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Andrew Orr

Since 2015 Andrew has been writing about Apple, privacy, security, and at one point even Android. You can find him most places online under the username @andrewornot.

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Articles by Andrew Orr

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Examining Apple's Carefree Attitude Towards Employee Privacy

Andrew Orr ·

Zoe Schiffer, writing for The Verge, investigates Apple employees and “the blurring of personal and work accounts.”

This is how it starts: a new Apple employee is told during onboarding that collaborating with their colleagues will require them to make extensive use of iCloud storage, and their manager offers a two terabyte upgrade. This will link their personal Apple ID to their work account — in fact, the instructions for accessing this upgrade explicitly say “you must link your personal Apple ID with your AppleConnect work account.”

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Private Search Engine 'Xayn' Releases Web Version of its App

Andrew Orr ·

An AI company based in Berlin, Germany called Xayn has launched a web version of its private search engine app.

Both versions of Xayn use Masked Federated Learning to protect users’ data privacy while still providing them with an individually tailored web experience. They are created with the same code base in Flutter, a developing framework that’s designed to function both on mobile and web. The team transferred the AI to work directly in the respective browsers with high speed via WebAssembly so that all personal data stays privately within the browsers.

Looks like it doesn’t work yet on Safari.

Update to Command Line App ‘a-Shell’ Can Force iCloud Downloads
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Update to Command Line App ‘a-Shell’ Can Force iCloud Downloads

Andrew Orr ·

a-Shell is a terminal app for iOS and iPadOS that supports Python, Lua, Perl, C, C++, TeX, and all Unix utilities. It received an update recently with even more capabilities: New commands: ffmpeg, ffprobe, unrar; ffmpeg is compiled to Arm64 and uses hardware acceleration for fast conversion; iOS won’t idle while a-Shell is running a command (good for long running commands); If you open an iCloud directory with pickFolder, a-Shell will download all files in this directory; New commands: downloadFile and downloadFolder, to force downloading iCloud files; Shortcuts: You can run small python scripts or ImageMagick (convert) commands in extension; Improvements to lg2: lg2 merge –abort, lg2 reset –hard, documentation fixes.

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AdGuard: 'People Should be Worried About Apple CSAM Detection'

Andrew Orr ·

Adblocking company AdGuard is the latest to offer commentary on Apple’s controversial decision to detect CSAM in iCloud Photos. The team ponders ways to block it using their AdGuard DNS technology.

We consider preventing uploading the safety voucher to iCloud and blocking CSAM detection within AdGuard DNS. How can it be done? It depends on the way CSAM detection is implemented, and before we understand it in details, we can promise nothing particular.

Who knows what this base can turn into if Apple starts cooperating with some third parties? The base goes in, the voucher goes out. Each of the processes can be obstructed, but right now we are not ready to claim which solution is better and whether it can be easily incorporated into AdGuard DNS. Research and testing are required.

New Roleplaying Game ‘Baldo’ Available on Apple Arcade
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New Roleplaying Game 'Baldo' Available on Apple Arcade

Andrew Orr ·

Journey through a magical land teeming with mysteries to unravel. Baldo: the Guardian Owls is full of challenging puzzles to solve and intricate dungeons to explore. Traverse this captivating open world as Baldo, and meet a host of quirky and unforgettable characters, as you struggle to decipher the cryptic prophecy, and thwart destiny. From delightful whimsy to thrilling adventure, discover new towns and their distinctive inhabitants, fight ferocious foes, locate hidden temples, and collect objects both magical and mundane to obtain powerful new weapons, or to help unveil the myriad secrets of this strange land.

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NFTs Aren't Going Away, They are Important Tools of Digital Ownership

Andrew Orr ·

Alexander Lange wrote an essay on NFTs, saying that they aren’t a fluke and will change the way we experience and own digital media.

Just like DeFi’s money legos are about to revolutionize finance, media legos will deeply alter the social layers of the web. They will change how creators issue, distribute, and monetize their work while defining new rules for content exploration, collecting, and community building.

I agree. NFTs aren’t going away. In an age where possessions such as music, photos, books, videos, etc. are being stored and kept in “the cloud,” we have to find ways to prove that we own these things. Right now, ownership is tied to identities like an Apple ID. I can prove that that eBook is mine because it’s in my purchase history. But what if I export that eBook to a flash drive as a backup? Or what if my Apple ID is deleted? It also facilitates direct creator-to-buyer transactions. I can buy an eBook from an author without needing a middleman like Apple Books, and its accompanying NFT proves my ownership. That’s what crypto is all about: Cutting out middlemen like banks and corporations.

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Chinese Hackers May be Stealing Data to Feed an Artificial Intelligence

Andrew Orr ·

Dina Temple-Raston of NPR published a fascinating investigation regarding the Microsoft Exchange attack earlier in 2021.

Officials believe that the breach was in the service of something bigger: China’s artificial intelligence ambitions. The Beijing leadership aims to lead the world in a technology that allows computers to perform tasks that traditionally required human intelligence — such as finding patterns and recognizing speech or faces.

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US Air Force Contract Aims to Improve Blockchain Security

Andrew Orr ·

The United States Air Force will use Constellation’s Hypergraph Network to provide data security with the Department of Defense’s commercial partners.

Constellation said it had been working with Kinnami Software Corporation to develop an end-to-end data security solution using blockchain encryption and distributed data management for the United States Transportation Command, Air Mobility Command’s 618th Air Operations Center, and a Civil Reserve Air Fleet partner. According to the platform, its goal is to securely exchange data with commercial partners on missions involving the operations of aircraft and ships under contract to the Department of Defense, or DoD.

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New Snapchat Scan Feature Can Detect Clothes, Plants, Wine, and More

Andrew Orr ·

Snap released a new augmented reality feature on Thursday. Called Scan, it can detect objects in the physical world.

This latest version of Scan, which Snap previewed at its developer conference earlier this year, adds detection for dog breeds, plants, wine, cars, and food nutrition info. The majority of Scan’s features are powered by other companies; the app Vivino is behind the wine scanning feature, for example. Soon Allrecipes will power a Scan feature that suggests recipes to make based on a specific food ingredient. Snap plans to keep adding more abilities to Scan over time using a mix of outside partners and what it builds in-house.

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Data Leak From Chinese Company 'EskyFun' Affects 1 Million Gamers

Andrew Orr ·

The research team at vpnMentor discovered an unsecured server from Chinese mobile gaming company EskyFun. It exposed data for over a million Android gamers.

The resulting records contained a lot of sensitive information, including: IP address, IMEI number, Mobile application package doing the tracking, Device screen size – whether a device is ‘rooted’*, Device model, Phone number (if any), Platform (Android/iOS), NetType (WiFi or cellular), Events (open,login,level_up, etc).

Not so fun anymore.