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Underclocked iPhone SE More Powerful Than Android Phones

Andrew Orr ·

Some impressive news for Apple: Not only is the iPhone SE more powerful than the most expensive Android phones, it’s doing that while underclocked.

More powerful than Android phones:

Building your own mobile chipset brings many advantages, and Apple is leveraging them today. Google really needs to do the same, and soon.

Underclocked processor:

Looking at the result breakdown of the iPhone SE (2020), the CPU and GPU yield is closer to the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max that are powered by an A12 Bionic platform. Memory speed is the only thing pushing the 256GB iPhone SE way ahead of the XS family with the result of 77,968, which is in line with the iPhone 11 trio.

No speculation on why it’s underclocked, but one possible reason is heat.

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Netatmo Smart Indoor Security Camera Patched After Security Issue Found

Andrew Orr ·

Following an investigation by PCMag and Bitdefender, a patch has been issued for the Netatmo Smart Indoor Security Camera.

The Bitdefender IoT Vulnerability Research Team discovered that the device is susceptible to an authenticated file write that leads to command execution (CVE-2019-17101), as well as to a privilege escalation via dirtyc0w—a local privilege escalation bug that exploits a race condition in the implementation of the copy-on-write mechanism in the kernel’s memory-management subsystem.

Many smart home devices are notoriously insecure, and this is the main reason why I don’t have any of them (Besides my robot vacuum, but I explained my reasoning).

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Apple Watch: Remove The Band Before Getting a Repair

Charlotte Henry ·

Customers need to remove the band on their Apple Watch before going to get the device repaired. If they leave it on, it will no longer be returned. That’s according to update guidance, reported on by Cult of Mac.

It is now explicitly asking customers to remove them. Its new support document warns that any bands sent in will not be returned. Your Apple Watch band and any other accessories that you send won’t be returned, so please remove them before sending your Apple Watch in for service,” read the updated guidelines. Apple also reminds users who own a Link Bracelet band to “remember to separate the link before you remove the band.” In the past, Apple has been known to return accessories, bundled together, when practical. Apple Watch bands would be be reattached, but they would be sent back to the user. It’s possible that practice has now become too time-consuming.

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Fortnite is Now in The Google Play Store, but Epic Games Isn't Happy About it

Charlotte Henry ·

After an 18-month standoff, Fortnite is finally on the Google Play Store. However, Techcrunch reported that gamesmaker Epic Games is not all that happy about it.

“Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,” an Epic Games spokesperson said in a statement. “Because of this, we’ve launched Fortnite for Android on the Google Play Store.” Epic Games withholding Fortnite from the Play Store was a very clear threat to Google’s app profits, though Google argued that downloading Android software outside of the Play Store presented a clear security threat to users who could unknowingly download malware from less reputable sites.