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Andrew Orr

Since 2015 Andrew has been writing about Apple, privacy, security, and at one point even Android. You can find him most places online under the username @andrewornot.

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Articles by Andrew Orr

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Would You Like a Flying Security Drone From Amazon?

Andrew Orr ·

On Thursday, Amazon’s Ring surveillance company revealed a security drone that flies around your house taking photos of everything, because what could go wrong in 2020?

The company’s promotional video highlighting the camera showed a burglar breaking into a home and getting spooked as the drone flew straight at him — “Oh, no!” he exclaimed — while the homeowner watched the encounter on his phone. “Oh, yes,” the ad proclaimed.

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, it’s a real product and not a parody from The Onion.

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Watch Behind the Series ‘Tehran’ From Apple TV+

Andrew Orr ·

Apple uploaded a behind the series look at thriller “Tehran” on Apple TV+. It’s a new espionage thriller from “Fauda” writer Moshe Zonder that tells the thrilling story of a Mossad agent who goes deep undercover on a dangerous mission in Tehran that places her and everyone around her in dire jeopardy. The series is created by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden, and Maor Kohn, and directed by Daniel Syrkin. Omri Shenhar serves as writer alongside Zonder. The series is executive produced by Moshe Zonder, Dana Eden, Shula Spiegel, Alon Aranya, Julien Leroux, Peter Emerson and Eldad Koblenz; and produced by Donna and Shula Productions in association with Paper Plane Productions, with the participation of Cineflix Rights and Cosmote TV. Tehran will premiere globally on Apple TV+ with the first three episodes on September 25, and new episodes will premiere weekly, every Friday.

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Amazon’s Luna Streaming Game Service Works on iOS

Andrew Orr ·

Amazon’s newly-launched Luna streaming game service works on iOS…as a progressive web application. It’s not the same as a native app but it lets Amazon get around certain App Store rules.

Amazon said that Luna can support for gaming at a 4K resolution and 60 frames per second in “select titles.” It brought this up in relation to its Ubisoft gaming channel. This feature works like Amazon’s Prime Video channels. For example, I subscribe to PBS Kids for $5 per month on Prime Video to ensure I have plenty of content for my kids that goes beyond what the free PBS Kids app provides.

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‘Blacklight’ Tool Reveals Website Trackers

Andrew Orr ·

A tool called Blacklight has been making waves in the news recently. When you enter a website address into the page it scans it to reveal user-tracking technology.

Blacklight works by visiting each website with a headless browser, running custom software built by The Markup. This software monitors which scripts on that website are potentially surveilling the user by performing seven different tests, each investigating a specific, known method of surveillance.

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Twitter Tests Voice DMs After Debuting Voice Tweets

Andrew Orr ·

After rolling out voice tweets this summer, Twitter is now testing voice DMs. RIght now it’s being tested in Brazil.

Similar to voice tweets, voice messages have a bare-bones, simple interface: there’s just a play / pause button, and the sender’s avatar pulsates as the message plays. The product team designed an “in-line recording experience to make it easier to send these messages as part of the natural conversation flow,” so that’s one difference from the current audio tweets interface.

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Microsoft Still Interested in Bringing Xbox Game Pass to App Store

Andrew Orr ·

During an interview with CNBC, Microsoft Xbox lead Phil Spencer says the company remains committed to bringing Xbox Game Pass to the App Store.

With Apple changing the App Store policies, the Xbox Game Pass will be able to exist as a catalog app, which means that each game that will be available through the Game Pass will have to go through its indivudla [sic] review on the App Store. This is not really viable for a number of reasons, simply because Microsoft is talking about how it would still force a “bad experience” on the users.

Quickly Access iCloud Keychain With This Apple Engineer’s Shortcut
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Quickly Access iCloud Keychain With This Apple Engineer’s Shortcut

Andrew Orr ·

Ricky Mondello works on app and website authentication as well as password management at Apple. They recently created a shortcut that lets you quickly access iCloud Keychain, so instead of opening Settings and scrolling down to tap on Passwords, it’s a one-tap method to directly open the Passwords section. Separately from that, this is also something you can do yourself using the Settings Shortcut Generator. You can quickly jump to a variety of different places within Settings. One that I recently created is jumping to Settings > Privacy > Photos to manage app access to photos.

Discover Your Place in the Universe With the Kurzgesagt App
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Discover Your Place in the Universe With the Kurzgesagt App

Andrew Orr ·

Kurzgesagt is a science channel on YouTube that creates education videos for people. They recently partnered with Wait But Why to create the Universe in a Nutshell app. It lets people explore size by zooming between scales of 10^-35 meters to 10^26 meters (atomic scale to universe scale). It’s also filled with science facts that you can find by tapping on the objects you see. App Store: US$2.99

Create iOS 14 Widgets With the “Widgetsmith’ App
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Create iOS 14 Widgets With the “Widgetsmith’ App

Andrew Orr ·

Widgetsmith lets you create iOS 14 widgets and customize them to suit your needs and Home Screen theme. The app includes a variety of widget categories like weather, calendar, timezone converter, and others. Widgets can even by scheduled to appear on your screen following rules you define. App Store: Free (Offers In-App Purchases)

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Linksys Velop Tri-Band Routers Now Support HomeKit

Andrew Orr ·

Linksys Velop Tri-Band Routers now support Apple’s HomeKit through a free update available in the Linksys app.

Through ‌HomeKit‌, Velop users can choose to firewall off ‌HomeKit‌ accessories to prevent them from communicating with other WiFi devices on a home network and untrusted internet services to prevent hacking attempts and provide better security for connected home devices.

HomeKit-compatible Velop Tri-band model numbers that work with ‌‌HomeKit‌‌ include A03, WHW0301, WHW0301B, WHW0302, WHW0302B, WHW0303, and WHW0303B.

Good news for owners of these routers.

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Mark Zuckeberg Fights European Regulators

Andrew Orr ·

In a court filing in Dublin, Ireland, Facebook says if a decision by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is upheld, the company would have no choice but to abandon Europe because of its bad business practices.

If the decision is upheld, “it is not clear to [Facebook] how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” Yvonne Cunnane, who is Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, wrote in a sworn affidavit.

The decision Facebook’s referring to is a preliminary order handed down last month to stop the transfer of data about European customers to servers in the U. S., over concerns about U. S. government surveillance of the data.