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The Search for Infamous Phone Phreaker Susy Thunder

Andrew Orr ·

The Verge has a cool story about searching for Susy Thunder, a phone phreaker and social engineer.

Susan found her way into the hacker underground through the phone network. In the late 1970s, Los Angeles was a hotbed of telephone culture: you could dial-a-joke, dial-a-horoscope, even dial-a-prayer. Susan spent most of her days hanging around on 24-hour conference lines, socializing with obsessives with code names like Dan Dual Phase and Regina Watts Towers. Some called themselves phone phreakers and studied the Bell network inside out; like Susan’s groupie friends, they knew how to find all the back doors.

Cool Stuff Found

Apple TV+ Makes 'The Afterparty' Premiere Episode Available on YouTube

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple TV+ made the entire premiere episode of The Afterparty available for free on YouTube. It is a very interesting move. While we have seen plenty of clips of movies and shows released online previously, as well as trailers and complimentary content, there have never been full episodes shared likes this. The Afterparty is a comedy-drama that follows the fallout of a school reunion gone wrong. It features a star-studded cast led by Tiffany Haddish. A further two episodes, alongside the pilot, were released to subscribers on Friday.

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'Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock' Guest Stars Ed Helms, Cynthia Erivo, Daveed Diggs Play Frictionary

Charlotte Henry ·

In a newly released clip, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock guest stars play ‘Frictionary’. Ed Helms, Cynthia Erivo, and Daveed Diggs all appear in the new Apple TV+ series, but do they really know what all the phrases they are saying mean? Their answers are, it’s fair to say, unimpressive…However, the show is lovely and available now to subscribers to the streaming service.

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Facebook Rolls Out End-to-End Encrypted Chats for Everyone

Andrew Orr ·

End-to-end encrypted chats are now available for all users of Facebook Messenger, the company announced. This includes group chats and calls.

Last year, we announced that we began testing end-to-end encryption for group chats, including voice and video calls. We’re excited to announce that this feature is available to everyone. Now you can choose to connect with your friends and family in a private and secure way.

These secure chats remain opt-in only, instead of encrypted by default like actual private messaging apps.

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An NFT on OpenSea Can Steal Your IP Address

Andrew Orr ·

An NFT found on the OpenSea marketplace can steal visitors’ IP addresses, according to a repot from Motherboard.

Of course, websites often collect and store visitors’ IP addresses in virtue of how the sites function. OpenSea itself likely collects the IP addresses of visitors, like plenty of other sites, apps, or services. But here, an outside third party—the NFT seller—is able to gather information themselves on the people viewing the NFT, potentially without them knowing.

‘The Matrix Resurrections’ Now Available to Rent or Buy on Apple TV
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'The Matrix Resurrections' Now Available to Rent or Buy on Apple TV

Andrew Orr ·

The newest movie in the franchise, The Matrix Resurrections is now available to buy or rent on Apple TV. Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Lambert Wilson reprise their roles from the previous films, and they are joined by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. The film is set sixty years after Revolutions and follows Neo, who lives a seemingly ordinary life as a video game developer troubled with distinguishing dreams from reality. A group of rebels, with the help of a programmed version of Morpheus, free Neo from a new version of the Matrix and fight a new enemy that holds Trinity captive.

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Contactless iPhone Payments May Be Just Around The Corner

Andrew Orr ·

Contactless iPhone payments could be enabled in a future iOS update, Mark Gurman wrote on Wednesday. It means that small business could accept credit card payments directly with an iPhone, without needing a terminal such as Square. Jeff Butts has more information here.

In order to accept payments on an iPhone today, merchants need to use payment terminals that plug in or communicate with the phone via Bluetooth. The upcoming feature will instead turn the iPhone into a payment terminal, letting users such as food trucks and hair stylists accept payments with the tap of a credit card or another iPhone onto the back of their device.

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ID.me CEO Admits Company Uses '1:Many' Facial Recognition

Andrew Orr ·

ID.me CEO Blake Hall wrote in a LinkedIn post that his company uses 1:many facial recognition. Cyber Scoop explains how this contradicts a press release saying ID.me does not use this technology. 1:many means the technology can identify people within mass databases of photos. It’s the opposite of the 1:1 face match proposed in the IRS + ID.me verification.

“We could disable the 1:many face search, but then lose a valuable fraud fighting tool. Or we could change our public stance on using 1:many face search,” an engineer wrote in a message posted to a company Slack channel on Tuesday. “But it seems we can’t keep doing one thing and saying another as that’s bound to land us in hot water.”

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Apple M1 Max vs Intel Alder Lake Core i9 - Who Wins?

Charlotte Henry ·

Benchmarks are out for Intel’s Alder Lake Core i9 chip. The raw numbers look like a win for PC users, even when compared with Apple’s M1 Max. However, as Macworld pointed out, there is a bit more to consider when making comparisons.

Geekbench 5’s OpenCL graphics benchmark results look dramatic. The PC laptops PCWorld tested have expensive discrete GPUs that offer peak performance, and it shows in the results. But a more applicable comparison is to examine the results for the integrated GPUs. In this case, the M1 Max and its 32-core GPU posts a 183 percent increase over the Alder Lake’s integrated GPU, an Iris Xe.

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Analysts Confident Apple Ahead of AAPL Earnings Call

Charlotte Henry ·

Some analysts believe that Apple has managed to deal with supply-chain issues caused by the Covid pandemic better than its rivals at the end of last year. It could also surpass Wall Street growth targets of six percent when it announces its latest earnings on Thursday. Reuter has a nice round-up of analyst opinion.

We expect Apple to reach its highest market share in China since Apple entered the market in 2008,” said analyst Nicole Peng of Canalys. Investment firm Wedbush Securities forecasts record iPhone sales of more than 40 million units during the holiday period from Black Friday to Christmas. Morgan Stanley estimates total holiday quarter iPhone shipments at 83 million, representing a 4% increase from the previous year. Wall Street analysts expect Apple to post about $118.7 billion in revenue, representing 6.48% year-over-year growth, and quarterly earnings per share of $1.89, according to Eikon data as of Tuesday.