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Facebook Profits on Manipulating Us, an Insider Reveals

Andrew Orr ·

Writing for The Washington Post, Yaël Eisenstat writes about paid political advertising at Facebook and how the company profits off of manipulation.

The “culture of fear,” nasty political campaigns and amplified extreme voices are not new in American society. But the scale to which these platforms have fueled and exacerbated this by using our emotional biases to keep our eyeballs on their screens, to vacuum up our data and sell their targeting tools to advertisers, has tilted the playing field toward the most salacious and fanatical voices.

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What to Look For When Reading a Privacy Policy

Andrew Orr ·

Yael Grauer wrote a useful guide on what to look for when reading a privacy policy, such as length, updates, and more.

While you shouldn’t feel compelled to read your apps’ and services’ privacy policies word for word—boring!—there are still a few key criteria you should look for while you’re skimming. Yes, skimming; you shouldn’t ignore privacy policies completely, because it’s important to know what’s being done with (or to) your data.

I also use two tools called Polisis and PriBot. These are automated tools that break down a privacy policy for you.

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Facebook Updating Branding to Provide Clarity Across Instagram And Other Apps

Charlotte Henry ·

Facebook announced Monday that it will update its branding across its range of products. The company said the move is a bid to provide greater clarity.

People should know which companies make the products they use. Our main services include the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Portal and Calibra. These apps and technologies have shared infrastructure for years and the teams behind them frequently work together. We started being clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook years ago, adding a company endorsement to products like Oculus, Workplace and Portal. And in June we began including “from Facebook” within all our apps. Over the coming weeks, we will start using the new brand within our products and marketing materials, including a new company website.

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Adobe Announces Photoshop Camera App

Andrew Orr ·

Today Adobe announced a Photoshop Camera app that gives you plenty of photo effects and lenses and preview them before you take the shot.

Scroll through tons of insta-worthy lenses and effects to apply before or after the shot. It’s really easy to swap them in and out, so you don’t have to worry about changing your mind. And you can keep your favorites to use again and again.

Photoshop Camera is packed with amazing AI-powered features that help you take gorgeous selfies, food and scenery shots, and more. Quick fixes like portrait relighting and distortion removal mean you can post images that look like you spent way more time on them than you did.

It’s not available for release yet but you can sign up to try to test it.

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Apple May be Partnering With Valve on AR Headset

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple is said to be developing an AR headset with Valve, the game developer behind the Steam platform. MacRumors picked up on a report from DigiTimes:

DigiTimes is reporting this morning that Apple has partnered with U.S. game developer Valve to develop its rumored AR headset, which is expected to launch next year. ‘Apple reportedly has partnered with US game developer Valve to develop AR head-mounted display devices, which may be released in the second half of 2020 at the earliest, with Taiwan’s ODMs Quanta Computer and Pegatron said to handle the assembly job, according to industry sources.’ Creator of the popular Steam digital storefront and delivery platform, Valve launched Steam machine consoles in 2015 and released its first VR headset, Valve Index, in April 2019. Notably, Valve worked with Apple in 2017 to bring native VR headset support to macOS High Sierra, leveraging the operating system’s then-new eGPU support with a Mac version of Valve’s SteamVR software. However, Apple’s latest partnership with the company is said to be focused on AR, not VR.

 

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Google Wants to Provide Doctors With Medical Record Search Tool

Charlotte Henry ·

Google is looking to create a high-powered medical record search tool for doctors, The Next Web. Hard to see anything going wrong here…

In a logical next step to make its search products the access point for all content on the web, the internet goliath is turning its focus to healthcare. David Feinberg, the recently appointed head of its Google Health initiative, outlined plans to make it easier for doctors to search medical records, and improve the quality of health-focused search results across Google and YouTube. “Imagine a search bar on top of your EHR (electronic health record) that needs no training,” Feinberg said at the HLTH health care conference in Las Vegas last week. According to Feinberg, the search bar will supposedly allow doctors to type into it, with the system automatically displaying appropriate responses to the queries. For example, a doctor could just type the number “87” to return details about an 87-year-old patient with a history of stomach cancer.

Cool Stuff Found

Adobe Releases Photoshop for iPad, But it's Still a Work in Progress

Andrew Orr ·

Adobe has released Photoshop for iPad. You can try it for a 30-day free trial, and after that it requires a subscription to Creative Cloud that costs US$9.99/mo.

This first version focuses on core compositing and retouching tools designed to work best on the iPad with Apple Pencil and touch. And we’re just getting started. For future versions, we’re looking at enhancing our tools used for brushes, masks, refining edges, and selecting smart subjects. Plus, we want to make it easier to access your brushes and fonts in Creative Cloud.

Early reviews of the app say it’s a bit rough around the edges, but download it to see for yourself. App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)

Podcast

Hey Presto! I Outsmarted Myself! – Mac Geek Gab 787

John F. Braun · · Add Comment

Tips about new functionality, including moving Catalina’s windows, scanning with your iPhone, fixing mail, running cron jobs, and downloading installers from the Terminal are just scratching the surface. Then it’s on to diagnosing some network problems and learning how Time Machine can keep your volumes from being resized. Listen as John and Dave walk through all of these, to ensure everyone (including them!) learns at least five new things this week.

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Trump Cybersecurity Advisor Rudy Giuliani Probably Doesn't Know Much About Cybersecurity

Andrew Orr ·

I think it’s a safe assumption that Rudy Giuliani, named as Trump’s cybersecurity advisor, probably doesn’t know anything about cybersecurity. My evidence? He forgot the passcode to his own iPhone.

Giuliani showed up at the San Francisco store after being locked out of his iPhone, just 26 days after Trump named him cybersecurity adviser, NBC News reported Thursday, citing interviews with two sources and an internal Apple Store memo.

The former New York mayor had entered his passcode incorrectly 10 times and went to the store for help — a troubling move that suggests a sloppy approach to cybersecurity for someone so close to the president, experts said.

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NordVPN Falls Victim to Credential-Stuffing Attack

Andrew Orr ·

About 2,000 NordVPN users have fallen victim to credential-stuffing attacks that let third-parties access their accounts.

While it’s likely that some accounts are listed in multiple lists, the number of user accounts easily tops 2,000. What’s more, a large number of the email addresses in the list I received weren’t indexed at all by Have I Been Pwned, indicating that some compromised credentials are still leaking into public view. Most of the Web pages that host these credentials have been taken down, but at the time this post was going live, at least one remained available on Pastebin, despite the fact Ars brought it to NordVPN’s attention more than 17 hours earlier.

NordVPN emailed all the publishers that have reported on its hack. In my opinion the company has been trying to downplay it. We’ll see if its recent security measures will improve the service, or if it’s lip service.

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Apple Shares Trailer for Apple TV+ Show 'Ghostwriter'

Andrew Orr ·

Apple shared a trailer for Ghostwriter, a show for kids on Apple TV+ that is a remake from the Ghostwriter series on PBS from 1992 to 1995.

When a ghost haunts a neighborhood bookstore and starts releasing fictional characters into the real world, four kids must team up to solve an exciting mystery surrounding the ghost’s unfinished business.