5 New Apple Arcade Games Include Fallen Knight, Yaga, Lifelike, Hogwash, and Tales of Memo

Today Apple has added five new games to its Arcade gaming service, which you can find in the App Store.

Apple Arcade has added five more games to its new $4.99 monthly subscription service on Friday. Players can now check out Fallen Knight, Yaga, Lifelike, Hogwash and Tales of Memo as part of Apple Arcade’s growing catalog of games. The games are available on iPad, iPhone and Apple TV to start, with content slowly coming to Mac as well.

Behind AT&T's Streaming Competitor HBO Max

AT&T wants to take on the likes of Netflix, Disney, and Apple with its streaming service HBO Max.

By 2025, AT&T aims to reach about 80 million global subscribers, with about 50 million in the United States, a source briefed on the plans told Reuters. They are ambitious targets that would be consistent with Netflix Inc’s (NFLX.O) early progress, and in the mid-range of Disney+, Walt Disney Co’s (DIS.N) Netflix rival, set to launch on Nov. 12.

WarnerMedia hopes this service will get a boost in 2021 when it launches an advertising-supported option at a lower cost, insiders said.

Line Up Your Shots with This Wearable, Compact Bluetooth Golf Rangefinder: $54.99

We have a different sort of deal for you today, the GoGolf GPS Bluetooth rangefinder. With this device, you can push a single button and immediately know the distance to the pin. It will also tell you how far you hit a drive down the fairway, giving you a more precise feel for the game. It will speak ranges on it is, but but it also reports to both iOS and Android devices through a companion app. The GoGolf GPS is $89.99 through our deal, but coupon code GOLFSAVE brings the price down to $54.99 at checkout.

New Messaging Standard RCS Won't Have Encryption

Everyone is talking about a new messaging standard the Big Four carriers have agreed upon. It’s called RCS and it’s meant to replace SMS. But your RCS conversations won’t be end-to-end encrypted.

The CCMI neatly fixes both the first and the second problem. Garland says the carriers believe there are some implementation issues with the Universal Profile that the CCMI can address more elegantly, but it will follow the standard to ensure interoperability.

As for encryption, Garland wouldn’t commit. He emphasizes that the CCMI intends to make sure that the chats are “private” and that the app it’s making is “an experience [customers] can trust.”

Having Apple join the project would certainly legitimize RCS, but if it doesn’t have encryption I don’t think Apple will partake.

Apple Watch Series 5 Comes to South Korea, Thailand and Brazil

The Apple Watch Series Five has arrived in some new countries. It is now available in South Korea, Thailand, and Brazil, AppleInsider reported.

With different local sales taxes applied, Apple is selling the Apple Watch Series 5 at roughly the same pricing as in the US in Korea and Thailand where it’s 539,000 ($458) and 13,400 ($444) respectively. It’s a considerably more expensive purchase in Brazil, however, where prices start at R$3,999 ($996). The key selling point of the Series 5 is that it brings an always-on screen that intelligently dims until you raise your wrist or tap on the screen. An ultra-low power display driver together with newly-optimized watch faces contribute to having this feature yet in theory retaining an all-day 18-hour battery life. In practice, users are finding the Series 5 battery does run down a little faster than on the previous Apple Watch Series 4, however.

 

Elizabeth Warren's Plan For Big Tech

Senator Elizabeth Warren has made taking on big tech a key part of her campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Bloomberg Businessweek analyzed what her plans might mean.

The plan consists of two big ideas. The first is to unwind old acquisitions, such as Facebook Inc.’s purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. There’s a legal framework already in place for this. The Federal Trade Commission has the power to review old mergers and said when it formed an antitrust task force in February that it would consider doing so. Any such moves would certainly end up in court. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has already told employees he thinks the company would prevail if a Warren administration tried to break it apart. Warren’s second idea is that the tech giants—those with more than $25 billion in revenue—that operate an online marketplace or exchange shouldn’t be allowed to offer services that compete with the participants on those platforms.

Happy 18th Birthday iPod - the Gadget That Changed Music

On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPod. The Economist reflected on how the device revolutionized both the music and tech industries.

The iPod’s wheel elegantly removed the scrolling problem. A tiny hard-drive built by Toshiba packed five gigabytes of memory (enough for 1,000 songs) into 1.8 inches (4.5cm), allowing the iPod to offer as much storage as any competitor in a smaller body. And the earlier launch of iTunes meant that every Apple computer had a programme dedicated to managing the device’s contents. Critics wondered whether ordinary music fans would fork out $399 (about $580 today) for such a strange contraption. By 2007 Apple had sold 120m of them, and soon launched the smaller Mini, the tiny Nano and the screenless Shuffle. The classic iPod gained a colour screen, then the ability to play videos, and finally a hard-drive of 160 gigabytes, which was more than most laptops had. Historians of Apple generally note that the iMac computer, which Jobs launched shortly after returning to the ailing company in 1997, revived its fortunes. But the iPod introduced most people to the firm’s aesthetic and technical brilliance. At its peak it accounted for 40% of Apple’s revenue.

Over 175 Musicians Boycott Amazon Over ICE Contracts

Over 175 musicians have pledged to boycott Amazon festivals and partnerships because of the company’s contracts with ICE.

We the undersigned artists are outraged that Amazon continues to provide the technical backbone for ICE’s human rights abuses. We will not allow Amazon to exploit our creativity to promote its brand while it enables attacks on immigrants, communities of color, workers, and local economies. We call on all artists who believe in basic rights and human dignity to join us.

New iOS Security Suite Helps Developers Protect Apps

The iOS Security Suite is a brand new platform for developers. It helps them detect if their apps are running on a secure iOS device. What ISS detects:

Jailbreak (even the iOS 11+ with brand new indicators!)

Attached debugger

If an app was run in emulator

Common reverse engineering tools running on the device

6 Reasons Why Apple’s New Operating Systems are Buggy

You may have experienced some bugs with iOS 13 and macOS Catalina. David Shayer shares six possible reasons for this.

The betas started out buggy at WWDC in June, which is not unexpected, but even after Apple removed some features from the final releases in September, more problems have forced the company to publish quick updates. Why? Based on my 18 years of experience working as an Apple software engineer, I have a few ideas.

What I’m most annoyed about is the fact that some shortcuts have been broken by iOS 13.

Bob Iger Says Disney+ Lets You Keep Downloads Even After Removal

Disney+ will let you keep downloaded content even if it has been removed from the platform, says Bob Iger.

But Iger said that while these deals would cause some of that content to leave the platform for “brief periods of time,” you’ll be able to download that content onto a device where it will remain so long as your Disney+ account is active. This would give Disney+ a leg up on other services with which it has licensing agreements to make any downloads of that series or film available to Disney+ subscribers.

Fortnite Breaks Twitch Records With Black Hole Event

Fortnite caused quite a stir when it pulled a stunt showing the wildly popular game disappearing into a black hole. In fact, it broke streaming site Twitch’s viewing record, VentureBeat reported.

Twitch revealed that Fortnite broke the site’s peak concurrent record on a single game on October 13. That was when all of Fortnite, including even the start menu, got sucked into a black hole. The curious and surprising event drew a max of 1.7 million concurrent viewers… No one knew exactly what was going on with the black hole, and that intrigue helped attract viewers. Rumor also suggested that once Fortnite came back, it would launch with a new map. That’s what happened when Season 2 came online.

IBM Gets Sniffy at Google's Quantum Supremacy Claim

It is fair to say IBM was not impressed with Google’s declaration of Quantum Supremacy. In post full of withering put-downs, the computer giant refuted many of the claims made in a paper published in Nature, and welcomed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Recent advances in quantum computing have resulted in two 53-qubit processors: one from our group in IBM and a device described by Google in a paper published in the journal Nature. In the paper, it is argued that their device reached “quantum supremacy” and that “a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task.” We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity. This is in fact a conservative, worst-case estimate, and we expect that with additional refinements the classical cost of the simulation can be further reduced. Because the original meaning of the term “quantum supremacy,” as proposed by John Preskill in 2012, was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, this threshold has not been met.

Apple Patents Discuss Digital Government ID

Two new Apple patents discuss methods for replacing paper documents with a digital government ID, and how they could be verified.

US Patent applications numbered 20190325125 and 20190327228, both titled “Identity Credential Verification Techniques,” follow previous reports of Apple hoping to make iPhones central to ID security.

The two new patent applications separate out the functions of such systems into the creation or collection of a user’s identity details, the later authentication of that ID, and then the user’s ability to provide this detail on request.

I’m normally all about privacy but personally I look forward to the day when such documents are digital.

AT&T Customers Hit By Weeks of Voicemail Problems

AT&T Customers have been having voicemail issues for weeks. The Verge tried valiantly to get to the bottom of what is going on, but the situation is not getting much clearer.

AT&T has been experiencing a weeks-long voicemail outage affecting some customers across the country. But it’s hard to tell exactly what’s causing the outage, or how long until it will be fixed — and AT&T is saying conflicting things about what’s going on. Here’s what the company told us, when we asked “A recent software update to some devices may be affecting our customers’ voicemail. We are working with the device manufacturer to issue a patch to resolve this and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.” That statement seems to suggest that only a single phonemaker is affected, and that phonemaker might share the blame for the outage — but that wouldn’t make sense, because AT&T customers are reporting a wide array of different phones are having the same issue.

Travel Platform Autoclerk Just Leaked 179GB of Military Data

Hosted on AWS servers, Autoclerk leaked 179GB of military data containing sensitive personal data of users and hotel guests.

The most surprising victim of this leak wasn’t an individual or company: it was the US government, military, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Our team viewed highly sensitive data exposing the personal details of government and military personnel, and their travel arrangements to locations around the world, both past and future. This represented a massive breach of security for the governmentagencies and departments impacted.

LumaFusion 2.1.0 Adds External Drive Support

Big news for video editors: LumaFusion 2.1.0 adds support for external drives on iOS 13. You’ll be able to browse for files directly within the app.

iOS 13 External drive support fully integrated in the Library. Select the new Files source in the Library, then tap “Add Link To Folder” to connect to any external drive or other app’s shared folder. Browse, preview trim, and add media to your projects. Press-and-hold on a linked folder to remove it at any time.

App Store: US$29.99

Mophie Launches iPhone 11 Battery Case

mophie launched an iPhone 11 battery case. The juice pack access case keeps your Lightning port free and your iPhone powered past sunset.

The juice pack access for the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro comes equipped with a 2,000mAh integrated battery, while the juice pack access for the iPhone 11 Pro Max includes a 2,200mAh integrated battery. Each case employs Qi wireless charging technology to pass power to the iPhone while leaving the Lightning port available for simultaneous EarPods use during charging.

You can pick one up for US$99.95.

School Surveillance: How Millions of Kids are Spied On

When we hear the word “surveillance” we usually think about the NSA, or perhaps tech companies like Facebook and Google. What we probably don’t think about is school surveillance used to spy on kids.

The new school surveillance technology doesn’t turn off when the school day is over: anything students type in official school email accounts, chats or documents is monitored 24 hours a day, whether students are in their classrooms or their bedrooms.

Tech companies are also working with schools to monitor students’ web searches and internet usage, and, in some cases, to track what they are writing on public social media accounts.

Google Celebrates Quantum Computing Milestone

On Thursday, Nature’s 150th-anniversary edition featured news of a quantum computing breakthrough from Google.  The company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, explained in a blog why he felt it as so significant.

For those of us working in science and technology, it’s the “hello world” moment we’ve been waiting for—the most meaningful milestone to date in the quest to make quantum computing a reality. But we have a long way to go between today’s lab experiments and tomorrow’s practical applications; it will be many years before we can implement a broader set of real-world applications. We can think about today’s news in the context of building the first rocket that successfully left Earth’s gravity to touch the edge of space. At the time, some asked: Why go into space without getting anywhere useful? But it was a big first for science because it allowed humans to envision a totally different realm of travel … to the moon, to Mars, to galaxies beyond our own. It showed us what was possible and nudged the seemingly impossible into frame.  That’s what this milestone represents for the world of quantum computing: a moment of possibility. 

TR9 True Wireless Headphones with Charging Case: $34.99

We have a deal on a pair of TR9 True Wireless Headphones with a charging case. Small and lightweight, these in-ear earphones were designed to sit comfortably in and around your ear so you can go for a jog, hit the gym, or do your daily commute without having to worry about them falling out. They’re $34.99 through our deal.

Firefox 70 Brings Enhanced Tracking Protection Today

Mozilla released Firefox 70 today and one of the new features is Enhanced Tracking Protection turned on by default on all platforms.

More privacy protections from Enhanced Tracking Protection:

Social tracking protection, which blocks cross-site tracking cookies from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, is now a standard feature of Enhanced Tracking Protection.

The Privacy Protections report shows an overview, with details, of the trackers Firefox has blocked. It provides consolidated reports from Monitor and Lockwise.