Enlarge / Siri in iOS 14. Samuel Axon Over the past few weeks, there have been several reports (including one of our own) on a feature found in recent beta releases of iOS 14.5 that appeared to allow users to change the default music app on their iPhones. However, Apple just clarified to TechCrunch that […]
Gears & Gadgets
Bitflips when PCs try to reach windows.com: What could possibly go wrong?
Enlarge Getty Images Bitflips are events that cause individual bits stored in an electronic device to flip, turning a 0 to a 1 or vice versa. Cosmic radiation and fluctuations in power or temperature are the most common naturally occurring causes. Research from 2010 estimated that a computer with 4GB of commodity RAM has a […]
Google claims it will stop tracking individual users for ads
Enlarge Aurich Lawson / Getty Images As Google’s plan to kill third-party tracking cookies ramps up, the company is answering questions about what will replace it. Many people have wondered: if Google kills cookies, won’t the company just cook up some other method for individually tracking users? Today, Google answered that concern in a post […]
All US Apple stores are open for the first time in almost a year
Enlarge / NEW YORK, June 17, 2020 – Staff workers serve customers outside an Apple store on Fifth Avenue. Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images For the first time in just a few days shy of a year, all Apple Store retail locations in the United States are open this week, reports 9to5Mac. Apple first […]
Microsoft issues emergency patches for 4 exploited 0-days in Exchange
Enlarge Getty Images Microsoft is urging customers to install emergency patches as soon as possible to protect against highly skilled hackers who are actively exploiting four zero-day vulnerabilities in Exchange Server. The software maker said hackers working on behalf of the Chinese government have been using the previously unknown exploits to hack on-premises Exchange Server […]
Rookie coding mistake prior to Gab hack came from site’s CTO
Enlarge Gab.com Over the weekend, word emerged that a hacker breached far-right social media website Gab and downloaded 70 gigabytes of data by exploiting a garden-variety security flaw known as an SQL injection. A quick review of Gab’s open source code shows that the critical vulnerability—or at least one very much like it—was introduced by […]
Trump’s is one of 15,000 Gab accounts that just got hacked
Enlarge Gab.com The founder of the far-right social media platform Gab said that the private account of former President Donald Trump was among the data stolen and publicly released by hackers who recently breached the site. In a statement on Sunday, founder Andrew Torba used a transphobic slur to refer to Emma Best, the co-founder […]
Sony’s brighter A90J OLED TV makes its way to living rooms this month
Sony’s A90J OLED TV. Sony Here’s the back. Sony And here’s a close-up look at the bezels. Sony LG’s OLED TV lineup often gets the most press among its peers, but Sony’s high-end OLED TVs get positive reviews as well. Today, Sony announced pricing and release timing for its flagship 2021 OLED, the A90J. Preorders […]
All the little things that add up to make iPadOS productivity a pain
The 12.9-inch 2020 iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard and Magic Trackpad peripherals. Samuel Axon The camera and sensor array on the 2020 iPad Pro includes two lenses and a lidar sensor. It’s still as thin as before, but that camera bump is a change. The design hasn’t changed at all beyond that camera bump. […]
Hard-coded key vulnerability in Logix PLCs has severity score of 10 out of 10
Enlarge Rockwell Automation Hardware that is widely used to control equipment in factories and other industrial settings can be remotely commandeered by exploiting a newly disclosed vulnerability that has a severity score of 10 out of 10. The vulnerability is found in programmable logic controllers from Rockwell Automation that are marketed under the Logix brand. […]
Google’s Smart TV software will have a “dumb TV” mode
Google TV setup will show you this menu in the future. Here, the Google TV option enables apps, the Google Assistant, and recommendations. 9to5Google Basic TV mode will turn off all but the essentials. 9to5Google This is what the Google TV interface normally looks like. Google And here’s basic mode. Other than the banner at […]
Code-execution flaw in VMware has a severity rating of 9.8 out of 10
Enlarge Getty Images Hackers are mass-scanning the Internet in search of VMware servers with a newly disclosed code-execution vulnerability that has a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10. CVE-2021-21974, as the security flaw is tracked, is a remote code-execution vulnerability in VMware vCenter server, an application for Windows or Linux that administrators […]
Google’s Wear OS neglect has left voice activation broken for months
Enlarge / A Wear OS watch. Ron Amadeo Poor, dying Wear OS. Apparently, the Google Assistant on Wear OS has been broken for months, and until now, no one at Google has noticed. About four months ago, diehard Wear OS users started a thread on the public Android issue tracker saying that the “OK Google” hotword […]
Firefox 86 brings multiple Picture-in-Picture, “Total Cookie Protection”
I installed Firefox 86 on my Ubuntu workstation using Snap to be certain I wouldn’t accidentally mess with my working system configuration. Jim Salter Although Firefox 86 is the default download from Mozilla, the Snap store hasn’t quite caught up yet. I needed to snap refresh firefox –channel=latest/candidate in order to get build 86. Jim […]
Ukraine says Russia hacked its document portal and planted malicious files
Enlarge Oleksii Leonov Ukraine has accused the Russian government of hacking into one of its government Web portals and planting malicious documents that would install malware on end users’ computers. “The purpose of the attack was the mass contamination of information resources of public authorities, as this system is used for the circulation of documents […]