Tag: tech

Standing Still

Toyota has been a long-popular car manufacturer. However, lately, they’re in the news for the wrong reasons. The car company announced that they have once again had to halt production of their cars due to a supplier getting hacked. Jonathan Gitlin at ArsTechnica has more. Toyota is becoming quite the frequent target for hackers. It was compromised at least three times in 2019, including a malware attack in Australia, a breach of 3.1 million customers’ data in Japan (and possibly Thailand and Vietnam), and a scam that cost a subsidiary $37 million. ArsTechnica Last year they were hacked through a…

I Agree, I Agree

If anything from using software and signing up for stuff has taught us, it’s that nobody ever reads the giant page of legal text before using something new. Basically, we click “I Agree” and move on. Software license agreements and Terms & Conditions are important, yet it’s more of a legal CYA than anything. Enter TikToker Mckenzie Floyd who found something funny on Peacock’s Terms & Conditions. In a viral TikTok posted last week, TikToker Mckenzie Floyd (@mckenziefloyd) revealed Peacock’s secret Easter egg: A chili recipe from The Office. “Kevin’s famous chili” is famous among Office fans, featured in the slapstick cold open to the episode “Casual…

Crypto Your Way Out of It

In all the talk of what countries will do in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a key move is mentioned every time: sanctions. The idea is pretty basic. Stop doing business with a country, freeze their assets, and stop goods from going in. It’s an economic way to turn the screws. But, living in the 21st century means Russia is ready. Emily Flitter and David Yaffe-Bellany at the New York Times have more about the Digital Ruble. Should it choose to evade sanctions, Russia has multiple cryptocurrency-related tools at its disposal, experts said. All it needs is to find…

Alexa Anyone

Amazon’s runaway success with Alexa and the Echo devices “she” lives in is quite obvious. As someone who owned an original Echo back when you needed an invite to buy it, I can remember the awe in how good the voice recognition was. The time it took to understand a question, send it to the cloud, then return a response was a big win. It seems now that Amazon allows anyone to provide information to questions Alexa may not know. Jack Morse at Mashable has the story. Way back in 2019, Amazon announced that, going forward, any old idiot off…

Meta-less VR

With all the hullabaloo about the metaverse and Facebook Meta pitching it non-stop, it is a breath of fresh air to see a VR announcement that doesn’t come from Zuckerberg. Sony revealed the second iteration of their Playstation VR system that will release later this year. Kyle Orland from Ars Technica has more. As far as significant design changes, the PSVR2 will now offer a lens adjustment dial that can slide each lens side to side in order to match the player’s interpupillary distance. Getting a good match there can be key to providing a sharp focus and preventing eye strain…

Sights Out

When your computer, car, phone, or any other Thing is dead or ready for an upgrade, we head out to the store and upgrade our tech. It’s a simple proposition. But what do you do when your tech is literally inside your body? That is the real scenario faced by many customers of Second Sight. This was a company pioneering medical implants to help visually-impaired people see again. “Was” is the keyword, because they’re now out of business. Eliza Strickland and Mark Harris at IEEE have this more of this cautionary tale. Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out…

Thanks For Wii Memories

It’s no secret that the Switch has been a massive hit for Nintendo. Its 2017 launch was questioned by the industry. It launched in March, nowhere near the holiday season. Its launch lineup was sparse. It was coming off the embarrassing era of its previous console, the Wii U. Nintendo overcame its stumbles and now the Switch is everywhere. In turn, the Big N has given the green light to shutter the eShop for the Wii U. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica covers this news while also covering the fact that the eShop digital store for the 3DS portable console…

Chrome Flex

Anyone who works in education or has kids in public school, it’s a sure bet that you’ve seen how pervasive Chromebooks are. Lightweight and inexpensive laptops, these durable devices are everywhere in schools. ChromeOS is a basic operating system, but because it ties into Google’s services at its core, it is quite powerful. Google announced Chrome OS Flex, a new version of their operating system that works on Windows and Intel Mac PCs. Scharon Harding at Ars Technica has more. Chrome OS Flex is basically the official Google version of CloudReady, which Google acquired when it bought Neverware in 2020. Flex allows individuals,…

Accusations of a Clueless Person

Back in October Missouri governor Mike Parson, decided to hold a press conference and sling accusations against a reporter. The charge? Hacking. The crime? Viewing the HTML code in a browser of a publicly-available webpage. It took many months to get some resolution to this, but the prosecutor has decided to not press charges. Rational thinking prevails. Jon Brodkin at ArsTechnica has more. Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud had been facing the threat of prosecution since his discovery that the state website’s HTML source code exposed the full Social Security numbers of teachers and other school employees in unencrypted form. Renaud…

Listening Together

If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, like I am, it’s painfully apparent that Apple lacks some core social features. Their “Replay” feature pales in comparison to Spotify’s “Wrapped” year-end review. In addition, there is no way to collaborate on a playlist with friends. A new app, Caset, looks to change that. Billed as a “mixtapes for the new era”, Caset is an app that lets you create playlists with friends. Anyone you share the playlist with can add tracks too. Even better is you can give a tapback-style reaction to tracks, allowing a simple feedback mechanism to exist. Mixtapes represent…

Apple is Coming for Square

Even if you aren’t familiar with the company Square, you’ve seen it and have used it. Square is a payment system for small and medium businesses. They use iPad-like devices that swivel on a countertop and those small square devices that merchants use to take payments. Ever been to a craft fair, street fair, or other events with vendors? They’re everywhere. Apple, not one to ever overlook an opportunity, announced they’ll offer to accept tap-to-pay payments without any additional hardware. The new capability will empower millions of merchants across the US, from small businesses to large retailers, to use their…

Nutritional Gigs

It’s incredibly frustrating to know what you’re getting when purchasing internet service. Most companies operate in complete or near-complete monopolies here in the US. Even worse is you don’t know the price you’ll actually pay due to fees nor will you always know the speeds you’re supposed to be getting. That’s about to change. In 2016 the FCC came up with “broadband nutrition labels” for ISPs to use. Similar to the labels on all food, this would break down everything in plain terms what you’re getting and what you’re going to pay. Finally, six years later, ISPs will now be…

Switching It Up

Normally I don’t care too much about quarterly reports from companies, but Nintendo’s shareholder call did reveal something pretty noteworthy. Nintendo revealed that the Switch is now their best-selling console of all time. It has officially surpassed the Wii’s gangbuster sales. Matt Purslow at IGN has more. The Nintendo Switch has become the fastest home console to sell 100 million units, and has now outsold the Nintendo Wii. Announced in Nintendo’s financial report for the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 2022, the company revealed that the lifetime sales of the Nintendo Switch is 103.54 million units as…

Wordle Joins NYT

If you had free game gets bought by a prestigious newspaper on your 2022 BINGO card, then you win. Late news broke on Monday that the New York Times has purchased Wordle from Josh Wardle… for seven figures. The purchase, announced by The Times on Monday, reflects the growing importance of games, like crosswords and Spelling Bee, in the company’s quest to increase digital subscriptions to 10 million by 2025. Wordle was acquired from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would…

From the ‘How Was This Never a Feature’ department

In all the years that Apple’s App Store has been in existence, apparently, they have never allowed a company to hide one’s app from the store. Doing so would make the app available only via a direct link. Why would a developer want to hide an app? Perhaps it’s for a one-off or annual event like Comic-Con. Or the app could be limited in use by employees of a singular company. Regardless of the use cases, Apple has finally implemented this obvious feature according to Amanda Yeo at Mashable. It will also help declutter the App Store, so you don’t…

Cornering the Cast

Last week’s brouhaha of Neil Young vs Spotify / Joe Rogan went as predicted. Spotify didn’t budge and Young made good on his threat. Joni Mitchell joined the fray and removed her music from Spotify too. But lost in all of this are two critical decisions that have undermined critical cores to podcasting. The first is exclusivity. Podcasts were never envisioned or built to be exclusive. Sure, some outlets offer podcasts as members-only perks or private ways to access shows. However, podcasting’s lifeblood is RSS. That is an open standard and without it, podcasting would not exist. Spotify decided to…

Sorta Face to Unlock

When Apple introduced Face ID in 2017, they never could’ve predicted the world we live in today. Masks are mandatory in many places due to COVID. Many times when we are out and about, this super-fast way of unlocking an iPhone is rendered useless. Apple tried to fix this once. However, there are still tons of iPhone users who do not own an Apple Watch. Now, the upcoming iOS version 15.4 looks to do even more about this. Oliver Haslam at iMore gives more details. The change was first spotted by YouTuber Brandon Butch and comes with a text that…

Life360 Gets Slightly Less Crappy

When news broke about Life360 being one of the biggest data brokers as a side-hustle, the blowback was huge. This company, which people pay to use to see the location of friends & family, was not only collecting all this information but also selling it all to at least a dozen companies. Umar Shakir at The Verge has more. Life360, a safety and tracking service that helps its users to keep tabs on the whereabouts of family and friends who also use the app, is scaling back its user data sales business to just two partners: Allstate Arity and Placer.ai…

Dead Pixel

Years ago T-Mobile did something revolutionary: they ditched two-year contracts. A norm in the industry, they decided to let you finance your phone separately and separate it from the service billed monthly. That decision lead to a series of moves leading to people holding onto them for 3-5 years according to a 2019 report. Bundled with keeping your phone is the expectation of that phone getting updates. Apparently, one of the more popular Android phones, the Pixel 3, shouldn’t be used any further. Google has decided to stop updating it entirely. This phone is only three years old. Aaron Gordon…

Five Times the Gigs

In a country where internet service is awful in many areas and virtually no competition exists, AT&T decided it was time to offer more speed. Hot off the press release is the announcement of a five-gigabit plan available right now to customers. Juli Clover at MacRumors has the breakdown. According to AT&T, the new plans are available to nearly 5.2 million customers across 70 metro areas including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Raleigh, Miami, and Dallas, with a full list available on AT&T’s website. AT&T Fiber 2 GIG is priced at $110 per month plus taxes,…

From the Terrible Ideas Department

Twitter’s Twitter Blue premium (and paid) service posted this head-scratcher about a new ‘perk’ to paying the company money to use Twitter: gm! You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT Profile Pictures on iOS I’m not sure why people would ‘need’ this feature when an NFT is literally an image you can screen shot and upload as your profile photo. Even worse is the growing fad of companies jumping into NFTs as if it’s some super-hot market. From what I can tell, most people have no clue what an NFT is nor can…

Prove It

UPDATE: According to Mashable, Apple has removed the requirement. No statements have been made. It’s simply gone back to the way it used to be. Since the beginning of Apple’s production of computers, they have focused on education. It was a strategy to get their computers in front of people at a time when a computer seemed unnecessary. The educational market has always been important to Apple. Every year they run back-to-school promotions and they have always offered discounts for students and teachers. However, now you will have to prove you qualify as Apple has done away with the honor…

Page ‘Em

It’s a beautiful day in the woods. Far off the grid, away from stores, people, or even shelters more stable than a tent, Jeff Wilson is backpacking through deep woods. It’s a return to nature that brings him enjoyment and is a complete disconnection from society. But Jeff has no connection to the world at large and in this case, unaware of what is coming. He is deep in the forest when a loud series of beeps emits from his pocket. The small plastic rectangle continues to sound until Jeff pulls it out and silences it with a push of…

Fiji Crypto

Depending on whom you speak to, cryptocurrency is either the second-coming of money or it’s a complete waste of time. Leave it to people who have too much time on their hands to come up with some Fyre Fest level ideas on what to do with the crypto ‘riches’. Two people who want to create a crypto utopia of sorts in Fiji have run into real-world roadblocks. Widely mocked plans to establish a tropical haven for cryptocurrency enthusiasts have run into trouble after a contract to buy an island in Fiji for US$12m fell through. A group of crypto-evangelists, led by Max…

Meta Breakup

Facebook can only dodge legal ramifications for the way they run their business for so long. The more they acquire companies, the more they try to hoover up people’s data, the more they think they can get away with anything, the bigger chances they’ll run afoul of the law. The FTC has been granted permission to force Facebook Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Judge James Boasberg ruled that the FTC can proceed with a bid to force Facebook, now Meta, to sell its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram. Meta asked for the lawsuit to be dismissed in December, Reuters reported, but Boasberg rejected…

Google Blaming Apple For Their Own Mistakes

If there was a big eye-roll moment, it’s Google’s Android team bellyaching about iMessage. Apple’s advantage is obvious because it’s a form of lock-in for their ecosystem. When the iPhone debuted, it supported SMS and nothing more. Then with iOS 5 in 2011, Apple rolled out iMessage. It was a simple and secure messaging platform that was an alternative to SMS. It famously only works between Apple devices. What really set it apart though was it became the default messaging protocol when you first messaged someone. Google has been fighting this fight for a long time. However, due to Android’s…

And We’re Calling it iPhone

It’s been fifteen years since Steve Jobs spoke those words. A lot of grand claims were made at MacWorld 2007 at the iPhone’s unveiling. Some were seen as laughable. Some were seen as revolutionary. Nearly all of it came true. I (among many others) believe this was Jobs’ pinnacle performance on stage. I remember watching it and being floored over and over with the (LIVE!!) demo. Something as simple as the Slide to Unlock feature garnered amazed reactions. If you didn’t experience the event, even remotely, at the time it is hard to put into words how important it felt.…

Chip Shortage Forces Canon to Call BS on Themselves

Canon makes printers. Printers suck. They have been awful for so long, as I’ve mentioned before. Every company who makes them tries to pull some nonsense regarding price, lock-in and ink levels. For years, ink and toner cartridges have shipped with chips in them. It was a form of security that forced customers to only buy their ink or toner. If a printer doesn’t see the chip (because you’ve chosen to buy 3rd party ink), it gives you a hard time or will stop printing. That’s worked fine and dandy… until we’ve hit a global chip shortage. Canon can’t source…

E3 Learns from CES’ Mistakes

A full six months ahead of 2022’s E3 gaming convention, the Entertainment Software Association announced E3 will be virtual this year. “Due to the ongoing health risks surrounding COVID-19 and its potential impact on the safety of exhibitors and attendees, E3 will not be held in person in 2022. We remain incredibly excited about the future of E3 and look forward to announcing more details soon.” VentureBeat E3 was virtual last year too and they’re taking no chances with Omicron causing enormous spikes in cases everywhere. Contrast this with CES and their insistence that they conduct an in-person event in…

A Rival Ecosystem

When Apple rolls out new products or services, the hook is their ecosystem. People can make fun of “it just works” when things don’t work. However, many ways Apple devices and services have an interplay between them is a huge benefit. Airdrop for starters is amazing. Airplay is another no-hassle way to sling content from one device to another. Even AirPods are part of it with a single-pairing that carries to all your other devices. At CES, Google has unveiled their plans to develop their own ecosystem. The company announced several new features that will be available in 2022: Coming…