Firefox Working to Eradicate 'Weak" TLS 1.0 & 1.1 HTTPS Standards

Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox browser, announced it is moving to “eradicate” the weak TLS 1.0 and 1.1 HTTPS standard, The Register reported. Apple made a similar announcement in October 2018.

From next month, users hitting a site running TLS 1.0 or 1.1 will not connect immediately, but see a warning screen stating: “Secure connection failed.” There is an option to override this, in which case it will be overridden for all sites. Thyla van der Merwe, cryptography engineering manager at Mozilla, said: “We plan to keep the override button for now; the telemetry we’re collecting will tell us more about how often this button is used. These results will then inform our decision regarding when to remove the button entirely. It’s unlikely that the button will stick around for long. We’re committed to completely eradicating weak versions of TLS.”

T-Mobile-Sprint Merger Gets go Ahead

The proposed T-Mobile-Sprint merger got the go-ahead on Tuesday, Yahoo Finance/Reuters reported. A judge approved the deal, rejecting antitrust concerns raised by some states.

During a two-week trial in December, T-Mobile and Sprint argued the merger will better equip the new company to compete with top players Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, creating a more efficient company with low prices and faster internet speeds. The states, led by California and New York, had said the deal would reduce competition, leading to higher prices. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero clears the path for the deal, which already has federal approval and was originally valued at $26 billion.

 

Snapchat’s ‘Here For You’ Promotes Mental Health

Snapchat has a new tool called Here For You. Whenever the app detects you’ve searched for topics like “depression” it will present Here For You with mental health content written by experts.

“Sometimes people come in and search for this kind of content, be it anxiety or depression,” says Jen Stout, vice president of global policy at Snap. “Instead of being served up maybe nothing, or meme accounts, or something like that, we’re looking for a healthy alternative to provide young people with tools that would be readily available in the app.”

It’s nice to hear about a company doing something good for a change. It seems like it happens all too rarely.

The Woman Who Got Netflix to Let Users Turn Off Autoplay Videos

Last week, Netflix introduced the ability to turn off those annoying autoplay videos. Recode spoke to Sarah Hollowell, the woman who made it happen.

A week after her volley of tweets, Netflix retweeted Hollowell and announced the updated settings. This is a big deal, if you follow Netflix Twitter much. People reviled these autoplay previews so much that there’s a dedicated Twitter account collecting the complaints, including one widely circulated smirk from Knives Out director Rian Johnson. Outrage like this has spilled over to seemingly every corner of the internet. If you click through any of those links, you’ll also realize that people have been yelling at Netflix about this for years. There’s even a Change.org petition started by a Melissa Bryant, a passionate Netflix user from Maine, that racked up nearly 125,000 signatures in the past two months.

TMO UK Associate Editor Charlotte Henry (#4) - TMO Background Mode Interview

Charlotte Henry is a London-based technical journalist. A self-described media junkie, she writes about Apple — and now for the Mac Observer as well as our UK Associate Editor. She has also written for City A.M. (London’s daily business tabloid,) Computer Business Review, the Independent on Sunday and CapX. Her new book is: Not Buying It.

In this special episode, Charlotte and I discuss the various streaming TV services: Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, CBS All Access, Britbox, Peacock, and Quibi. We chat about our favorite shows, our experiences viewing, the pricing, and the prospects of success for the new guys on the block. Charlotte loves The Bold Type (Netflix). John waxes poetic about The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Picard.

Chinese Military Charged With Equifax Data Breach

Four Chinese military hackers have been charged with breaking into Equifax’s network and stealing the data of tens of millions of Americans.

The accused hackers exploited a software vulnerability to gain access to Equifax’s computers, obtaining log-in credentials that they used to navigate databases and review records. The indictment also details efforts the hackers took to cover their tracks, including wiping log files on a daily basis and routing traffic through dozens of servers in nearly 20 countries.

Reminder that Equifax executives did insider trading based on the breach. They are criminals.

Google Fighting $9 Billion Worth of EU Fines

Google will commence its efforts to have over $9 billion of fines from the EU overturned this week. Bloomberg News looked at the impending legal battle.

The EU’s General Court in Luxembourg will host a three-day hearing starting on Feb. 12 as the Alphabet Inc. unit seeks to topple a 2.4 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) penalty in 2017 for thwarting smaller shopping search services. Lawyers say the court clash will help set the scene for a broader crackdown on U.S. tech giants by Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner. Apple Inc. is separately battling her massive back-tax order and Amazon.com Inc. is currently being investigated for potentially favoring its own products over those of third-party sellers on its platform.

Edison Mail Uses Your Emails For Market Research

Popular Apple Mail alternative Edison Mail scans your emails for market research so companies can make “better investment decisions” among other uses.

On its website Edison says that it does “process” users’ emails, but some users did not know that when using the Edison app the company scrapes their inbox for profit. Motherboard has also obtained documentation that provides more specifics about how two other popular apps—Cleanfox and Slice—sell products based on users’ emails to corporate clients.

I did write about Edison Mail coming to the Mac last year, and noted that the company calls it “interesting research.”

Wikipedia War Rages Over Coronavirus Disinformation

Whenever a topic dominates the headlines it blows up on Wikipedia with users and editors battling to have proper information on the site. The coronavirus outbreak has been no different, Wired reported.

Over a few weeks, the English-language version of Wikipedia witnessed the creation of at least six articles about the outbreak. Since the beginning of January, over 18 million people have read those entries. Countless others have found their way to articles indirectly related to the coronavirus, including those for Sars, Wuhan, “bat as food” – and even Corona beer, which has seen an uptick in editing. This frenetic surge in interest is a challenge for Wikipedia’s community of volunteer editors, who have to deal with a firehose of information about the health crisis constantly flooding the website, and inevitably fight off rumours and misinformation.

New Mophie Fast-Charge Battery Packs Available at Apple

mophie recently announced three new fast-charge battery packs available at Apple.com and certain Apple retail stores. They are: powerstation, powerstation plus, and powerstation plus XL. They all feature 18W fast charge, Lighting input, and the ability to charge multiple Apple devices at the same time.

Suggested retail prices are as follows: powerstation US$59.95; powerstation plus US$79.95; powerstation plus XL US$99.95.

10-Ft Cloth MFi-Certified Lightning Cable 3-Pack: $32.99

We have a deal on a 3-pack of 10-foot cloth MFi-Certified Lightning cables. The cloth housing makes them both flexible and tangle-resistant, and the 3-pack is $32.99 through our deal. I’m linking to black ones, but there’s an option in the deal for blue and green, too, as well as 1-pack and 2-pack options.

Upgrading iPad Multitasking by Making it More Like on a Mac

Multitasking on the iPad has improved, but is still something of a sore point for power users, and barely used by most others. Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac made some recommendations that would mean multitasking on an iPad closer resembled how works on a Mac.

Gestures are faster, and while entirely unintuitive, they are easy to remember once you’re used to them, so I wouldn’t take them away. They can effectively be the power user option: the iPad equivalent of keyboard shortcuts. Second, while recognizing that an iPad is not a Mac, I can’t see any reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to how you close or expand a window. Why not have the same Close, Minimize, and Full-Screen buttons we have on Mac apps? Sure, they would be tiny touch targets for a finger, but they could initially be a single touch target that expands into a larger version when tapped, and we then tap the specific button we want.

FBI Investigates Over 1,000 Cases of Chinese IP Theft

At the China Initiative Conference, government officials from the FBI and DoJ spent four hours talking about theft of U.S. intellectual property by China.

“The threat from China is real, it’s persistent, it’s well-orchestrated, it’s well-resourced, and it’s not going away anytime soon,” John Demers, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, opened the conference.

“This one to me really stands out as the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Start with The Preposterous, Bow to The Absurd – Mac Geek Gab 801

You love the Quick Tips? You’ll love these when you learn about the things you can do with window edges, copying screenshots, picture-in-picture mode, and extra options for the Safari Share Sheet. Say THAT ten times fast! Then, move on to learning the least expensive way to stream Apple TV+ to your TV, manage iOS’s varying volume levels, override iOS autocorrect and much, much more. Just press play and join John, Dave, and your fellow MGG listeners in learning at least five new things together!

Not Wanting Surveillance Competition, Facebook Tells Clearview AI to Back Off

Last month, we got word that a company called Clearview AI helped law enforcement with its facial recognition technology. Now, Facebook and Google, which also use facial recognition, told Clearview AI to stop scraping images from each one’s website.

Ton-That argued that his firm’s work is protected by the First Amendment and also that Clearview doesn’t do anything Google doesn’t.

“The way we have built our system is to only take publicly available information and index it that way,” he said.

Ton-That added, “Google can pull in information from all different websites… So if it’s public and it’s out there and could be inside Google search engine, it can be inside ours as well.”

There’s ANOTHER Streaming Service on The Way

I’m sure you would all agree, that what we need is another streaming service. Thankfully, ViacomCBS are set to answer our call. A new service bringing together content from the newly merged firm is in the works, CNBC reported, creating yet another challenger for Apple TV+.

While ViacomCBS executives haven’t made any firm decisions, they are considering creating a service with advertisements that will combine CBS All Access with Viacom assets including Pluto TV, Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures, said the people, who asked not to be named because the product discussions are private. An ad-free version will also be available, and a premium version of the streaming service will include Showtime, the people said. ViacomCBS executives haven’t decided on a name for the service, nor a price, though the base service will probably be less than $10 a month, two of the people said.