Apple says that Mac apps distributed outside of the Mac App Store have to be notarized by February 3, 2020, an attempt to increase security.
Twitter Trolls Used Animated PNGs to Attack Epileptics
Twitter has blocked the use of animated PNGs on its platform after trolls used them to attack people with epilepsy.
NYT and Location Data, Last Minute Gift Picks – TMO Daily Observations 2019-12-23
Dave Hamilton and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to discuss the latest location data reporting, and last minute gift ideas.
Apple Offers Free Two-Day Delivery for its Products
If you live in an area with an Apple store offering courier delivery, you’re in for a treat this holiday season.
A Look Back at The Decade's Worst Hacks
As the decade comes to an end, we’re all in a reflective mood. Wired looked back at some of the worst cybersecurity incidents of the last 10-years.
Over the last decade, hacking became less of a novelty and more of a fact of life for billions of people around the world. Regular people lost control of their data, faced invasive surveillance from repressive regimes, had their identities stolen, realized a stranger was lurking on their Netflix account, dealt with government-imposed internet blackouts, or, for the first time ever, literally found themselves caught in the middle of a destructive cyberwar. It’s been apparent for decades that an increasingly computerized world would inevitably invite constant digital threats. But the actual evolution of hacking—with all its scams, criminal black markets, and state sponsored forces—has been characteristically human, not a sterile, dispassionate artifact of an unknown future.
App Store Offering Free Treats From Christmas Eve
Apple will give free gifts to users via the App Store between December 24 and December 29, with a new present to unwrap each day.
Sling TV Adds News Channels and $5 to Monthly price
Sling TV, the live-streaming TV service, added more news channels such as MSNBC and Fox News to its plans on Monday. Existing users will see a $5 increase in their monthly price, 9to5Mac reported.
The price jump means both Blue and Orange service plans will now start at $30/month each. Sling divides channels by plans to make access more affordable. Subscribers who want all channels can subscribe to plans at a new price of $45/month. Sling TV adds that the price increase is the first for the Blue plan since it launched four years ago and the first for the Orange plan since June 2018. During that period, new channels and features including Cloud DVR Free have been added to the service.
CasVPN 1-Year Subscription: $9.99
We have a deal on CasVPN, a VPN that unblocks your favorite movies and TV shows with buffer-free UHD video streaming and unrestricted P2P File Sharing, all with unlimited downloads. 1 year is $9.99 through our deal.
AirPods Pro and Bluetooth Latency
As with most Bluetooth devices, audio latency is a problem with AirPods. However, the composer and software developer Stephen Coyle found that Apple noticeably reduced it with the new AirPods Pros.
Looking to the AirPods first, there’s a very encouraging trend occurring. They drop from 274ms to 178ms going from the first to second generation, and the AirPods Pro take it down even further, to 144ms. While a 130ms reduction may not seem like a lot, the perceptual difference from this makes the AirPods Pro tantalisingly close to seamless. Keyboard clicks are near enough to their corresponding keypresses that they feel like they’re actually related to them, not just the cacophony of blips they had seemed before. Tapt is playable, but only just; there’s still additional cognitive load caused by the delay, which I’m sure affects other rhythm-based games equally, and risks upsetting the playability of games that rely heavily on audio cues. However, it’s a lot better, and it looks like things are heading very much in the right direction.
Apple Removes ‘ToTok’ App After its Reveal as Spying Tool
Apple has removed a chat app called ToTok after an investigation revealed it was a government spying tool.