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Would Apple Leave Russia Over Device Ban?

Andrew Orr ·

Going into effect on July 2020, Russia just passed a law that would ban the sale of devices that don’t come pre-installed with Russian software. This obviously butts up against the integrity of iOS. Would Apple have the “courage” to leave the country if the Kremlin tried to force them to install their surveillance software? Because of course it’s for surveillance. Why else would a government meddle with device makers in this way?

The law will not mean devices from other countries cannot be sold with their normal software – but Russian “alternatives” will also have to be installed.

The legislation was passed by Russia’s lower house of parliament on Thursday. A complete list of the gadgets affected and the Russian-made software that needs to be pre-installed will be determined by the government.

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Startpage News Tab Gives You ‘Unprofiled’ News

Andrew Orr ·

Startpage News Tab is a new feature of the search engine that promises to give people news that hasn’t been personalized.

Personally curated feeds, sometimes referred to as a “filter bubble,” are based on an individual’s online behavior constructed by previous search queries, browsing history, social media clicks, IP address, device, and so on…Our goal with Startpage News Tab is to help people break out of that bubble.

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Adobe Announces Feature Roadmap for Photoshop for iPad

Andrew Orr ·

Just in time after my negative review, Adobe has announced a feature roadmap for Photoshop for iPad. Here are features coming in 2019: Access all Adobe Fonts on iOS; Select Subject using machine learning; Cloud documents that will only save incremental changes to speed up the process. Here are features coming in the first half of 2020: Refine Edge; Curves and Adjustment Layer options; Brush sensitivity and Rotate Canvas; Lightroom integration.

Your experience, your feedback and your point of view has always been a critical part of our process, and we take that very seriously as we chart a path forward with the iPad.

Adobe font integration is great, but I’m not able to install fonts from outside their ecosystem.

TMO Deals

WRAPS Wearable Charge and Sync MFi Lightning Cable: $14.44

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on a wearable Lightning cable. Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but the WRAPS MFi Lightning cable is designed to be worn around your wrist as a bracelet. The company’s promo video below shows how it works. The WRAPS cable is $16.99 through our deal, but promo code BFSAVE15 brings it down to $14.44 at checkout.

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Lots of Android Apps Contain Old Security Flaws

Charlotte Henry ·

Underlying security flaws from code copied from code libraries are in thousands of apps, according to new research from cybersecurity firm CheckPoint. Wired reported that it is causing big problems on Android.

“There are a lot of vulnerabilities out there in applications,” says Yaniv Balmas, head of cyber research at Check Point. “Some of these vulnerabilities are not specifically in applications, but they are found in code libraries. Modern applications use dozens or hundreds of these libraries to operate.” Code libraries (often known as software libraries) allow developers without expertise in specific areas, such as Java Script, to use code that’s already been created. Researchers at Check Point say they have identified existing code libraries that contained vulnerabilities and then compared them to apps scraped from the Play Store. The company says it regularly checks Android apps for its security teams to look for current threats.