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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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How the Internet Archive Makes Wikipedia More Reliable

Andrew Orr ·

Many of Wikipedia’s citations are from books, and to check the book citation against the article requires that you hunt down the book. But now the Internet Archive is making the process easier.

Now, thanks to a new initiative by the Internet Archive, you can click the name of the book and see a two-page preview of the cited work, so long as the citation specifies a page number. You can also borrow a digital copy of the book, so long as no else has checked it out, for two weeks—much the same way you’d borrow a book from your local library.

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Facebook Profits on Manipulating Us, an Insider Reveals

Andrew Orr ·

Writing for The Washington Post, Yaël Eisenstat writes about paid political advertising at Facebook and how the company profits off of manipulation.

The “culture of fear,” nasty political campaigns and amplified extreme voices are not new in American society. But the scale to which these platforms have fueled and exacerbated this by using our emotional biases to keep our eyeballs on their screens, to vacuum up our data and sell their targeting tools to advertisers, has tilted the playing field toward the most salacious and fanatical voices.

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What to Look For When Reading a Privacy Policy

Andrew Orr ·

Yael Grauer wrote a useful guide on what to look for when reading a privacy policy, such as length, updates, and more.

While you shouldn’t feel compelled to read your apps’ and services’ privacy policies word for word—boring!—there are still a few key criteria you should look for while you’re skimming. Yes, skimming; you shouldn’t ignore privacy policies completely, because it’s important to know what’s being done with (or to) your data.

I also use two tools called Polisis and PriBot. These are automated tools that break down a privacy policy for you.

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Adobe Announces Photoshop Camera App

Andrew Orr ·

Today Adobe announced a Photoshop Camera app that gives you plenty of photo effects and lenses and preview them before you take the shot.

Scroll through tons of insta-worthy lenses and effects to apply before or after the shot. It’s really easy to swap them in and out, so you don’t have to worry about changing your mind. And you can keep your favorites to use again and again.

Photoshop Camera is packed with amazing AI-powered features that help you take gorgeous selfies, food and scenery shots, and more. Quick fixes like portrait relighting and distortion removal mean you can post images that look like you spent way more time on them than you did.

It’s not available for release yet but you can sign up to try to test it.

Cool Stuff Found

Adobe Releases Photoshop for iPad, But it's Still a Work in Progress

Andrew Orr ·

Adobe has released Photoshop for iPad. You can try it for a 30-day free trial, and after that it requires a subscription to Creative Cloud that costs US$9.99/mo.

This first version focuses on core compositing and retouching tools designed to work best on the iPad with Apple Pencil and touch. And we’re just getting started. For future versions, we’re looking at enhancing our tools used for brushes, masks, refining edges, and selecting smart subjects. Plus, we want to make it easier to access your brushes and fonts in Creative Cloud.

Early reviews of the app say it’s a bit rough around the edges, but download it to see for yourself. App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)

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Trump Cybersecurity Advisor Rudy Giuliani Probably Doesn't Know Much About Cybersecurity

Andrew Orr ·

I think it’s a safe assumption that Rudy Giuliani, named as Trump’s cybersecurity advisor, probably doesn’t know anything about cybersecurity. My evidence? He forgot the passcode to his own iPhone.

Giuliani showed up at the San Francisco store after being locked out of his iPhone, just 26 days after Trump named him cybersecurity adviser, NBC News reported Thursday, citing interviews with two sources and an internal Apple Store memo.

The former New York mayor had entered his passcode incorrectly 10 times and went to the store for help — a troubling move that suggests a sloppy approach to cybersecurity for someone so close to the president, experts said.

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NordVPN Falls Victim to Credential-Stuffing Attack

Andrew Orr ·

About 2,000 NordVPN users have fallen victim to credential-stuffing attacks that let third-parties access their accounts.

While it’s likely that some accounts are listed in multiple lists, the number of user accounts easily tops 2,000. What’s more, a large number of the email addresses in the list I received weren’t indexed at all by Have I Been Pwned, indicating that some compromised credentials are still leaking into public view. Most of the Web pages that host these credentials have been taken down, but at the time this post was going live, at least one remained available on Pastebin, despite the fact Ars brought it to NordVPN’s attention more than 17 hours earlier.

NordVPN emailed all the publishers that have reported on its hack. In my opinion the company has been trying to downplay it. We’ll see if its recent security measures will improve the service, or if it’s lip service.

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Apple Shares Trailer for Apple TV+ Show 'Ghostwriter'

Andrew Orr ·

Apple shared a trailer for Ghostwriter, a show for kids on Apple TV+ that is a remake from the Ghostwriter series on PBS from 1992 to 1995.

When a ghost haunts a neighborhood bookstore and starts releasing fictional characters into the real world, four kids must team up to solve an exciting mystery surrounding the ghost’s unfinished business.

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Adobe Creative Cloud App Brings Fonts to iOS 13.1

Andrew Orr ·

For the first time Adobe is bringing its fonts in its Creative Cloud app. Your device needs iOS 13.1 or later as that release supports custom font APIs.

If you already have a Creative Cloud subscription, you’ll have the same access as you do on your desktop to over 17,000 fonts from type foundries around the world. Users without a subscription but with an Adobe ID have access to 1,300 fonts included within the app for use on iOS13.1-compatible devices. Any fonts installed in Creative Cloud mobile are automatically activated across all your devices.

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iOS 13.2 Aggressively Kills Background Apps and Tasks

Andrew Orr ·

Nick Heer put together a list of people noticing that iOS 13.2 is awfully aggressive in killing apps and tasks in the background.

As bugs go, this is isn’t a catastrophic one, but it absolutely should be the highest of priorities to fix it. It’s embarrassing that all of the hard work put into making animations and app launching feel smooth is squandered by mismanaged multitasking.

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The ProtonMail iOS App is Now Fully Open Source

Andrew Orr ·

Since 2015 ProtonMail’s web app has been open source, and today the company announced that its iOS app is, too.

In addition to making our iOS app open source, we have also documented and published our iOS security model. This is important to us because raw code without documentation can be almost unintelligible sometimes, and a documented security model will assist in rigorous assessment and review of our code by the public. Our iOS trust model is also available on our Github page.