John Ternus Now on Apple Leadership Website

John Ternus has finally made his way onto the Apple Leadership websiteiMore spotted the updated for the exec, who took over Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering from Dan Riccio in January.

Now, Ternus has been formally added to the Apple Leadership website. Below is Apple’s profile of Ternus as is listed on his page: “John Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. John leads all hardware engineering, including the teams behind iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, and more. John joined Apple’s Product Design team in 2001 and has been a vice president of Hardware Engineering since 2013. Throughout his tenure at Apple, John has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products including every generation and model of iPad, the latest iPhone lineup, and AirPods. He has been a key leader in the ongoing transition of the Mac to Apple silicon. Prior to Apple, John worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.”

LinkedIn Data Leak of 500 Million People Sold Online

Just days after a Facebook data leak was discovered, security researchers found another one, this time involving LinkedIn. It affects a similar amount of users, 500 million, with data being sold on a “popular hacker forum.”

The leaked files appear to only contain LinkedIn profile information – we did not find any deeply sensitive data like credit card details or legal documents in the sample posted by the threat actor. With that said, even an email address can be enough for a competent cybercriminal to cause real damage.

Three Annoying Apple Problems on the Way to Being Fixed

We all have particular bugbears with certain Apple products or services – the things that don’t work quite how we want. Over at MacWorld, Dan Moren lists three that are on their way to being fixed – the Apple TV remote, upgrades to Siri, and a battery health reporting in iPhone 11s.

One thing that surprised but didn’t delight owners of iPhone 11 series handsets was an issue reporting the health of their batteries. In some cases that meant the battery draining too fast or performance being degraded—but the bug, as it turned out, issued from software, not the batteries themselves. Apple says iOS 14.5 will attempt to rectify this issue by re-calibrating the battery health reporting system on the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max.

LG to Exit Smartphone Market

LG is to stop making smartphones. However, according to an analyst who spoke to Reuters, Samsung, not Apple, may be best placed to pick up the gap in the market vacated by the South Korean firm.

“In the United States, LG has targeted mid-priced – if not ultra-low – models and that means Samsung, which has more mid-priced product lines than Apple, will be better able to attract LG users,” said Ko Eui-young, an analyst at Hi Investment & Securities. LG’s smartphone division has logged nearly six years of losses totalling some $4.5 billion. Dropping out of the fiercely competitive sector would allow LG to focus on growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices and smart homes, it said in a statement. In better times, LG was early to market with a number of cell phone innovations including ultra-wide angle cameras and at its peak in 2013, it was the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer behind Samsung and Apple.

Facebook Leaks Data of 553 Million People Like Phone Numbers

The personal data of 553 million Facebook users was posted in a hacking forum over the weekend. Data includes phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and other information.

While it’s a couple of years old, the leaked data could prove valuable to cybercriminals who use people’s personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, the chief technology officer of the cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who discovered the trough of leaked data on Saturday.

Facebook PR has been downplaying the leak, saying it’s “only” two years old. But for most people, their phone number, email addresses, and full names probably haven’t changed in that time.

Supreme Court Sides With Google in Legal Battle Over APIs

Google and Oracle have been fighting for a decade over the copyright status of APIs, or application programming interfaces. But Google just won [PDF].

The high court punted on whether APIs can be copyrighted in the first place. But the court’s fair use reasoning was broad enough that it should provide a strong defense for most API copying, making the question of API copyrights much less important.

The Singularity: Can Computers Make Themselves Smarter?

Writing for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang believes that the concept of a technological singularity, in which computers / AI would be able to make themselves ever smarter, is similar to an ontological argument. In other words, it probably won’t happen.

How much can you optimize for generality? To what extent can you simultaneously optimize a system for every possible situation, including situations never encountered before? Presumably, some improvement is possible, but the idea of an intelligence explosion implies that there is essentially no limit to the extent of optimization that can be achieved.

GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera: $199.99

Our friends at Stack Commerce have a fun deal for us today on the GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera, a wireless underwater fishing camera that sits on your fishing line and works with a mobile app so you can see your footage right from your phone. The camera attaches in-line between your main line and leader line, and it allows you to both view and share your underwater fishing footage. It’s $199.99 through our deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUJI2R_vlo

NSA Wants to Spy on Americans Because Reasons

U.S. government servers have been getting hacked left and right. In response, the NSA wants us to think that approval of domestic spying will solve the problem, despite suffering an egregious hack in 2016 where its zero-day exploits were stolen.

“We truly need to look at the ability for us to see ourselves and right now it’s difficult for us to see ourselves,” Nakasone testified on Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Adversaries like China and Russia “are operating with increased sophistication, scope [and] scale, including operations that can end “before a warrant can be issued,” he warned.

Google Bravely Blocks Apps From Scanning Your Other Apps

Google announced that it will stop Android apps from scanning the list of your other apps in Android 11. Why this behavior was accepted before is beyond me.

Google has another page that lists allowable use cases for Play Store apps querying your app list, including “device search, antivirus apps, file managers, and browsers.” The page adds that “apps that must discover any and all installed apps on the device, for awareness or interoperability purposes may have eligibility for the permission.”

Time to make a fake antivirus app which queries your list of apps to sell to other companies.

Babbel Language Learning Lifetime Subscription (All 14 Languages): $199

We have a deal on Babbel language learning software, and it’s a lifetime subscription at that. Babbel lets you practice with 10-15 minute bite-sized lessons, and Babbel uses speech recognition technology to keep your pronunciation on point. And, it comes with 10,000 hours of online language education. That lifetime subscription is $199 through our deal, and it covers all 14 languages.

Document Collaboration That Doesn’t Need the Cloud

Collabio Spaces is an interesting new office suite that allows for document collaboration without needing external servers. Unfortunately it requires a subscription, but could be a useful tool for sensitive documents.

The P2P software lets multiple people co-edit a document locally — from a mobile device or desktop computer — without A) the risk of uploading sensitive information to the cloud (i.e. as you must if you’re using a shared document function of a service like Google Docs); or B) the tedium of emailing a text to multiple recipients and then having to collate and resolve changes manually, once all the contributions trickle back.

UBS Upgrades AAPL, Thinks Firm Will Make Big Impact in Electric Vehicle Market

UBS analyst David Vogt upgraded AAPL to a Buy and raised the price target to US$142 from US$115, Yahoo Finance reported. This upgrade was in no small part based on the impact he thinks Apple can make in the electric vehicle market.

Our analysis of the auto market and Apple’s multi-year investment in the industry (self-driving car licenses and LiDAR patents) suggests to us Apple’s auto optionality is worth at least an incremental $14/share,” Vogt said in a research note to clients. “Apple’s current portfolio provides significant cash flow the company will likely utilize to enter the battery electric vehicle market.” Vogt says Apple can capture some of the battery electric vehicle (BEV) market given customer satisfaction is already high for the tech giant’s products. “We expect Apple’s platform strategy and market share in the global PC and smartphone markets should enable Apple to introduce a branded BEV and achieve a minimum 5% market share in the global BEV market,” he wrote. “Over the next ten years, we forecast the global automotive market will likely transition to almost 100% EV opening up a 90M unit market to new entrants with large installed bases of loyal satisfied customers like Apple.”

Opera Browser Gets M1 Support For Mac and a Speed Boost

Opera browser now has native support on M1 Macs, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday. The company also said it performs twice as fast on Apple Silicon devices.

Opera now natively supports the newest line of Apple M1 processors. With the transition from Intel to Apple Silicon chips, Apple is able to gain more control over the performance of Mac hardware and the software that runs on macOS. Like Apple, Opera’s goal is to make your online experience as smooth as possible. With this latest release, Opera runs 2 times faster compared to the previous version of our browser. This means faster access to your favorite websites, and quicker transition to Opera’s built-in features like WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter and Instagram – all neatly packed into the sidebar… Speaking of speed, Opera now lets you set your own keyboard shortcuts to quickly access the Flow feature, which connects your computer browser with Opera on iOS and Android.

Microsoft Shuts Down its Cortana App on Mobile

As of March 31, 2021, Microsoft’s Cortana app on iOS and Android will no longer be supported.

As of March 31, 2021, the Cortana content you created–such as reminders and lists–will no longer function in the Cortana mobile app, but can still be accessed through Cortana in Windows. Also, Cortana reminders, lists, and tasks are automatically synced to the Microsoft To Do app, which you can download to your phone for free.

New Siri Remote for Apple TV on the Way

There are lots of rumors currently flying around about an updated Siri remote, with a new Apple TV expected. 9to5Mac has a good roundup, including details of the product’s code name.

Details about this new Apple TV Remote are still unknown, but 9to5Mac’s sources have told us that this model is being developed under the code name “B519,” which is quite different from the code name of the current Siri Remote — internally identified as “B439.” When Apple introduced the Apple TV 4K in 2017, the Siri Remote had a small change with a white ring around the Menu button, which made it be identified as a new model. However, as the new Remote has an internal model number way above the current version, we believe the changes will be more significant. Siri Remote has always been a controversial accessory among Apple TV users. While some people love it, there are a significant number of users who hate it for not having physical navigation buttons or for having a glass surface, which makes it extremely fragile. With a new Apple TV model on the way, this could be the perfect opportunity for Apple to create an improved Remote

Spotify Looks to Take on Clubhouse With New Live Audio Experience

Spotify announced Tuesday that it had acquired the creators of live audio app Locker Room, and will be moving into that space. The move is part of its attempts to take on Clubhouse.

“Creators and fans have been asking for live formats on Spotify, and we’re excited that soon, we’ll make them available to hundreds of millions of listeners and millions of creators on our platform,” said Gustav Söderström, Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify. “The world already turns to us for music, podcasts, and other unique audio experiences, and this new live audio experience is a powerful complement that will enhance and extend the on-demand experience we provide today.” In the coming months, Spotify will evolve and expand Locker Room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans. Through this new live experience, Spotify will offer a range of sports, music, and cultural programming, as well as a host of interactive features that enable creators to connect with audiences in real time. We’ll give professional athletes, writers, musicians, songwriters, podcasters, and other global voices opportunities to host real-time discussions, debates, ask me anything (AMA) sessions, and more.

BackPack Magnetic 5,000mAh Powerbank: $39.99

We have a deal on BackPack, a magnetic wireless charger equipped with extra strength magnets inside, which perfectly align and attach to your iPhone 12 family of devices. It has a built-in 5,000mAh battery, and bottom ports allow Type-C out and/or Type-A out. It’s $39.99 through our deal.

Google Maps Will Provide 'Eco-Friendly' Routes to Drivers

Google Maps is to provide an ‘eco-friendly’ route to drivers by default, Reuters reported. Further upgrades to make comparing transit options are also on the way.

Unless users opt out, the default route will be the “eco-friendly” one if comparable options take about the same time, Google said. When alternatives are significantly faster, Google will offer choices and let users compare estimated emissions. “What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost tradeoff,” Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google, told reporters on Monday. Google said it derives emissions relative estimates by testing across different types of vehicles and road types, drawing on insights from the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). Road grade data comes from its Street View cars as well as aerial and satellite imagery. The potential effect on emissions from the feature is unclear.

PayPal Will Let Customers Pay With Bitcoin at Online Merchants

PayPal users with Bitcoin can now pay with the cryptocurrency at supported online merchants globally. It will be rolled out later in 2021.

The ability to pay with bitcoin at checkouts with PayPal’s estimated 29 million merchants means that cryptocurrency use is now easier than ever before. Despite all of this, there is still some concern about the volatility of bitcoin and other cryptos, though PayPal hopes to address this with the conversion to fiat currency.

Adobe Announces a Mobile Bundle for iPad Apps

Adobe announced on Tuesday its Adobe Design Mobile Bundle as a subscription plan. It will cost US$14.99/month or US$149.99/year.

The Design Mobile Bundle includes Photoshop on the iPad, Illustrator on the iPad, and Fresco on the iPad and the iPhone, as well as Adobe Spark, the Creative Cloud Mobile app, and the benefits of Creative Cloud services, including 100GB of cloud storage, Adobe Fonts, Adobe Portfolio and Behance.

Most Browser Tracking Protection Isn’t Very Effective by Default

DuckDuckGo wrote on Tuesday that most browser tracking protection doesn’t stop tracking by default. There are multiple ways to track people besides third-party cookies, for example.

The issue is that once such trackers are loaded in your browser, they have a ton of ways to track you beyond just third-party cookies (e.g., by another form of cookies called first-party cookies, by your IP address, and much, much more).

Therefore, to really stop a cross-site tracker, the kind that tries to track your activity from site to site, you have to prevent it from actually loading in your browser in the first place.

Of course, the post is a plug for the DuckDuckGo browser extension, but the details behind tracking are good to know.