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Spotify CEO Discusses 'Play[ing] Nice' With Apple and Other Rivals

Charlotte Henry ·

Spotify is expanding its slate of original podcasts. However, CEO Daniel Ek explained to The Verge that his firm wants its content across all platforms, including Apple’s operating systems, and is unlikely to make its own hardware.

I would have been a lot more concerned if consumers were locked into just one ecosystem. If it was just an Apple, or just a Google, or just an Amazon that kind of owned the consumer across their entire ecosystem. That is a very concerning development, if it were to be true. But I think the good news is what we’re finding is that while Apple, for instance, is very strong on mobiles in many markets, we’re finding Amazon is very strong in their homes, and most of the cars today are being built on Android Auto, which is Google’s ecosystem. And the one thing that is true about Spotify is we play nice on all of them, and I believe we’re the only player that has that relationship where we’re now on 2,000 devices, and we play nice on all of them.

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T-Mobile Announces New ‘Magenta MAX’ 5G Plan

Andrew Orr ·

T-Mobile announced on Monday the release of its new Magenta MAX 5G plan. It includes 40GB of mobile hotspot.

Magenta MAX delivers unlimited Premium Data — 4G and 5G — on your smartphone. That means you can’t be slowed down based on how much you use. Plus, Magenta MAX is made for video streaming with UHD (ultra-high definition) streaming up to 4K resolution and Netflix on Us on all MAX plans, now including single line customers. And Magenta MAX comes with the industry’s most generous smartphone mobile hotspot at 40GB of high-speed data included for consumers.

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Chick-fil-A Uses FaceTime and iPads to Speed Up Drive-Thru

Andrew Orr ·

Chick-fil-A has been experiencing big drive-thru lines during the pandemic and it’s using Apple technology to speed it up.

The chain stands out from the drive-thru crowd in large part thanks to its workers with iPads who take orders from cars even before they reach the window.

“Some restaurants are using [FaceTime] during extreme weather as another measure to protect Team Members and/or for additional social distancing during COVID,” Chick-fil-A said in a statement.

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M1 Mac Users Report Hard Drive Health Readings That Could Limit Device Life Span

Charlotte Henry ·

Some M1 Mac users have started to highlight hard drive health reports that might possibly indicate severe life span problems for the device. iMore rounded up some of the issues.

The issue of ‘TBW’, or total bytes written, refers to the lifespan of an SSD… If the readings being given out from these machines is correct, developer Hector Martin says it could indicate that some machines “aren’t going to last half a year”… Martin does however state this is “definitely” a bug, however its unclear if that relates to the readings being given, or macOS behavior which is causing the readings to be abnormally high (but accurate). As PC Gamer notes in its report, smart monitoring tools “are notorious for misreporting” and this could be an M1 teething problem.

 

TMO Deals

TEZL 1080P HD Webcam with Privacy Cover: $29.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on the TEZL 1080P HD Webcam with Privacy Cover. This device features a 1″ x 2.7″ 2MP image sensor and 3.6M lens for 1920x1080p video resolution even in dim light or poor backlighting settings. It also has a built-in microphone with automatic noise reduction. And, there’s the physical privacy cover to prevent the camera from being used. It’s $29.99 through our deal.

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Encrypted Cloud Storage Service ‘Cryptee’ Announces Massive Update

Andrew Orr ·

Cryptee is an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service and announced a huge update on Sunday.

We’ve re-designed the entire platform, re-engineered everything from ground up, added hundreds of new features, and created an entirely new Cryptee experience for you. Along the way we’ve realized it’s going to be a massive leap forward, so we thought we should get a new logo too.

I think Cryptee is a great service and one that I’ve recommended in the past.

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Mysterious ‘Silver Sparrow’ Malware Confuses Researchers

Andrew Orr ·

Over the weekend we got news of a mysterious piece of malware called Silver Sparrow. It has infected 30,000 machines so far and there is a version of it built for M1 Macs. But security researchers can’t figure out its purpose.

Once an hour, infected Macs check a control server to see if there are any new commands the malware should run or binaries to execute. So far, however, researchers have yet to observe delivery of any payload on any of the infected 30,000 machines, leaving the malware’s ultimate goal unknown. The lack of a final payload suggests that the malware may spring into action once an unknown condition is met.