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Andrew Orr

Since 2015 Andrew has been writing about Apple, privacy, security, and at one point even Android. You can find him most places online under the username @andrewornot.

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Articles by Andrew Orr

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Google’s ‘Fabricius’ Tool Uses ML to Decode Hieroglyphs

Andrew Orr ·

Here’s something cool that Google has created: A web tool called “Fabricius” that uses machine learning to decrypt hieroglyphs.

So far, experts had to dig manually through books upon books to translate and decipher the ancient language–a process that has remained virtually unchanged for over a century. Fabricius includes the first digital tool – that is also being released as open source to support further developments in the study of ancient languages – that decodes Egyptian hieroglyphs built on machine learning.

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VSCO Announces ‘BlackJoyMatters’ Photo Campaign

Andrew Orr ·

Something I like about VSCO is its curation of photos from its community of users. There are categories like summer, monochrome, abstract, and more. Its latest initiative is #BlackJoyMatters, a summon-long series to share photos from Black creatives.

We are kicking off #BlackJoyMatters with a global call to action, urging online communities to create, capture and share their interpretations of Black Joy to social media through posting art, first-person videos and/or photos across every social platform using the hashtag #BlackJoyMatters. Throughout the summer, we will spotlight the submitted imagery and art across our social channels and within the VSCO app.

Pixelmator Pro 1.7 Update Adds Curved Text
Cool Stuff Found

Pixelmator Pro 1.7 Update Adds Curved Text

Andrew Orr ·

In an update dubbed “Sequoia” Pixelmator Pro 1.7 adds text on a path, canvas rotation, a new welcome screen, and version 3 of ML Super Resolution. The text update lets you type text on a path, a circle, or any other shape with Circular Type, Path Type, and Freeform Type. Canvas rotation lets you rotate the canvas at any angle. Improvements to ML Super Resolution improves the quality of the result, adds a progress bar (yay!), and adds support for upscaling RAW files while preserving the RAW data.

‘Apple News Today’ Now Available in Apple Podcasts
Cool Stuff Found

‘Apple News Today’ Now Available in Apple Podcasts

Andrew Orr ·

Announced with the release of iOS 13.6 on Wednesday, the Apple News Today podcast gives people a guide to the most fascinating stories in news, and how the world’s top journalists are covering the stories. There will be a new episode every day, Monday through Friday. There are two episodes so far coming in at eight and nine minutes, so these are perfect bite-sized pods for your morning commute (do we still have those?)

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Big Twitter Accounts Like Apple, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Were Hacked

Andrew Orr ·

Major Twitter accounts were hacked today, reports Kevin Truong. Accounts like Apple, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Uber, and others were the victim of a hacking campaign that involved bitcoin.

Events kicked off when the Twitter accounts for major cryptocurrency platforms Coinbase, Gemini, and Binance, among others, all put out tweets minutes apart stating they had partnered up with an organization called CryptoForHealth and that they would be “giving back 5000 BTC to the community.” The tweets all included a link to a site that has been tagged by Google and Cloudflare as a phishing site […]

Most of the tweets have been removed already. Apple’s Twitter account appears to be entirely wiped of tweets.

A fascinating hack that clearly took advantage of Twitter vulnerabilities. But I’d also like to point out that Apple has never actually tweeted, so there wasn’t much to wipe.

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Congressman Wants Apple to Increase Security Over Foreign-Linked Apps

Andrew Orr ·

Rep. Stephen Lynch, chairman of the House subcommittee on national security, sent separate letters to Apple and Google, wanting assurances these companies could warn users about apps with foreign ties.

At a minimum, Apple and Google should take steps to ensure that users are aware of the potential privacy and national security risks of sharing sensitive information with applications that store data in countries adversarial to the United States, or whose developers are subsidiaries of foreign companies.

Apple can only do so much. They probably can’t check the source code of every app to see if it contains Chinese spying code. And what about U.S. spying code?

Cool Stuff Found

Apple Uploads ‘Ted Lasso’ Trailer Starring Jason Sudeikis

Andrew Orr ·

Apple has posted a trailer for “Ted Lasso”, a comedy series starring Jason Sudeikis. Ted Lasso is a small-time college football coach from Kansas hired to coach a professional soccer team in England, despite having no experience coaching soccer.

In addition to starring, Sudeikis serves as executive producer, alongside Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs”) via his Doozer Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television, a division of NBCUniversal Content. Doozer’s Jeff Ingold also serves as an executive producer with Liza Katzer as co-executive producer. The series was developed by Sudeikis, Lawrence, Joe Kelly and Brendan Hunt, and is based on the pre-existing format and characters from NBC Sports.

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Electronic Frontier Foundation Unveils ‘Atlas of Surveillance’

Andrew Orr ·

The EFF unveiled the Atlas of Surveillance today. It’s a database of surveillance tech used by law enforcement across the country. Anyone can use it to see what spying technology their state’s LE uses. You can download datasets, too.

We specifically focused on the most pervasive technologies, including drones, body-worn cameras, face recognition, cell-site simulators, automated license plate readers, predictive policing, camera registries, and gunshot detection. Although we have amassed more than 5,000 datapoints in 3,000 jurisdictions, our research only reveals the tip of the iceberg and underlines the need for journalists and members of the public to continue demanding transparency from criminal justice agencies.

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H.266 Video Codec Uses Half the Data to Stream 4K

Andrew Orr ·

The H.266 video codec was recently revealed, and it was designed for 4K and 8K video streaming. It can steam at these resolutions using half the data as previous codecs.

Fraunhofer said that if a 90-minute, H.265/HEVC-encoded movie is about 10GB, it would only be 5GB for the same quality when encoded with the new codec. “Because H.266/VVC was developed with ultra-high-resolution video content in mind, the new standard is particularly beneficial when streaming 4K or 8K videos on a flat screen TV,” Fraunhofer said. At the same time, it will support all formats from 480p on up.

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Logitech Launches Mouse and Keyboard for Apple Devices

Andrew Orr ·

Today Logitech has launched the MX Master 3 mouse and MX Keys keyboard for Macs and iPads.

Our newest additions to the Master Series and multi-device Bluetooth keyboard lineup have been re-imagined for advanced content creators who need the best tools for their craft and value Apple aesthetics, alongside increased productivity and performance.

Both products mention “For Mac” in the name, but of iPadOS now supports mice and keyboards.

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Apple Patent Shows Folding Device With TouchBar

Andrew Orr ·

A patent application filed today shows a folding Apple device with a TouchBar and an exposed strip for notifications.

If desired, touch sensors (e.g., a two-dimensional touch sensor), buttons, or other input-output devices may be formed in a region such as region on rear surface R of housing (e.g., so that a user may supply input to one of these regions in response to adjacent content being displayed on protruding portion.

This is probably my own bias showing (because I think folding phones are gimmicks) but I think Apple is going for a folding iPad. That makes sense to me.

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Secret Service Warns of Hacking Increase to Managed Service Providers

Andrew Orr ·

The U.S. Secret Service sent out a security alert to warn of an increase in hacking to Managed Service Providers. These provide remote management software for companies, like file-sharing systems.

In a security alert sent out on June 12, Secret Service officials said their investigations team (GIOC — Global Investigations Operations Center) has been seeing an increase in incidents where hackers breach MSP solutions and use them as a springboard into the internal networks of the MSP’s customers.