Toyota and Volkswagen announced this week that 2020 models of their vehicles will come with CarPlay integration.
Apple Pay Support Comes to Over 20 Banks Worldwide
Aside from French banks adding support, Apple updated its list to reflect the addition of over 20 more banks.
The U.S. bank list is now so long that Apple has introduced alphabetical sub-sections to make it easier to find your bank on the list. Other new entries added to the most recently updated list include Qpay in Australia; HSBC in France; Surgutneftegasbank in Russia; Banco Mediolanum in Spain; Concord bank and UkrSibbank in Ukraine; and N26 in the UK.
iOS 12.1.4 Has Been Released
Apple just released the iOS 12.1.4 update with important security fixes, like a fix for the Group FaceTime bug.
The Boy Who Built His Own Prosthetic Arm. Out of Lego.
LONDON – David Aguilar was born without a forearm. So the Spaniard decided to build his own one. This would be extraordinary enough, but he did out of Lego. He started aged 9 and, aged 19, is now on his 4th iteration of the prosthetic limb. Reuters spoke to Mr. Aguilar and told his amazing story.
Once his favorite toys, the plastic bricks became the building material for Aguilar’s first, still very rudimentary, artificial arm at the age of nine, and each new version had more movement capability than the one before.“As a child I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different, but that didn’t stop me believing in my dreams,” Aguilar, who is from Andorra, a tiny principality between Spain and France, told Reuters.
Flickr Photo Deletion Delayed Until March
Flickr says that accounts that are no longer used will be targeted first. For active users old content will be deleted first.
Technobabylon is a Cyberpunk Game Full of Adventure
Technobabylon is a cyberpunk game that I recently came across. I haven’t played it yet but it’s downloading as I type, due to its large, 1.4GB file size. In the city of Newton, 2087, genetic engineering is the norm, the addictive Trance has replaced almost any need for human interaction, and an omnipresent AI named Central powers the city. CEL agents Charlie Regis and Max Lao are investigating a serial Mindjacker who is tapping into the neural wiring of seemingly ordinary citizens, stealing their knowledge and leaving them dead. An agoraphobic net addict named Latha Sesame might be the next target. But when Charlie’s past comes back to haunt him, he and his partner find themselves on opposite sides of the law, with Latha’s fate in the crossfire. App Store: US$4.99
Russia Wants Apple Maps to Show Crimea as Russian Territory
The Russian State Duma is asking why Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea, is displayed on Apple Maps as being part of Ukrainian territory.
Mumsnet Refers Itself to UK Privacy Regulator After Bug
LONDON – Popular parenting website Mumsnet reported itself to the UK’s Information Commissioner. A bug that meant users’ accounts could potentially be switched was found. This meant people could have access to other’s account details and private messages. The company confirmed to the Guardian that it had reported itself, following the incident.
A botched upgrade to the software the forum runs on meant that for three days, if two users tried to log in at the same time, there was the possibility that their accounts would be switched. Each user was able to post as the other, see their account details, and read private messages. The company doesn’t know how many user accounts were affected, but says that over the three days the bug was live, from Tuesday afternoon to Thursday morning, about 4,000 users logged in. Of that, only 14 users have reported an issue.
59,000 Reported GDPR Breaches in Just 8 Months
59,000 GDPR beaches have been reported in the 8 months since the law came into force, with the most in The Netherlands, Germany, and the UK.
Fauxtography, or Manipulating an Image to Tell a Story
Nice piece on photography and fauxtography by The Verge. It talks about certain automated actions in photography but I think it speaks to photo manipulation in general. Long before smartphones and Photoshop were invented, some photographers still manipulated their images in the dark room. These were under the category of fine art photography, and it helped a photographer use the picture to tell the story in their head.
For the longest time, we’ve had a seemingly clear dividing line between shots straight out of the camera (colloquially referred to as SOOC) and examples of fauxtography where the shooter has indulged in applying some after effects like filters, vignettes, recoloration, or masking and inserting objects in the frame. Phones are now stampeding over that line.