Owners of the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max can join the iPhone Macro Challenge. Share your best macro photos on Instagram and Twitter.
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.
Articles by Andrew Orr
Google Topics Will Categorize Your Browsing for Advertising
Google Topics will track your browsing and divvy it up into 300 categories for advertising. It replaces Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).
When you hit upon a site that supports the Topics API for ad purposes, the browser will share three topics you are interested in — one for each of the three last weeks — selected randomly from your top five topics of each week. The site can then share this with its advertising partners to decide which ads to show you. Ideally, this would make for a more private method of deciding which ad to show you — and Google notes that it also provides users with far greater control and transparency than what’s currently the standard. Users will be able to review and remove topics from their lists — and turn off the entire Topics API, too.
Developers are Finding That iCloud Sync is Breaking
iCloud sync is breaking and developers don’t know why. So far, they say, Apple hasn’t publicly acknowledged the issue.
Cooking Over FaceTime? New Recipe App 'Pestle' Can Help
Sarah Perez writes about a new app called Pestle that helps with cooking over FaceTime. It makes use of SharePlay released with iOS 15.1.
The result is a well-built recipe app that provides a better experience for the end user, and one which tries to respect the creator content it organizes by offering source links, tools to discover more recipes from the same creator as they’re published, and a feature that encourages repeat visits to recipe sites. But some of Pestle’s other features make it almost too easy to bypass creators’ websites, which could cause concerns.
Coinbase Creates Center to Help With Crypto Taxes
Worried about crypto taxes? Coinbase has created a tax center on its platform to help.
Customers will see all of their taxable activity in one place to determine if they owe taxes, and how much. If they’ve taken more advanced steps like sending or receiving crypto from Coinbase Pro or external wallets, they can receive free tax reports for up to 3,000 transactions from our crypto tax partner CoinTracker. The most complicated time of the year just became more clear.
Here's Where to Find a Word Count in TextEdit
Michael Rankin, an instructor at LinkedIn, wrote a tip last year about finding the word count in TextEdit on the Mac.
'Open App Markets Act' Would Have Unintended Side Effects, Warns ITIF
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation warns Congress about unintended consequences of the Open App Markets Act.
'AccessPress' Themes and Plugins for WordPress Contains Backdoor
JetPack discovered a backdoor found within AccessPress themes and plugins. Every theme and most plugins contain this malware.
Do You Use Coinbase or Venmo? Join the Plaid Lawsuit
Join the Plaid lawsuit if you’ve ever used Coinbase, Venmo, Robinhood, or dozens of other apps.
Plaid, a middleman connecting bank accounts to other fintech services, says it’s been used by tens of millions in North America. According to the settlement website, Plaid allegedly obtained “more financial data than was needed” and set up log-in pages that deceptively mimicked those of the user’s own bank account, but fed the credentials directly to itself. For its part, Plaid has denied any wrongdoing and argued it was transparent about its practices.
I filed a claim and look forward to getting my US$5.00.
Someone Reverse Engineered 'Wordle', Here are the Secrets
Robert Reichel has reverse engineered Worldle and posted a write-up on his blog. It includes a list of words the game uses.
At this point, we’ve done enough digging to know how Wordle is choosing the word of the day. We know that Wordle uses a client-side date-based algorithm to determine which word to use from a static wordlist. Each day is predictable so long as we have all of the code pieced together.
Merck Wins Court Dispute Over 'NotPetya' Attack
Merck wins a court dispute with insurance companies for US$1.4 billion in losses due to the NotPetya attack. This was a cyberattack in 2017.
YouTuber Ruben Sim Must Pay Roblox Over 'Cybermob'
The Roblox Corporation sued YouTuber Ruben Sim over leading a “cybermob” on its platform and terrorizing players, many of whom are kids.
The original ban, according to Roblox’s lawyers, was issued after the YouTube creator harassed other players using racist and homophobic slurs, allegedly sexually harassed users, and uploaded photos of Adolph Hitler to Roblox. Sim disputed this characterization in a YouTube video uploaded last week.
Congress Explores Blockchain Energy Usage From Mining
On January 20, the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the U.S. Congress House Energy and Commerce Committee discussed blockchain energy usage and other concepts related to mining and consensus.
Representatives then took to the floor with statements and questions. A few used their time for partisan attacks and political grandstanding, yet most made an honest effort to ask questions that either tackled the energy-related issues at the core of the hearing or sought broader context on the uses and potential applications of blockchain technology.
Intel Plans Ohio Factory for Semiconductor Fabrication
Intel plans an Ohio factory that will include at least two chip fabs on the 1,000-acre site. Construction will begin in 2022.
Red Cross Data Breach Affects 515,000 Vulnerable People
A contractor for The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) suffered a data breach, as revealed on Wednesday.
Federal Reserve Releases Paper on Digital Dollar, Seeks Public Comment
The Federal Reserve has released a 40-page paper [PDF] on its study of a digital dollar. It seeks public comment as it takes no position at this time.
Instead, it provides an exhaustive look at benefits such as speeding up the electronic payments system at a time when financial transactions around the world already are highly digitized. Some of the downside issues the report discusses are financial stability risks and privacy protection while guarding against fraud and other illegal issues.
Peloton Pauses Production of Bikes, Treadmills Over Decreasing Demand
Peloton is pausing production of its bikes and treadmills in February-March, according to internal documents obtained by CNBC.
Peloton has essentially guessed wrong about how many people would be buying its products, after so much demand was pulled forward during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s now left with thousands of cycles and treadmills sitting in warehouses or on cargo ships, and it needs to reset its inventory levels.
Twitter NFT Profile Photos Roll Out to iOS Subscribers
Twitter NFT profile photos are rolling out to members of the Twitter Blue subscription in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
At launch, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Ledger Live, Argent, and Trust Wallet are supported. After authenticating, you’ll select the NFT you want to showcase. Twitter says that, currently, JPEG and PNG NFTs minted on the Ethereum (ERC-721 or ERC-1155 tokens) can be used as NFT Profile Pictures.
Big Tech Nervous About 'American Innovation and Choice Online Act'
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to deliberate on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO), a bill aimed at Big Tech.
IRS and ID.me Makes Video Selfies a Requirement in 2022
The IRS is requiring people create an account with ID.me to access and submit taxes. One of the verification methods is a video selfie
'Orchid' Nanopayments for VPN Support 8 More Blockchains
Orchid nanopayments for its VPN service can now be bridged onto eight additional blockchains via the company’s layer 2 system.
Apple Countersues Ericsson Seeking Base Station Import Ban
Apple countersues Ericsson and seeks a U.S. import ban on mobile base stations from Ericsson, a report says on Thursday.
Court Rules Blocking Ads is Not Copyright Infringement
Publisher Axel Springer claimed that blocking ads is copyright infringement, but a German court disagreed.
The Court notes that ruling otherwise would represent a “disproportionate encroachment” on users’ freedoms to make various choices, including not to load images to save bandwidth, to deactivate Javascript, or block pop-ups or tracking elements. It would also render translation tools and aids for visually impaired people as copyright infringing.
Instagram Subscriptions New Way to Support Your Favorite Users
Instagram Subscriptions, launching on Wednesday, is a way for people to support their favorite profiles. TechCrunch reports:
Through the Subscriptions product, creators can choose their own price point for access to their exclusive content. There are eight different price points to choose from, starting at $0.99 per to month to as much as $99.99 per month, depending on how much a creator believes their content is worth. Most creators will likely start towards the bottom of that range, at price points like $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, $4.99, or maybe even $9.99 per month, before experimenting with higher pricing like $19.99, $49.99, or $99.99 per month.