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Microsoft App Brings Spam Filter, AI Sorting to Your Text Messages - [briefly]
03:21 PM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment Microsoft SMS Organizer is an alternative SMS app for Android that includes a configurable spam filter and several smart sorting and filtering features. The app was launched in India last year, but xda-developers discovered that it has now become available in the US, UK, and Australia as well. The app uses machine learning to automatically sort incoming SMS messages into categories such as promotional, transactional and personal. Promotional messages are considered spam; they won't trigger a notification and can be deleted automatically after a configurable amount of time. The apps also detects and helps organize info received by text about travel, tickets, and bills. The app can also backup and restore messages from Google Drive. The app is available now, for free, from the Google Play Store. |
Apple is planning to launch Apple TV+ by November at $9.99 per month - [internet]
03:19 PM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment AppleTV+ is expected to launch by November and will lead off with a free trial period according to sources familiar with the matter as reported by Bloomberg. Netflix popularized the concept of binging by releasing all episodes of a season at once and letting viewers consume them at their own pace. It works, to a certain degree, as you don't have to wait week after week for new episodes and potentially run the risk of losing interest. Conversely, once you watch an entire season – often times in a single day – you're done with the show until next season which could be a year or longer.
It would seem that Apple is targeting some sort of middle ground here in an effort to appease both camps.
Sources said Apple is considering a rate of $9.99 per month, the same as Apple News+ and Apple Music. In comparison, Netflix starts at $8.99 per month while Disney+ will begin at $6.99 a month.
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Apple Card is now available + 3% cash back for Uber / Uber Food - [briefly]
03:16 PM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment Back in March, when Apple first revealed the Apple Card, experts agreed that it holds great potential for disrupting non-tech organizations that are going through digital transformation. The card was planned to launch sometime this month, and the company started receiving applications a couple of weeks ago as part of a preview rollout for random people that have pre-registered for the service. Now, they're officially open for everyone in the U.S. and all you have to do to get started is open the Wallet app on your iPhone or iPad, or the Wallet & Apple Pay menu from Settings. Keep in mind that you need to be on iOS 12.4 or later, and the application process typically takes a minute or two to get approved or rejected. Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs explored the idea of an Apple Card in the 90s but dropped it because he didn't want anyone to get declined.
Apple Card exists in two forms, one being a digital card and the other being a physical one made of titanium and lacking any sort of visible credit card number or CVV code - instead, it will only have the name of the owner etched on it alongside an Apple logo. It can, however, be used just like any traditional card with a chip and magnetic stripe, and is permanently linked to a single iPhone user account as of writing. The transactions will be processed through MasterCard's merchant network. If your application is approved, you'll get a 'no fees' kind of card, including international and over-the-limit fees. Instead, the whole idea is that Apple will offer user-specific terms such as a credit limit between $250 and $7,500 and at an interest rate between 13 percent and 24 percent. The company also promises 24/7 app-based support and a focus on security and privacy. |
WD announces a 12TB external HDD - [hardware]
03:10 PM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment For gamers who regularly have to delete old games to make space for newer ones in their limited capacity consoles, Western Digital has now announced five models under the "WD Black" line-up of external gaming hard drives to take care of those worries. These drives range in capacity from a 500GB P50 Game Drive SSD to a 12TB D10 Game Drive for Xbox One that can store up to 300 games to make for an impressive library of titles, which showing off would probably be as much fun as playing. Jared Peck, WD's Senior Product Manager in an interview with GamesBeat, said that people often don't play games citing their fully stuffed console storage in what the company has identified as one of the pain points in its survey. It mentions 45% of gamers who'd be buying a storage device in the next year and 41% of PC gamers who'll definitely be getting more storage. There's also a double-digit figure for console owners who are already attaching external storage to their consoles, reports VentureBeat.
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WD Black P50 Game Drive SSD (500GB $180, 1TB $250, 2TB $500) - This aluminum drive comes with a 20 Gbps Superspeed USB over Type-C (only drive in the line-up with this connector, rest have Micro-B) for transfer speeds of up to 1,980MB/s. It has a five-year warranty with shipment expected later this year.
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WD Black P10 Game Drive (2TB $90, 4TB $130, 5TB $150) - This drive has 140MB/s transfer speeds for the 2TB version while the 4TB and 5TB versions have 130MB/s. The latter variant can store 125 games coming in at roughly 40GB each. It also supports Superspeed USB 5GB/s connectivity, comes with a three-year warranty and ships this month.
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WD Black P10 Game Drive for Xbox One (3TB $100, 5TB $150) - This drive comes with a two-month free subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, features USB 3.2 Gen 1 and transfer speeds of 130MB/s. It has a three-year warranty and ships this month.
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WD Black D10 Game Drive (8TB $200) - With space for up to 200 games, this 7200 RPM drive has a faster 250MB/s transfer speed. It features active cooling and has an external power supply that also has two 7.5W charging ports for your devices. It has a three-year warranty and ships in September.
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WD Black D10 Game Drive for Xbox One (8TB $200, 12TB $300) - The most capacious offering in this model weighs a rather hefty 0.96kg that's capable of storing 300 games. The ample storage can be put to good use with the three-month free subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offered with this drive. Spinning at 7200 RPM, it can transfer data at 250MB/s and like the standard D10, there's an external power supply with two 7.5W charging ports. Also coming with a three-year warranty, this drive ships in September.
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NVIDIA GeForce 436.02 WHQL driver - [gaming]
11:35 AM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment NVIDIA has released a brand new driver for its graphics cards. According to the release notes, the NVIDIA GeForce 436.02 WHQL driver improves performance by up to 23% in popular games. Furthermore, this Gamescom 2019 driver adds New Ultra-Low Latency, Integer Scaling and Image Sharpening. Going into more details, NVIDIA claims that most of the performance improvements come for 1080p and 1440p. Some of the games that see better performance with these new drivers are: Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Forza Horizon 4, Strange Brigade and World War Z. In addition, NVIDIA has introduced a new Ultra-Low Latency mode. If enabled, this feature would benefit games that are GPU bound with framerates hovering between 60 to 100, per Nvidia. It's worth noting, however, that this mode can only be enabled for DX9 and DX11 titles as DX12 and Vulkan APIs give a game more control over the render queue.
FYI, The installer of these drivers appears to have a major bug that forces the installation of GeForce Experience without obtaining GPDR-compliant consent from the user so you cannot deselect GeForce Experience from the list of components in the Custom Install screen. TechPowerUp has a free utility that lets users take complete control over their NVIDIA graphics driver installation, called NVCleanstall. Using this software you may skip lot more optional components than what the NVIDIA Installer allows, such as Telemetry. Grab a beta version of NVCleanstall from here. |
Marvel's Avengers Gameplay Video - [gaming]
03:45 AM EDT - Aug,20 2019 - post a comment The video clocks in at almost 19 minutes long, and showcases Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Black Widow gameplay. The video description and press release both call A-Day a "tutorial level," so it is clear that this is an early portion of the single-player campaign that will ease players into learning how to use each hero. Marvel's Avengers releases for Google Stadia, PC, PS4, and Xbox One on May 15, 2020 and you can pre-order it on Amazon right now.
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Google Drive will introduce long-asked-for file shortcuts feature - [briefly]
05:57 PM EDT - Aug,18 2019 - post a comment The new feature will work just like shortcuts in Windows-they are pointers to a file stored in another location. The shortcut can be stored anywhere without impacting the location of the original file. Google gave this example in its blog post announcing the feature:
If Paul in marketing shares a document from his team's shared drive with the entire sales team, Greta in sales can create a shortcut to that document in her own team's shared drive. Previously, because documents can't be owned by two shared drives, Greta would need to create a copy of the document for her team's shared drive, which could then quickly become out of date.
Google writes that supported content types for shortcuts include Docs, Slides, Sheets, JPGs, PDFs, folders, and Microsoft Office files. |
New Attack exploiting serious Bluetooth weakness - [security]
05:54 PM EDT - Aug,18 2019 - post a comment Researchers have demonstrated a serious weakness in the Bluetooth wireless standard that could allow hackers to intercept keystrokes, address books, and other sensitive data sent from billions of devices.
Dubbed Key Negotiation of Bluetooth-or KNOB for short-the attack forces two or more devices to choose an encryption key just a single byte in length before establishing a Bluetooth connection. Attackers within radio range can then use commodity hardware to quickly crack the key. From there, attackers can use the cracked key to decrypt data passing between the devices. The types of data susceptible could include keystrokes passing between a wireless keyboard and computer, address books uploaded from a phone to a car dashboard, or photographs exchanged between phones.
KNOB doesn't require an attacker to have any previously shared secret material or to observe the pairing process of the targeted devices. The exploit is invisible to Bluetooth apps and the operating system they run on, making the attack almost impossible to detect without highly specialized equipment. KNOB also exploits a weakness in the Bluetooth standard itself. That means, in all likelihood, that the vulnerability affects just about every device that's compliant with the specification. The researchers have simulated the attack on 14 different Bluetooth chips-including those from Broadcom, Apple, and Qualcomm-and found all of them to be vulnerable.
"The Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth (KNOB) attack exploits a vulnerability at the architectural level of Bluetooth," the researchers wrote in a research paper published this week. "The vulnerable encryption key negotiation protocol endangers potentially all standard compliant Bluetooth devices, regardless [of] their Bluetooth version number and implementation details. We believe that the encryption key negotiation protocol has to be fixed as soon as possible."
While people wait for the Bluetooth Special Interest Group-the body that oversees the wireless standard-to provide a fix, a handful of companies has released software updates that patch or mitigate the vulnerability, which is tracked as CVE-2019-9506. The fixes include:
The US CERT has issued this advisory. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, meanwhile, posted a security notice here. |
YouTube Originals will be free beginning Sept 24 to non-paying users - [internet]
08:53 AM EDT - Aug,17 2019 - post a comment YouTube, the behemoth of video-sharing websites, announced that starting September 24 this year, non-paying users of YouTube will also be able to access YouTube Originals. The company's Help Center wrote:
Beginning on September 24th, 2019, your YouTube Originals viewing experience will differ based on whether or not you have a YouTube Premium membership [...] Some YouTube Original series, movies, and live events are available for viewing without a YouTube Premium subscription. However, you will see ads during this viewing experience and only select episodes may be available for streaming at any time.
YouTube Originals, a channel that started back in 2016, contains a selection of original series, events, and movies from Youtube. Previously, access to this content was restricted to only YouTube Premium users. which is the site's paid streaming subscription service with features like exclusive content and the ability to download videos, among others. Despite the general availability of YouTube Originals to non-paying subscribers, YouTube Premium members will still enjoy exclusive perks:
- Ad-free viewing of YouTube Originals
- Access to all the available episodes in a series right when they premiere
- The ability to download YouTube Originals for offline viewing
- Exclusive access to bonus content such as director's cuts and extra scenes of YouTube Originals when available.
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Dave Chappelle Netflix Standup Comedy Special Trailer - [off-topic]
05:41 PM EDT - Aug,16 2019 - post a comment Legendary comedian Dave Chappelle is back with an all-new stand-up comedy special, Sticks & Stones, his fifth Netflix Original.
Unflinching and boundary-pushing, Dave gives his provocative perspective on the tidal wave of celebrity scandals, the opioid crisis, and more -- in trademarked Chappelle fashion. Dave Chappelle's Sticks & Stones streams August 26, only on Netflix.
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Botanist Rescues Abandoned Coyote Pup - [off-topic]
05:29 PM EDT - Aug,16 2019 - post a comment An amateur botanist got more than he expected when he took a stroll through the fields and came across an abandoned coyote puppy in desperate need of his help.
Locomotive engineer Joey Santore, 36, likes to unwind by taking a stroll and recording his botany adventures around California.
But on one eventual trip to Siskiyou County on June 23, Joey stumbled across a young, emaciated coyote, desperately trying to run away.
Quickly realising that the pup was all alone and there were no other puppies or parents around, Joey decided to chase after the spooked animal.
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Apple reportedly locking out unauthorized battery replacement - [briefly]
05:09 PM EDT - Aug,16 2019 - post a comment iFixit reported earlier this week that Apple has activated a "dormant software lock" on some iPhones that's effectively locking out third-party battery replacement. The iFixit team explains that when an iPhone battery needs replacing, it'll display a "Service" message in the Settings > Battery menu. If a third-party vendor replaces that battery, even using a genuine Apple battery, that message will continue to display. To make the message go away, an Apple Genius or Apple Authorized Service Provider has to authenticate the battery, iFixit says. There's a microcontroller from Texas Instruments onboard iPhone batteries that communicates health information to the phone. That chip is paired with the phone via an authentication key. If the key doesn't match due to third-party replacement, you get the service warning without the battery health info. Assuming the replacement battery is in good condition, it'll work fine regardless of the service warning. The service warning does not affect expected battery life, nor does the replacement cause performance throttling.
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Certified Drivers Apparently Unsafe - [security]
05:07 PM EDT - Aug,16 2019 - post a comment Eclypsium, an Oregon security company, claims that drivers on Microsoft's Windows platform are a security mess. Who could have guessed? Their researchers found serious flaws in more than 40 drivers from at least 20 different hardware vendors. Apparently every single one of these vulnerabilities allows the driver to hand over "access to the hardware resources, such as read and write access to processor and chipset I/O space, Model Specific Registers (MSR), Control Registers (CR), Debug Registers (DR), physical memory and kernel virtual memory. This is a privilege escalation as it can move an attacker from user mode (Ring 3) to OS kernel mode (Ring 0)." Basically, complete control of the impacted machine. Not only that, these potentially allow malware to compromise your UEFI and persist across an operating system re-installation. They also add that not only do these drivers provide the necessary access, they also provide the mechanism to make changes. Scary stuff.
What's perhaps most interesting is that every driver they tested was signed by a Certificate Authority and had Microsoft's stamp of approval on them. Tie that to the fact that you can no longer block updates on Home versions of Windows 10, and you've got one heck of a potentially serious problem. In other words, these impacted problematic drivers are almost certainly going to be installed on possibly millions of PCs. If you were thinking that you can just stick with Windows 7 to be safe from these vulnerabilities, sadly, all modern versions of Windows are impacted. You can block updates on Windows 7, however, that's likely not a solution since there is a good chance you're already running problematic drivers. You may also be later to receive a patch for older versions of Windows as the newest version is prioritized. |
AA tells airlines MacBook Pros with defective batteries can't fly - [security]
04:51 PM EDT - Aug,15 2019 - post a comment The Federal Aviation Administration has banned certain 15-inch MacBook Pros with potentially defective batteries from US flights. The move, which follows Apple's June recall announcement, is part of a general FAA policy on devices with defective batteries. The FAA says it alerted airlines about the recall in early July. The agency also says it informed the public on social media around the same time, though it didn't get much attention at the time. Regulators in the European Union have also restricted the recalled MacBooks from use on European flights. Affected laptops were mostly sold between September 2015 and February 2017. |
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