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Texan Man Imprisoned For Apple Store Thefts in Multiple States

Charlotte Henry ·

Jalek Ingram, a 20-year-old  man from Texas, has been given two-year in prison for his links to thefts at  Apple Stores in various states. These included shoplifting 25 iPhones, MacBooks, and iPads from the retail outlet in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Sentencing papers filed Thursday show Jalek Ingram received a total of three years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and commercial burglary for the March 2018 Apple store theft for a two-year term, with an additional year in prison for a second-degree battery charge stemming from his role in beating a fellow jail inmate unconscious last November. Three other men are charged in the Apple thefts while three other jail inmates, including two murder suspects, are accused in the attack on Marcus Lorenzo Daniels of Crawfordsville about 1½ weeks before Thanksgiving.

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Examining the Boot Process for M1 Macs

Andrew Orr ·

Howard Oakley recently dove into the boot process for M1 Macs and how it affects booting from an external hard drive.

Unless the user has already changed its default security settings to allow it to start up from an external disk, you’ll have no joy whatsoever. Although this is secure, it’s also more than inconvenient, as the times that you most need your Mac to start up from an external disk are when it’s in trouble with its internal disk, and that’s likely to prevent you from changing its security settings, leaving your Mac dead.

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Experts Key to Epic vs Apple Battle

Charlotte Henry ·

The Epic Games vs Apple case is well underway. A key part of the trial is expert witnesses, with David Evans, chairman of Global Economics Group set to be there for the Fortnite maker. Reuters has a breakdown of the significance of his, and other, appearances.

On the stand this week, Evans testified that Apple is what is known as a single-brand market, arguing that once consumers buy an iPhone, the costs of switching to an Android are so high that they rarely make the jump. Since about 2010, Evans testified, Apple’s App Store has effectively been its own market, and users rarely venture outside. After Apple kicked “Fortnite” off the App Store, Evans testified, only a small fraction of Apple users jumped to other devices like PCs or gaming consoles to play “Fortnite.”

 

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YouTube TV Added Direct to App as Roku Row Escalates

Charlotte Henry ·

Google and Roku are still rowing over how to get YouTube TV back on the streaming platform. It seems like Google has taken things into its own hands, as The Verge reported that YouTube TV is now in the main YouTube app.

YouTube users will start seeing a “Go to YouTube TV” option in the main YouTube app over the next few days. When they select that, they’ll then be switched over to the standard YouTube TV user experience. This option is coming to Roku devices first — where it’s currently most needed — but will also come to YouTube on other platforms as well. In essence, Google has basically stuffed the YouTube TV app into YouTube itself, a solution that seems unlikely to make Roku very happy. Google says it’s “still working to come to an agreement with Roku to ensure continued access to YouTube TV for our mutual customers,” and it notes the YouTube TV app remains usable for those who already have it installed

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‘Brave’ Browser Adds Support for Crypto Domains

Andrew Orr ·

Brave is the latest browser to partner with Unstoppable Domains, letting users access decentralized crypto websites.

Through this integration, the Brave browser is supporting a decentralized network not part of the traditional Domain Name Service (DNS), which is increasingly susceptible to hijacking, denial-of-service attacks, and phishing attacks. Unstoppable Domains allows users to build and host decentralized websites for a variety of use cases, including creating NFT galleries, video, and file sharing.

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IRS Can Seize Your Bitcoin if you Have Unpaid Taxes

Andrew Orr ·

Deputy associate chief counsel Robert Wearing of the IRS said that the agency would seize cryptocurrency assets to settle unpaid taxes.

The perceived authority to seize an asset like bitcoin from the IRS stems from a 2014 notice it issued claiming that “virtual currency is treated as property for Federal income tax purposes.”

But there is still some question as to how the IRS would accurately determine the BTC holdings of taxpayers, let alone compel them to relinquish their bitcoin.

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President Biden Signs Order to Improve U.S. Cybersecurity

Andrew Orr ·

After the attack on Colonial Pipeline, President Biden has signed an executive order to improve the nation’s cybersecurity.

The executive order requires IT service providers to share certain breach information with the government, modernizes and implements stronger cybersecurity standards in the federal government, establishes security standards for development of software sold to the government and will create an “energy star” label so that consumers can better determine whether software was developed securely.