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How Well Do the M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max Chips Handle Games?

Andrew Orr ·

Apple said that its latest chips, the M1 Pro | Pro Max are great for content creators like developers and photographers. What about gamers?

All games were run at a full-HD-equivalent resolution (1,920 by 1,200 pixels) because the two new MacBook Pros have differing native display resolutions. (Testing at each laptop’s native resolution would have rendered the scores non-comparable.)

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Dental Data Breach Affects 125,000 Patients in 10 States

Andrew Orr ·

North American Dental Management suffered a data breach between March 31 and April 1, 2021. It happened as the result of phishing. This group provides administrative and technical support services for Professional Dental Alliance (PDA) offices.

PDA said that it had not found any evidence of any actual misuse of personal information and that its investigation of the matter indicates that the attack was limited to email credential harvesting.

The threat actor did not access PDA’s patient electronic dental record or dental images; however, the Alliance found that some sensitive personal information may have been present in the compromised email accounts.

The breach was reported to the DHS’s Office for Civil Rights, impacting 125,760 patients in Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas and Tennessee.

Cool Stuff Found

ChargerLAB Speed-tests iPhone 13 Pro Charging

Jeff Butts ·

Not long ago, ChargerLAB tested the charging speed of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The lab found the new iPhone could charge at 27W, compared to around 22W for the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Since then, they’ve run the same tests on the iPhone 13 Pro. Paired with the right charging brick, the iPhone 13 Pro can recharge at up to 22W, the same as the previous generation. Apparently, only the iPhone 13 Pro Max got the speed boost.

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Polygon Blockchain Fixes Double Spend Bug Reported From Bug Bounty

Andrew Orr ·

Security researcher Gerhard Wagner found a double-spend bug in Polygon’s Plasma bridge. The company awarded Mr. Wagner a record US$2 million for reporting this critical vulnerability.

In total, it is possible to create 14×16 = 224 different encodings for the same raw path. A malicious user can leverage the issue to create alternative exits for the same burn transaction and perform double spends on the Polygon network.

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Stargate SG-1 Cast to Read AI-Generated Script

Jeff Butts ·

More than a few of us have been wishing for a reunion of our favorite Stargate: SG-1 characters. It looks like it’s finally happening, but not the way we thought. Someone fed thousands of hours of Stargate SG-1 episodes into a Google AI bot, and then let it write the script. On November 6, 2021, some of our favorite Stargate stars will do a table reading of that script. Could be good, could be bad, but it’s bound to be fun.

The whole script — every single line, every stage direction — was, according to the teaser, produced by an AI from Google. Some of it is in clear homage to classic Stargate’s sense of humor. But there’s also some of the gravitas that Thor and the Asgard brought to their interactions with SG-C and allies. If what we know about Markov chains is any indication about what is to come, this reading may include word salad, but it’ll be light, and pretty meme-ready. It isn’t the reunion we deserve… it’s the reunion we need right now.

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Elcomsoft Can Now Download iCloud Data With Trusted Device Authentication

Andrew Orr ·

Elcomsoft has announced an update to its Phone Breaker, a forensic tool used to extract data from iPhones. A trusted iOS device can now be used to authenticate into iCloud. This will let the tool decrypt data protected by end-to-end encryption.

By using a trusted device, experts benefit from unrestricted access to all kinds of information stored in the user’s iCloud account including cloud backups produced by all Apple devices sharing the same Apple ID, photos, synchronized data, as well as end-to-end encrypted data such as the user’s passwords, browsing history, and health information.

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Adobe's Behance Platform Adds Support for NFT Art

Andrew Orr ·

Behance, a portfolio platform for graphic designers, will let creators connect their crypto wallet to showcase NFT art.

The company is working to include blockchains like Polygon, Solana, Flow and Tezos. It is also partnering with NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, SuperRare, KnownOrigin, and Rarible to display provenance data from the Content Authenticity Initiative — which is now built into a number of Creative Cloud tools — visible on their sites, in addition to Behance.