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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.

 

MOFT O Combines an iPhone Grip With a Stand
Cool Stuff Found

MOFT O Combines an iPhone Grip With a Stand

Andrew Orr ·

MOFT’s latest product is really clever. It’s called the MOFT O and it’s an iPhone grip that can also function as a stand. It’s MagSafe compatible or seamlessly snaps on any phone via the reusable MOFT Snap Sticker – a patented silicone pad with magnetic-like functionality. The slim multi-disc design object folds into a sturdy three-dimensional phone stand that rotates 360° for 3 viewing angles and snaps off to act as a 90° kickstand for live streaming. It’s available to purchase for US$19.99.

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Apple is Coming After Substack and the Email Newsletter Industry

Charlotte Henry ·

At WWDC 202, Apple announced Mail Privacy Protection, which removes tracking pixels from emails. These are used by newsletter services to let the sender see how many people open a message, how often, and when. Thanks to the likes of Substack and Revue, this industry has seen a recent boom, and Chris Stokel-Walker investigated for Wired how Apple’s move might affect them and others.

The decision is made all the more significant when you take into account Apple’s stranglehold on the email ecosystem. Between the iPhone and Apple Mail apps, more than 60 per cent of all email accounts are opened in a piece of software controlled by Apple… The worry among newsletter publishers is that at a stroke, Apple is about to do the same thing to the newsletter industry, removing one of the major benchmarks upon which newsletter advertising is sold – and therefore, the production of newsletters is funded.

TMO Deals

nomadplug 18W World Charger: $74.95

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on nomadplug, a modular 18 watt world charger. It’s safe for use in all 195 countries around the world, and it delivers USB-C charging for your output, with all of those global plug options. This device is $74.95, and it’s available in blue and orange in the deal listing.