iOS 15: Turn Off 'Website Tinting' in Safari

· Charlotte Henry · How-To

website tinting off Safari iOS 15

Safari on iOS 15 has ‘Website Tinting’, which means the address bar automatically becomes the same color as the webpage a user is browsing.

See a Clip From 'Foundation' Before it Appears on Apple TV+

· Charlotte Henry · Cool Stuff Found

A never-seen-before clip from sci-fi series Foundation was released, via Sony, a day before the show premieres on Apple TV+. In a connected interview, showrunner David S. Goyer reiterated to Sony’s Senior Director, SIE Content Communications Sid Shumun that it could take 70 or 80 episodes to fully adapt Isaac Asimov’s legendary novels.

Apple Launches 'The Spark' Music Documentary Series With Episode About Cuco

· Charlotte Henry · Cool Stuff Found

Apple launched The Spark on Thursday. It is a documentary that looks into the creative process behind some of culture’s biggest songs. The first episode features Mexican American sing-songwriter Cuco. He explains how he creates songs and how ‘Under the Sun’ took more than a year to complete.

iPhone 13: How Cinematic Mode Was Made

· Charlotte Henry · Link

Cinematic mode was one of the big new features in the iPhone 13. In a new interview with Techcrunch, Apple VP Kaiann Drance and Human Interface Team designer Johnnie Manzari explain how it was made.

“We knew that bringing a high quality depth of field to video would be magnitudes more challenging [than Portrait Mode],” says Drance. “Unlike photos, video is designed to move as the person filming, including hand shake. And that meant we would need even higher quality depth data so Cinematic Mode could work across subjects, people, pets, and objects, and we needed that depth data continuously to keep up with every frame. Rendering these autofocus changes in real time is a heavy computational workload.” The A15 Bionic and Neural Engine are heavily used in Cinematic Mode, especially given that they wanted to encode it in Dolby Vision HDR as well. They also didn’t want to sacrifice live preview — something that most Portrait Mode competitors took years to ship after Apple introduced it.

Inside Story: How the Mafia is Getting Involved in Cybercrime

· Andrew Orr · Link

Man posing as spy

On Monday, police in Europe announced the arrests of over 100 people connected to the Mafia. They were using hackers to support efforts in traditional crime.

The authorities said that the organized crime groups employed hackers who were using phishing, social engineering attacks, and SIM swapping, as well as sending malware to victims with the goal of taking over their bank accounts and stealing their money.

This operation highlights a new trend: traditional organized crime groups, such as the Italian Mafia and Camorra, are now dabbling in cybercrime to support their traditional offline activities, according to Italian and Spanish police investigators involved in the crackdown who spoke with Motherboard.

AirPods Market Share Dropped From 41 Percent to 29 Percent

· Andrew Orr · Link

airpods on yellow background

Mashable‘s Alex Perry writes how AirPods revolutionized the wireless earbud space but is currently falling behind.

AirPods market share dropped from 41 percent at the end of 2019 to 29 percent at the end of 2020, according to research firm Counterpoint. That’s still a substantial lead over everyone else, but it does point to what happened in the more than two years since the last AirPods update: Other companies made cheaper and better entry-level wireless earbuds, and consumers took notice.

Photo by Lala Azizli on Unsplash

'ShadowDragon' Helps Michigan State Police Surveil its Citizens

· Andrew Orr · Link

shadowdragon surveillance tool

An investigation on Thursday shows how Michigan State Police use software called ShadowDragon to collect online data. This helps them identify “persons of interest.”

By providing powerful searches of more than 120 different online platforms and a decade’s worth of archives, the company claims to speed up profiling work from months to minutes. ShadowDragon even claims its software can automatically adjust its monitoring and help predict violence and unrest. Michigan police acquired the software through a contract with another obscure online policing company named Kaseware for an “MSP Enterprise Criminal Intelligence System.”

Microsoft Unveils New Surface Laptop Studio

· Charlotte Henry · Cool Stuff Found

Microsoft unveiled the new 14.4″ Surface Laptop Studio on Wednesday. Users can alternate between using the device as a laptop or tablet. It also offers Slim Pen storage and charging too, much like the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. A new video outlines all the available features.

FaceTime SharePlay and More in iOS 15.1 Beta

· Jeff Butts · News

FaceTime SharePlay

The highly anticipated FaceTime SharePlay feature is back in the first iOS 15.1 beta. That’s not all that Cupertino has added, though.

Apple Music Playlist Curated by Deaf People

· Charlotte Henry · Cool Stuff Found

Apple Music has its first playlist curated by Deaf people. The collection includes music by a variety of artists, including Eminimen, The Commodores, and Kendrick Lamar. It is inspired by the movie Coda, which is available now to TV+ subscribers, and meant to highlight the different ways Deaf people can experience songs.