Teardown of the Apple Watch Series 5

Thinking of getting an Apple Watch Series 5? Got one on the way?  iFixit have a very interesting teardown of the device.

The Series 5 uses Apple’s new S5 system-on-chip, which packs in twice the storage and the new compass. But it also contains the same CPU and GPU as the S4 chip in the Series 4, and the overall performance specs are the same. Other than that, the Series 5 is very similar to the Series 4 on the inside. But Apple has made enough minor changes that many parts are not interchangeable, thanks to redesigned connectors on the taptic engine, display and battery. Now, about Apple’s claim that the Series 5 Sport cases are made from “100% recycled aluminum.” While using recycled materials is great, the truth is most of the world’s aluminum is already recycled, and recycled aluminum is dramatically cheaper than the freshly-mined variety. The real question is whether Apple uses any recycled aluminum that wouldn’t have been recycled anyway. And after analyzing Apple’s statements on the matter, the answer seems to be no.

White House Blocks Audit of its Offensive Hacking Strategy

The White House is blocking an audit by Congress for its offensive hacking policy it has already used for cyberattacks against Russia and Iran.

The policy, which loosened the reins on military strikes against U.S. adversaries, has been withheld for more than a year from lawmakers — even those who regularly review classified material. Lawmakers from both parties are concerned the Trump administration could plunge the country into a cyberwar without congressional approval or oversight, or at the very least, provoke retaliation that causes serious damage at home.

The White House hacking strategy is: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.

2020 iPhone May Look Like iPhone 4

The 2020 iPhone could resemble the iPhone 4. That’s according to a research note from Ming Chi Kuo, reported on by MacRumors.

In his research note with TF International Securities, Kuo says Apple will change its flagship iPhone design “significantly” next year. Specifically, the new devices will feature a new metal frame with “a more complex segmentation design, new trenching and injection molding procedures, and sapphire or glass cover assembly to protect the trench injection molding structure.”
We predict that the new 2H20 iPhone design will change significantly […] The metal frame and the front and rear 2/2.5D glass are still used, but the metal frame surface will be changed to a similar design to the iPhone 4, replacing the current surface design.

An iPhone 6s Fell From an Airplane... And Survived

iPhones are tested to be resilient. However, The Next Web spoke to someone whose device took that to the next level. Haukur Snorrason’s iPhone 6s fell from an airplane into the Icelandic wilderness. The device was found over a year later. It still worked.

Last year, photographer Haukur Snorrason was on an aerial photo tour of the Skaftá river in South Iceland to grab pictures of the yearly glacier river floods. Unfortunately, when he grabbed his iPhone to film the flood, the phone got swept away by a gust of wind. Falling 60 meters (200 feet) down on rocky terrain — where a massive river was overflowing and rupturing roads — the time came for Haukur to say goodbye to his phone forever – or so he thought. Or so he thought, until 13 months later, when he received a phone call from people that had found his phone while hiking. After falling from a plane, and spending over a year exposed to the harsh Icelandic elements, it still worked!

Cloudflare Releases Warp VPN for Everyone

Cloudflare announced its Warp VPN earlier this year and created a waiting list for it to be rolled out. Although the company had technical difficulties, the list is gone and Warp VPN is available for everyone today.

Let me start with the apology. We are sorry making WARP available took far longer than we ever intended. As a way of hopefully making amends, for everyone who was on the waitlist before today, we’re giving 10 GB of WARP Plus — the even faster version of WARP that uses Cloudflare’s Argo network — to those of you who have been patiently waiting.

This Friday I intend to publish a list of five VPN apps for iOS, and Warp will be included.

Bob Iger Reveals Why he Quit the Apple Board

Disney CEO and Chairman Bob Iger has revealed why he quit Apple’s board of directors. Speaking to CNBC’s Jim Cramer, he said the two companies’ paths were “conflicting.”

“The reason I got off the board as they got more and more into creating television shows and movies, it became more clear to me our paths were conflicting rather than converging,” Iger said in an interview with CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer. “I just thought it was the right thing to do.” The business is still relatively small for Apple, but meaningful for Disney, and it wasn’t right,” Iger continued. Iger resigned from Apple’s board of directors on Sept. 10, the day Apple announced the price and release date for its streaming service.

iOS 13 Bug Affects Third-Party Keyboard Apps

A bug in iOS 13 and iPadOS affects keyboard apps. They can be granted full access even if you haven’t approved that.

Third-party keyboard extensions in iOS can be designed to run entirely standalone, without access to external services, or they can request “full access” to provide additional features through network access. Apple has discovered a bug in iOS 13 and iPadOS that can result in keyboard extensions being granted full access even if you haven’t approved this access.

Because Apple mentions an “upcoming software update” I assume this bug also affects iOS 13.1.

Russian Confesses to JPMorgan Chase Hack

Russian national Adrei Tyurin confessed to the 2014 hacking of JPMorgan Chase which stole the data of over 80 million customers.

Tyurin carried out the hacks at the direction of co-conspirator Gery Shalon, who used the stolen data to further a variety of schemes, including securities fraud. One scheme involved artificially inflating the price of certain publicly traded stocks by marketing them in a deceptive and misleading manner to customers of companies Tyurin had hacked.

Backblaze Storage Pod Celebrates 10 Years

Ten years ago, cloud storage company Backblaze introduced the Storage Pod. It’s a custom-built server for reliable, cheap storage. Today is the Pod’s 10th Anniversary.

Back in 2007, when we started Backblaze, there wasn’t a whole lot of affordable choices for storing large quantities of data. Our goal was to charge $5/month for unlimited data storage for one computer. We decided to build our own storage servers when it became apparent that, if we were to use the other solutions available, we’d have to charge a whole lot more money. Storage Pod 1.0 allowed us to store one petabyte of data for about $81,000. Today we’ve lowered that to about $35,000 with Storage Pod 6.0.

It’s an interesting, worthwhile read. Backblaze is a good cloud storage provider in my opinion.

No No-Deal Brexit Could Lead to a Data Disaster

Data currently flows freely between the UK and other EU countries. Daphne Leprince-Ringuet Wired explained why a no-deal Brexit could put this in jeopardy.

The UK is part of the mutually agreed General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018 and covers its European members with the world’s strongest data protection rules. This means that personal information gathered in other GDPR-protected countries can enter the UK with no barriers, as it is assured that data will be equally protected in the country. The UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 supplements GDPR, and in some cases goes slightly further, making the UK’s rules more stringent in some specific cases. In the event of a no-deal Brexit, the Data Protection Act will ensure that personal information processed in the UK will keep enjoying the same level of protection they do now. Still, under EU law, the UK will be automatically considered a third country not bound by GDPR rules, and able to diverge from the current strong standards if parliament so decides. Consequently, data from EU countries would not be able to flow freely to the UK.

How to Prepare Your iPad and Update to iPadOS

A bit ahead of schedule, Apple is releasing iOS 13.1 and iPadOS today. I wrote an update guide for iOS 13 and I’ll share that as a linked teaser, because the steps are identical for iPadOS. Just make sure that your iPad is properly backed up to iCloud or iTunes.

Once your iPhone is backed up, you’re ready to install iOS 13. You can either do so via iTunes, or right on your device. Go to Settings > General > Software Update. After a second or two, iOS 13 will appear and you can tap the install button. You can also enable the option for automatic backups. Like iCloud Backup, your iPhone will update automatically.

Users Have Right to Be Forgotten by Google, But Only in the EU

The European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that users have a right to be forgotten by Google. However, Reuters reported, this only applies in the EU.

In its judgment, the Court of Justice of the European Union said the right to have personal data protected was not an absolute right. “The balance between the right to privacy and the protection of personal data, on the one hand, and the freedom of information of internet users, on the other, is likely to vary significantly around the world,” it added. Google welcomed the decision, saying: “It’s good to see that the court agreed with our arguments.” The world’s predominant internet search engine has previously warned of the dangers of overreach by Europe. In a blog post two years ago, it said there should be a balance between sensitive personal data and the public interest and no country should be able to impose rules on citizens of another.

As It Turns Out, Yahoo Isn't Actually Dead Yet

In today’s weird news, apparently Yahoo is still around. I only know this because they recently created a new logo, and now the media is reporting on it. Which, of course, was the point. This is Yahoo’s God’s Not Dead moment.

The new logo keeps the purple and the exclamation point, but it ditches any remnants of the company’s many previous marks. Instead, the Pentagram-designed identity is crisp and friendly, with thick and curvy letterforms. Its main surprise is its exclamation point, which is slanted like an italic. To be exact, that slanted angle sits at 22.5 degrees—and it recurs throughout the new branding.

The new exclamation mark is rebellious yet familiar—and definitely masculine, as if Yahoo is wielding it like a club to beat out of your head the knowledge that Yahoo Mail was the biggest data breach so far.

Mac Pro Problems Cause Chaos in Hollywood

Problems in Hollywood as Mac Pros refused to reboot and rumors about a virus attack swirled. Variety reports there were major issues with older versions of macOS and AVID’s Media Composer software.

Film and TV editors across Los Angeles were sweating Monday evening as their workstations were refusing to reboot, resulting in speculations about a possible computer virus attack. Social media reports suggested that the issue was widespread among users of Mac Pro computers running older versions of Apple’s operating system as well as AVID’s Media Composer software… Other users reported that multiple computers at their company were affected by the issue, with social media chatter indicating that a number of different companies were affected by the issue.

Facebook Abuses Collected in Snap's 'Project Voldemort'

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, reportedly has a dossier of anticompetitive behavior Facebook carried out over the years, dubbed Project Voldemort.

According to the WSJ, Snap’s legal team recorded instances where Facebook discouraged prominent social media influencers with a presence on multiple platforms from mentioning Snap on their Instagram accounts. Snap executives also suspected Facebook was suppressing content that originated on Snap from trending on Instagram, when such content was shared there.

Apple Watch Helps Save Mountain Biker

An Apple Watch is credited with helping to save the life of a mountain biker after he suffered a bad fall while biking.

Dad flipped his bike at the bottom of Doomsday, hit his head and was knocked out until sometime during the ambulance ride. The watch had called 911 with his location and EMS had him scooped up and to the hospital in under a 1/2 hr. The fire dept. took his bike back to the station. My brother was already driving by the the hospital when the second update came in and was able to be with him right away.

Analyst Shares Typically Bearish Take on iPhone 11

Jun Zhang of Rosenblatt Securities tends to be pretty Bearish on Apple. His latest notes, seen by Apple Insider, are no exception.

In the latest essay, provided to investors on Monday, Zhang offers dour opinions on the sales of the new iPhones. The iPhone 11 is estimated to make up around 60% of total new model sales, with the iPhone 11 Pro Max at around 22% and the iPhone 11 Pro at 18%. The product mix is skewed towards the iPhone 11 in Rosenblatt’s view more than last year, which saw iPhone XR sales make up 55% of the total, with the iPhone XS Max at about 30% and the iPhone XS at around 15%. The change in mix is obviously going to affect the average selling price (ASP), which Zhang predicts will be between 10% and 15% lower than the second half of 2018, with between 68 and 70 million new iPhones thought to ship this year.

More Apps Should Use Differential Privacy

News app Tonic is different than most news apps because it uses differential privacy. More apps should do the same.

Before your eyes cross, a real-life example Cyphers gave me is the census. The government has a lot of aggregate data about its citizens—and it probably wants to share demographic information from that set without revealing anything about any one particular individual. Let’s say you live in a small census block with only one or two people. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out personal information about you, given the right parameters. Differential privacy would be a way to summarize that data without putting any one individual at risk.

Safari 13 Just Killed uBlock Origin and Other Extensions

Safari 13 deprecates support for legacy extensions. Instead, you now how to download them through the Mac App Store. A GitHub user explained the uBlock Origin situation and recommends adblocking alternatives.

Get a content blocker. Not nearly as powerful as uBO, but the best option if you want to stay with Safari. Do not get the app called “uBlock”, this is unassociated with uBlockOrigin (read about the split here), and is simply a content blocker with a big negative feature of having acceptable ads built in

A Deep Dive Into Apple's A13 Bionic Chip

Om Malik wrote a great dive into the A13 Bionic chip that powers the latest iPhones.

Apple’s new chip contains 8.5 billion transistors. Also, there are six CPU cores: Two high-performance cores running at 2.66 GHz (called Lightning), and four efficiency cores (called Thunder). It has a quad-core graphics processor, an LTE modem, an Apple-designed image processor, and an octa-core neural engine for machine intelligence functions that can run over five trillion operations per second.

Big numbers are amazing, and I still marvel at the fact that this chip can do five trillion operations per second. That is astoundingly fast. Five trillion seconds is 158,550 years. Just one trillion seconds ago (31,710 years) was before written history, before the pyramids were built.

Science Journal Admits Those Bone Horns Were Wrong

Remember the study claiming smartphone usage caused bone horns to grow on millennials? The publisher now admits the conclusion was false. But other scientists say their correction is still false.

While the correction attempts to clarify the record on smartphones, it does not do anything to address the fact that the study’s main finding — that poor posture and age are connected to neck bone spurs — still isn’t supported by the underlying data…

“I actually think Nature should remove the original article as the correction has not proved their point,” said Sara Becker, a bioarchaeologist at the University of California Riverside.

Don't Storm Area 51, Begs Fan Site Webmaster

Joerg Arnu is fascinated by Area 51. He even runs websites focussed on the site. However, as Wired discovered, he really does not want people descending on the mysterious Air Force base.

Arnu isn’t into it. He is not into the joke that has already inspired at least two people, young Dutch YouTubers, to breach the Air Force’s perimeter. And he is not into the party that threatens to take over his very little locale, a place located freakishly close to Area 51’s back gate. He has tried to put an end to its flight path. With the original festivities scheduled to start today, it’s unclear whether the horde will be huge or whether this bang will end with a poorly attended whimper.

Photographer Heaps Praise on iPhone 11 Pro Camera

Photographer Austin Mann could not wait to get his hands on a new iPhone 11 Pro and test the camera. His conclusion following a trip to China with the device? “If you are a serious photographer, get a Pro.” He explained why in a blog post, which also contained some stunning pictures (including the one featured in this article).

The addition of any new lens is a pretty big deal. You might remember my excitement when we gained the “telephoto” 51mm lens with the iPhone 7 Plus, and today I’m just as thrilled to be putting an entirely new Ultra Wide lens in my pocket. It gives us another format to tell the story, another perspective to visualize, and a better rounded tool for doing our best creative work. I’ve had a blast shooting with the new Ultra Wide on iPhone 11 Pro in all kinds of scenarios here in China.

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