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Amazon Ring Surveillance Cameras Leak Customer Data

Andrew Orr ·

Romanian security company Bitdefender found that Amazon Ring doorbell cameras were leaking customer data like Wi-Fi credentials.

Bitdefender researchers have discovered an issue in Amazon’s Ring Video Doorbell Pro IoT device that allows an attacker physically near the device to intercept the owner’s Wi-Fi network credentials and possibly mount a larger attack against the household network.

At the moment of publishing this paper, all Ring Doorbell Pro cameras have received a security update that fixes the issue described herein.

You can view the whitepaper [PDF] here.

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Apple Gets Closer to 50% Share of Smartwatch Sales

Charlotte Henry ·

The Apple Watch absolutely dominates the smartwatch market. It sales made up nearly 48% of smartwatches solde in the third quarter of 2019, according to research by Strategy Analytics reported on by AppleInsider.

It is claimed Apple Watch shipments reached 6.8 million units in Q3 2019, up 51% from the 4.5 million believed to have shipped in the same quarter in 2018. To Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawson, Apple “remains a long way ahead of the chasing pack,” and “continues to fend off strong competition from hungry rivals like Fitbit and Samsung.” Wearables were a big help for Apple’s recent financial results, with it and Services helping plug a shortfall in revenue from iPhone sales to bring Apple up to $64 billion. In the period, wearables revenue rose year-on-year by 54% to $6.52 billion… In terms of market share, Apple makes up 47.9% of smartwatch sales in the quarter, up from 45% in Q3 2018, and edging ever closer to the 50% mark.

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This Website is Hosted on a Macintosh Color Classic II

Andrew Orr ·

This cool website is being hosted on a Macintosh Color Classic II at 33MHz. This Mac was sold from 1993 to 1995.

This website was formerly hosted on a Macinosh SE/30 – the SE/30 is a 16MHz computer built in 1989. Mine shipped with 2 megabytes of RAM, a floppy drive, and an 80-meg internal SCSI (“Scuzzy”) hard drive. It has recently been upgraded with a custom 32-bit ROM, 68 megabytes of RAM, and a 4,000-megabyte Solid-State Drive. She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself.

A neat look back in time. Sign the guestbook while you’re there. The creator shared some info about it on Reddit.

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Spanish Siri Brands Bolivian President a 'Dictator'

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple tries to steer clear of political controversy (not always successfully, as we saw with Hong Kong). It probably won’t have gone down well in Cupertino then that the Spanish Siri has been branding controversial Bolivian president Evo Morales a dictator. As Cult of Mac noted, it’s not the first time the virtual assistant has strayed into politics.

Morales recently won a controversial fourth presidential term in Bolivia. However, thousands of citizens have marched across the country decrying voter fraud. It seems that Spanish language Siri was spiritually among them. When asked in Spanish, Siri said that, “The dictator of Bolivia” is Evo Morales. Siri described Morales as president in the English version. The issue was rectified after Apple was notified about it by Reuters. This isn’t the first time one of Siri’s answers has caused problems. For years, users asking about abortion centers were directed toward adoption centers. Apple finally changed this in 2016. More recently, an issue with the Russian version of Siri seemingly resulted in it expressing homophobic sentiments

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Two Twitter Employees Charged With Spying for Saudi Arabia

Andrew Orr ·

A complaint unsealed in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco revealed that two Twitter employees have been charged with spying for Saudi Arabia.

The complaint also alleged that the employees — whose jobs did not require access to Twitter users’ private information — were rewarded with a designer watch and tens of thousands of dollars funneled into secret bank accounts. Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, and Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, were charged with acting as agents of Saudi Arabia without registering with the U.S. government.

I wonder if this is a separate incident from Saudi’s Twitter mole.

Cool Stuff Found

Trailer for Sneaky Sasquatch - Now on Apple Arcade

Charlotte Henry ·

The game Sneaky Sasquatch is now on Apple Arcade. It is a task-based game in which you need to complete challenges – the only rule is don’t get caught. Apple posted a trailer for the game on its YouTube channel. This game doesn’t appear to have the high production values of some of the others on the subscription service, but it still looks quite fun.

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Chirp Books Gives You Limited-Time Deals on Audiobooks

Andrew Orr ·

For several years now I’ve been using a wonderful service called BookBub. It sends you alerts when ebooks go on sale. You pick the genres you’re interested in and you’ll get an email or notification every day. Literally about five minutes ago I got an email from them about another service they have called Chirp. It gives you the same deals except for audiobooks.

To thank you for being a BookBub member, I want to invite you to be one of the first to access our new platform for audiobook deals, Chirp! Chirp offers audiobooks selected by the same BookBub editors you trust at up to 95% off.

I love listening to audiobooks on my daily commute, while cleaning up around the house, and even while exercising. With Chirp I can binge audiobooks and discover new authors without breaking the bank.

The best part is that there’s no subscription fee or commitment, and new deals are added daily!

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Leaked Internal Facebook Documents Reveal Disturbing Information

Andrew Orr ·

Today a trove of 4,000 internal Facebook documents reveal how the social media giant profits off user data and battles rivals.

Here are some of the key revelations from the document dump, including from reports published from earlier leaks:

Facebook wielded its control over user data to hobble rivals like YouTube, Twitter, and Amazon.

Facebook executives quietly planned a data-policy “switcharoo.”

Facebook considered charging companies to access user data.

Facebook whitelisted certain companies to allow them more extensive access to user data, even after it locked down its developer platform throughout 2014 and 2015.

Facebook planned to spy on the locations of Android users.

The PDF can be found here but currently it’s taking forever to load. Grab it while it’s hot.

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Veterans can Save $40 on Amazon Prime This Year

Andrew Orr ·

Amazon is giving veterans a discount for its Prime subscription service. The price is normally US$119 but veterans can get it for US$79.

A couple of restrictions to note before jumping on the deal: you can’t take advantage of the discount if you’re already a Prime Student subscriber. Additionally, it’s not possible to use Amazon and partner rewards points to make the subscription even cheaper.

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Now Everyone Can Decide Which WhatsApp Groups They Are Added to

Charlotte Henry ·

WhatsApp has given the ability to control who adds you to a Group to all users, Engadget reported. Previously it had only been available to users in India.

Anyone who relies on WhatsApp to communicate with friends, family, and everyone in between knows how easily people can add them to group chats without consent. This is why the Facebook-owned messaging giant in April introduced a feature that allowed some users to stipulate who can add them to a group. Before today, the privacy setting had only been available in India, where the company has been fine-tuning the feature ahead of today’s global rollout. It’s worth noting that with more than 400 million users, India is a big market for WhatsApp, but it is also one that has struggled with the spread of incendiary messages and fake news. WhatsApp has previously tried to address these issues with stricter message-forwarding restrictions.