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Colorado Becomes Third State to Pass Privacy Law

Andrew Orr ·

Lawmakers in Colorado passed the Colorado Privacy Act, and now Senate Bill 190 needs Governor Jared Polis’ signature.

Consumer advocates said the measure could have gone further to protect people. One change allows consumers to universally opt out of ad-based tracking instead of having to make that request for each website or company. But the act also lets advertising companies keep tracking consumers if they ask for consent first.

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Rep. Joe Morelle Introduces Right to Repair Legislation in House of Representatives

Charlotte Henry ·

National right to repair legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday. It could compel firms to provide repair details and resources to both users and third-party technicians, AppleInsider reported.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) on Thursday introduced the Fair Repair Act, which requires device manufacturers to provide diagnostic and repair information, parts, and tools to third-party repair shops “in a timely manner and on fair and reasonable terms.” Additionally, the bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to carry out enforcement by penalizing violators. The goal, according to Rep. Morelle’s office, is to empower small businesses and consumers to be self-reliant in the ability to fix their own devices without needing to go through official manufacturer or authorized repair channels.

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Netflix Takes Almost the Same Percentage of TV Usage as Apple TV+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock and Discovery+ Combined

Charlotte Henry ·

Latest Nielsen figures show that streaming overtook broadcast in TV usage in May. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the figures also revealed that Netflix occupied just two percent yes of that usage than a number of rivals, including Apple TV+, combined.

Netflix also has reason to tout the Nielsen findings, as they show that the company accounted for 6 percent of all TV usage in May. That’s tied with YouTube (including the YouTube TV bundle) for first among streamers; each makes up more than a fifth of all streaming time on TV. Hulu (including its live TV service) took up 3 percent of TV time, Amazon’s Prime Video 2 percent and Disney+ 1 percent. All other streaming combined — including Apple TV+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock and Discovery+ — made up 8 percent of of total usage.

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This Man Warned Apple About China Years Ago

Andrew Orr ·

Apple hired Doug Guthrie in 2014 to help the company navigate China. But he warned executives of the growing power of Xi Jingping.

Apple, more than any other company, has been vulnerable to the government’s harder line. As a result, over the past several years, Apple has made compromises in China that undercut the values its executives have put at the center of its brand. To placate the authorities and keep its global business running, Apple has put its Chinese customers’ data at risk and aided the Chinese government’s vast censorship operation.

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New Malware Infects Software Pirates and Blocks The Pirate Bay

Andrew Orr ·

Andrew Brandt reports on a new malware campaign that isn’t like your typical malware. This one blocks people from accessing many popular pirating websites.

We weren’t able to discern a provenance for this malware, but its motivation seemed pretty clear: It prevents people from visiting software piracy websites (if only temporarily), and sends the name of the pirated software the user was hoping to use to a website, which also delivers a secondary payload.

Looks like this is aimed more towards Windows users. The malware takes the form of .EXE executables, and may display a message saying the victim is missing an important .DLL file.

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GitHub Desktop 2.9 Update Adds M1 Mac Support

Andrew Orr ·

GitHub Desktop was recently updated to version 2.9, and the team shared some of the new features included, such as squash and reorder commits. Users can now download a native build for their M1 Mac.

If a group of commits represents a single unit of work, or if a project requires that each pull request only has one commit, simply drag them on top of one another to squash them together and add a new commit message that captures the whole picture.

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The Story of BonziBuddy and its Company’s Demise

Andrew Orr ·

In the third episode of Kernel Panic, Mashable tells the story of one of the first virtual assistants known as BonziBuddy.

Behind the facade of that friendly gorilla, Bonzi Software, the company responsible for BonziBuddy, was collecting private information and contacts from the unsuspecting internet users who downloaded it — and bombarding them with ads and pop-ups that Bonzi would profit from.

Harry Potter and the Curse of Bonzi. If you ever downloaded this purple ape and noticed strange things start to happen, let us know in the comments. Maybe your browser was full of ads, or maybe he whispered into your ear at night, encouraging you to commit securities fraud.

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Even With Swift Playgrounds, iPad is Not a Developer’s Tool… Yet

Charlotte Henry ·

At WWDC 2021 Apple unveiled Swift Playgrounds 4 for the iPad. While it is a big step forward, The Verge reported that even when combined with the latest chip, the iPad is not yet a full-blown tool for developers.

Swift Playgrounds 4 isn’t the big announcement the developer community was waiting for. It has significant limits and lacks several advanced tools — debugging and profiling tools, versioning, storyboard integration, support for third-party packages, etc. “Swift Playgrounds is great for experimenting and debugging code, but it is missing many of the features … required to make fuller-fledged apps,” [Quo CEO Tucker] Haas explains. He says the program is “perfect for developing small utility applications, such as a to-do list, but currently incapable of building the next Angry Birds.”

 

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Data Leak Exposes Customer Records With CVS Health

Andrew Orr ·

CVS Health recently leaked approximately one billion user records that include email addresses, user IDs, and metadata. The information was discovered in a non-password protected database.

CVS Health acted fast and professionally to secure the data and a member of their Information Security Team contacted me the following day and confirmed my findings and that the data was indeed theirs. I was informed that this was a contractor or vendor who managed this dataset on behalf of CVS Health, but it was confidential as to who the vendor was.