it’s free, although for an unknown time. The app lets you compose and manage your notes directly on your Apple Watch. Notes are stored in your iCloud and sync between your Apple Watch and iPhone. You can change the note color by long-pressing on the plus button. The popular FlickType Keyboard is built into the app and doesn’t require a separate purchase.
Amazon Prime Air Delivery Drones One Step Closer to Reality
The Federal Aviation Administration gave Amazon approval to operate a fleet of Prime Air Delivery drones on Monday, NBC News reported. It brings the company a step closer to its aim of providing 30-minute deliveries.
The approval will give Amazon broad privileges to “safely and efficiently deliver packages to customers,” the agency said. The certification comes under Part 135 of FAA regulations, which gives Amazon the ability to carry property on small drones “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator. Amazon said it will use the FAA’s certification to begin testing customer deliveries. The company said it went through rigorous training and submitted detailed evidence that its drone delivery operations are safe, including demonstrating the technology for FAA inspectors.
ProtonDrive’s End-to-End Encryption Security Revealed
ProtonDrive (from the makers of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN) is in the final stages of development before it gets a beta launch later in 2020. The team revealed its end-to-end encryption security in a blog post.
Files and folders are arranged in a tree structure. Therefore, there is a recurring pattern where a file or folder’s asymmetric key is locked with a passphrase, which in turn is encrypted with the asymmetric key of their parent folder. All passphrases are signed with the address key of the user, without which a malicious server could forge the contents of the tree.
Apple Shipped 23.7 Million AirPods and Beats Products in Q2 2020
New data from IDC said that in Q2 2020 the company shipped 23.7 million AirPods and Beats products, meaning it leads the wearables market.
Apple Silicon Ruminations – TMO Daily Observations 2020-08-31
John Martellaro and Jeff Butts join host Kelly Guimont to discuss the transition to Apple Silicon and what we might learn from Apple history.
Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special Coming to Apple TV+
Apple announced on Monday that “Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special” is coming to Apple TV+ this holiday season.
Researchers Find Critical Slack Bug
A critical bug found in Slack could allow an attacker access to users’ private channels and conversations. Threatpost broke down the details of the flaw in the popular messaging and collaboration app.
To exploit the bug, attackers would need to upload a file to their own HTTPS-enabled server with a payload; then, they could prepare a Slack post with an HTML injection containing the attack URL pointing to that payload (hidden in an image). After that, they need only to share that post with a public Slack channel or user. If a user clicks on the booby-trapped image, the code will be executed on the victim’s machine. As for accomplishing the HTML injection, the issue lies in the way Slack posts are created, according to the researcher. “[Creating a post] creates a new file on https://files.slack.com with [a specific] JSON structure,” according to the writeup. “It’s possible to directly edit this JSON structure, which can contain arbitrary HTML.”
Apple Silicon Might Mean Major Mac Mini Improvements
The first Apple Silicon devices are imminent, but we’re still waiting to really see what it all means in reality. Rene Ritchie at iMore thinks the Mac mini could benefit from the shift away from Intel. I certainly hope so!
My biggest hope with Apple Silicon is that we start getting Mac mini updates every 12-18 months, just like iPad Pro updates. Whatever the next-generation equivalent to the AX-Series for iPads is, put it in the Mac version of that. 14X, 15X, 16, and on. Other than that, I expect we’ll see the same type of improvements from Apple Silicon in the Mac mini they we’d see from Apple Silicon in the MacBook Air — way better performance, especially for graphics, and especially for anything and everything Apple includes custom accelerators for, like 4K and above video rendering, H.265 encode and decode, hypervisor acceleration for virtual machines, and a few other things to make developers and power users alike just smile just a little or a lot wider.