Link

New Facebook Message Warns You of iOS 14 Ad Opt-In

Andrew Orr ·

In response to an iOS 14 feature that makes developers ask user consent to use their data, Facebook wants to remind people just how beleaguered it really is.

In the post, Facebook says that if users accept the prompts for Facebook and Instagram, the ads you see on those apps won’t change. “If you decline, you will still see ads, but they will be less relevant to you.” The tech giant notes that Apple has said that providing education about its new privacy changes is allowed.

To me, the most offensive part about this isn’t Facebook pretending to care about “businesses other than itself that rely on ads to reach products customers.” It’s how it says “This won’t give us access to new types of information.”

Link

Data Privacy Day 2021: Tresorit Responds to Encryption Backdoors

Andrew Orr ·

For Data Privacy Day 2021, companies with private products like Tresorit, ProtonMail, Threema, and Tutanota, have issued a joint statement about proposed laws about backdoored encryption.

[…] encryption is an absolute, data is either encrypted or it isn’t, users have privacy or they don’t. The desire to give law enforcement more tools to fight crime is obviously understandable. But the proposals are the digital equivalent of giving law enforcement a key to every citizens’ home and might begin a slippery slope towards greater violations of personal privacy.

Podcast

Spam, Your Privacy, Cool Stuff Found & More — Mac Geek Gab 855

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · 1 Comment

What’s your spam workflow? How do you know if your favorite podcast is selling your data? Want to hear about some Cool Stuff Found? Good news, your two favorite geeks talk through all this and more! Listen as John and Dave answer your questions and do their level best to ensure everyone learns at least five new things each week. Press play and enjoy!

Link

Apple Shares ‘MySwimPro’ in Developer Spotlight

Andrew Orr ·

Apple has highlighted Fares Ksebati and his app MySwimPro in its Developer Spotlight. It provides aquatic workout videos for athletes.

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started? That it’s really important to be consistent, that it takes time to develop, and that if you can just be a little bit better every single day, the compounding impact is absolutely insane. We’ve been at this for five years, which is more than 1,800 days, and we’re trying to be at least 1 percent better each day.

TMO Deals

Asus AC1900 T-Mobile Unlocked Dual Band Gigabit WiFi Router: $79.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on an Asus AC1900 T-Mobile Unlocked Dual Band Gigabit WiFi Router. This is a new, open box model, and it supports dual-band data rates of up to 1900Mbps, 3x faster than standard 802.11n routers. It also has 5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and please note that this router is not compatible with Aimesh or Mesh WIFI systems. It’s $79.99 through our deal.

Link

Jean Schulz Discusses Peanuts Partnership With Apple TV+ For The Snoopy Show

Charlotte Henry ·

On February 5, The Snoopy Show will arrive on Apple TV+. We’ve already seen a trailer for it. Jean Schulz, the widow of late Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz, discussed the forthcoming series with Variety.

We are so happy to have this relationship with Apple TV Plus, because they were one of the only places we talked to who wanted to do new material and be under the guidance [of ] Creative Associates, our creative arm here — people who are steeped in the “Peanuts” lore… New material in creative cooperation with us. Yes, Pixar would do it; other people would do it. But it would be their own project, not a collaboration. I think that probably would be what everybody would want. They want to have control and want it to be what they think is salable. Our interest is in keeping it as true to “Peanuts” as we can — to the comic strip, to my husband’s kind of humor and the humanity that comic strip showed.

Link

Pixelmator Pro ML Super Resolution Now Removes WebP Compression Artifacts

Andrew Orr ·

Pixelmator Pro has a new update ready, version 2.0.4. It brings an improvement to its ML Super Resolution image upscaler. It can now remove compression artifacts from WebP files. Another improvement adds support for portrait masks in Apple ProRAW images.

Pixelmator Pro already supports the WebP file format and, as it gains more users around the web, it’s becoming clear that the WebP compression algorithm produces unique compression artifacts. ML Super Resolution has already been trained to remove JPEG artifacts when resampling images but, with today’s update, it can now remove WebP artifacts too.