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What's a 'Wordle?' Here's the Story of This Popular Game

Andrew Orr ·

If you’ve been wondering what a “wordle” is as I have, fear no more. The New York Times tells its story.

It’s been a meteoric rise for the once-a-day game, which invites players to guess a five-letter word in a similar manner as the guess-the-color game Mastermind. After guessing a five-letter word, the game tells you whether any of your letters are in the secret word and whether they are in the correct place. You have six tries to get it right.

Update to ‘Apple Frames’ Shortcut Supports Apple Watch Series 7, 2021 MacBook Pro
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Update to 'Apple Frames' Shortcut Supports Apple Watch Series 7, 2021 MacBook Pro

Andrew Orr ·

Over at MacStories, Federico Viticci updated his Apple Frames shortcut. This is a brilliant tool I use nearly every day to frame my screenshots into an Apple device frame, or outline. He recently updated it to support the Apple Watch Series 7 and 2021 MacBook Pro. You can find Mr. Viticci’s article at the link below. “Starting with Apple Frames 2.1, the Shortcuts app will detect whether you have an older version of the Frames.json installed in iCloud Drive, and it’ll automatically replace it with the latest one from the MacStories CDN. That’s it. If an old version of the Frames.json file is found, Shortcuts will send you a notification and re-download the file from cdn.macstories.net.“

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Generate AI Music With 'Boomy' And Sell it on Spotify

Andrew Orr ·

Boomy is a service that lets you generate AI music in less than 30 seconds, then submit the tracks to Spotify and other platforms.

While Boomy owns the copyright to each recording, and receives the funds in the first instance, the company says it passes on 80% of the streaming royalties to the person who created the song. Mr Mitchell adds that more than 10,000 of its users have published over 100,000 songs in total on various streaming services.

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Mac Security Tools Company 'Objective-See' Goes Non-Profit

Andrew Orr ·

Instead of antivirus or antimalware software, I use several tools from Objective-See. They’re free and open source. Company founder Patrick Wardle is making the business a non-profit.

I see a lot of people who take VC money and almost always your business model has to change or you have to put profits first and can’t do the community focus and public service activities you want. Going the nonprofit route is a really good approach and illustrates that you can support your company on donations without having to change that business model.

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Avira Antivirus Crypto Miner is Also a Thing, Following Norton

Andrew Orr ·

Following Norton, Avira Antivirus crypto miner is also a thing now, as the company is owned by NortonLifeLock.

Not only does Norton press gang your system into mining Etherium [sic], they take a 15% cut off the top for doing so, though at least they let you keep the rest; whether you know it or not. The problem is that antivirus programs are supposed to prevent you from unwittingly mining cryptcoin for others, not actively recruit you for it. This might not seem bad at first glance, as they give you a dashboard which shows just how much money you could theoretically get if you cashed in the Etherium [sic] them made you mind.

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T-Mobile Blocks iCloud Private Relay for Customers in United States

Andrew Orr ·

It appears that carriers in the U.S. and aboard aren’t happy with iCloud Private Relay. The setting, released with iOS 15, likely interferes with surveillance of customers. A report from 9To5Mac says that T-Mobile has begun blocking the feature.

The change does not appear to be network-wide just yet, but rather it appears T-Mobile is in the process of rolling it out. This means that some users might still be able to use iCloud Private Relay when connected to their cellular network – at least for now.

Very shady behavior. I haven’t been using Private Relay because it overrides my DNS. The good news is that carriers can’t prevent you from changing your DNS settings.