EFF Shares Statement on Apple Scanning for Illegal Content

This week we discovered that Apple plans to localize its scanning efforts to detect child sexual abuse material. The move has been widely criticized and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has shared its statement on the matter.

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. That’s not a slippery slope; that’s a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change.

COVID-19 Pandemic Delays Opening of First Apple Store in India

The opening of the first Apple Store in India has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Express reported. The Mumbai location had been set to open this year to boost the company’s retail presence in the crucial market.

While Apple has a strong franchise retail network across India, it’s online store launched last September has been helping the company reach buyers beyond its retail network. This January, in an earnings call after announcing the company’s 2020 results, Cook said Apple had sold over a million devices in the country for the first time. “If you take India for example, we doubled our business last quarter compared to a year ago,” he told analysts while qualifying that Apple’s “absolute level of business there is still quite low relative to the size of the opportunity.”

Apple Music Now Lets Artists Share Milestones

Apple Music now allows artists to share various metrics and milestones with their fans, Macrumors reported. These include highs and all-time best number of  plays, number of Shazams, and whether tracks are feature in ‌curated playlists.

The ‌Apple Music‌ for Artists feature generates automatic milestones for artists of all sizes, which artists can highlight on social media networks. Milestones include new highs and all-time bests across Plays and Shazams, and inclusion in ‌Apple Music‌’s curated playlists. Artists will see images celebrating their milestones on their iOS overview page for ‌Apple Music‌ for Artists, and can tap the share icon to open up the share sheet. Users will also see relevant milestones on the song and country detail pages. Milestones can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and Instagram stories. Sharing milestones is a feature that’s limited to artists at the current time and the images can only be accessed through the ‌Apple Music‌ for Artists iOS app.

Why Apple TV+ Film 'CODA' is a Crucial Moment For Deaf Representation

The latest edition of The Hollywood Reporter is dedicated to CODA, which is set for release on Apple TV+ and in theaters on August 13. The film is about a family that is deaf except for one child, who has ambitions to sing but has to decide whether to stay and help her family or pursue her own dreams. In the piece, the cat and crew explain why the film is such a groundbreaking moment in onscreen representation and filmmaking.

On the set of CODA, gaffers learned to never backlight actors or stand them against windows so that the actors’ hands did not get lost in the shadows, and the director of photography reframed shots so the signing was clearly visible and the costume department stayed away from fringe and other clothing that could hinder signing. When not shooting, [Marlee] Matlin asked [Emilia] Jones, who is British, to speak with her onscreen American accent because it was easier to understand when it came to reading lips. And when the on-set ASL master, Anne Tomasetti, stepped into the Rossi family living room for the first time, she quickly pointed out that in a deaf household, the couch would be facing the front door. “Suddenly, we were moving furniture around and setting up the living room in a way that you would have sight lines to the entrances and exits,” since anyone who walks in through the door can’t be heard, recalls Heder. “It was like this ‘of course’ moment.” Adds Matlin, “That poor set decorator.”

 

Here's What Apple's AirPower Charging Mat Actually Looked Like

Remember AirPower, Apple’s wireless charging mat that never made it to release? Well, The Verge has was sent pictures of a prototype and took a closer look…

Giulio Zompetti, a 28-year-old from Italy, says he has been able to purchase a prototype AirPower unit from Chinese e-waste sources. “The unit lacks all of its exterior housing, and shows this beautiful and heavy stainless steel chassis,” says Zompetti. In photos supplied to The Verge, you can see the AirPower mat powering a prototype iPhone, with its 22 coils on the front-facing side and 22 controller circuits on the rear. In order for this AirPower prototype to work, it has to be paired with special prototype iPhone hardware to activate the coils. “It doesn’t work with production devices, because the coils are woken up by the device,” explains Zompetti, who says he’s been able to charge two prototype devices simultaneously so far. Zompetti says he received the unit in December and was able to interact with it initially through a serial lightning cable.

(Image Credit: Giulio Zompetti)

This Hardware Hack Gives iPhone Dual-SIM Support

In China, owners of the iPhone XR, iPhone 11, and iPhone 12 models enjoy dual-SIM support. This means they can insert two nano-SIMs, even from different carriers, into their phones. This feature is only available in China, and Apple doesn’t provide the configurations anywhere else. In the iPhone 12, of course, you have the possibility of using your physical SIM card along with a second, digital eSIM. YouTuber Hugh Jeffreys , however, had the idea to try swapping the SIM reader and tray in a non-Chinese iPhone for one from China. Surprisingly, the hardware hack works and provides dual-SIM support for non-Chinese iPhones. It’s definitely an advanced-level task, since it requires removing the display from your device. Still, if you want to have support for two physical SIM cards in your iPhone, it definitely seems within reach.

Backup Tool ‘iMazing’ Updated to Detect Pegasus Spyware

The team behind iMazing has updated their tool to detect NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. You don’t have to buy an iMazing license to scan for it.

It would therefore be possible to relatively quickly re-implement MVT’s methodology in our toolkit, and integrate a user-friendly ‘wizard’ in iMazing’s user interface. And because iMazing can already perform iOS backups and decrypt backup files, the tool we envisaged had the potential to dramatically reduce the technical barrier of entry whilst enhancing performance and promoting backup encryption.

WhatsApp One Time View Photos and Videos

WhatsApp began rolling out photos and videos that can only be used on Wednesday. It will become available to all users, according to a blogpost from the Facebook-owned messenger.

On many phones, simply taking a photo means it will take up space in your camera roll forever. That’s why today we’re rolling out new View Once photos and videos that disappear from the chat after they’ve been opened, giving users even more control over their privacy. For example, you might send a View Once photo of some new clothes you’re trying on at a store, a quick reaction to a moment in time, or something sensitive like a Wi-Fi password. As with all the personal messages you send on WhatsApp, View Once media is protected by end-to-end encryption so WhatsApp cannot see them. They will also be clearly marked with a new “one-time” icon.