Friday, April 01, 2016
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Feds have asked Google for help breaking into phones, too - CNET
A host of technology giants, including Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google filed a friend-of-the-court brief, also known as an amicus, earlier this month throwing their support behind Apple.
Until now, Google's dealings with the government over smartphone data have been out of the spotlight. It's unclear how many times each company complied with the requests.
"We carefully scrutinize subpoenas and court orders to make sure they meet both the letter and spirit of the law," a Google spokesperson said. "However, we've never received an All Writs Act order like the one Apple recently fought that demands we build new tools that actively compromise our products' security. As our amicus shows, we would strongly object to such an order."
Feds have asked Google for help breaking into phones, too - CNET
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
The Acer Chromebase 24 Is A Killer Chrome OS PC
The Acer Chromebase 24 sports a vivid 23.8-inch IPS display pushing a roomy resolution of 1920×1080 (known as FHD in abbreviation speak). A speaker grill sits beneath the screen (which will also be available with an optional 10-point multi-touch display).
The model will be available in a range of configurations, with a range of Intel Core processors promised. Yup, the low-power slow-poke Intel Celerons used previously give way to proper desktop processors.
A sleek chassis houses both the screen and system innards, while the switch to a traditional monitor stand enables the screen to be repositioned between 5 and 30 degrees.
The Acer Chromebase 24 Is A Killer Chrome OS PC
Apple could learn how the feds unlocked an iPhone - CNET
Apple wants to know how the FBI decrypted an encrypted iPhone. But will the feds be forced to talk?
On Monday, the US Department of Justicedropped its demand that Apple help it unlock an iPhone 5Cused by Syed Farook in December's terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. That's because the FBI succeeded in unlocking the phone with the help of an unknown third party.
Apple could learn how the feds unlocked an iPhone - CNET
Lessons from Apple vs. the F.B.I. - The New Yorker
"It now appears as though the F.B.I. seized on the San Bernardino case as an opportunity to pursue a policy agenda that it has had for years, and that it oversold its case. The agency said that it was unable to unlock the iPhone 5C without Apple’s assistance. But as Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out in a blog post published on March 7th, this claim didn’t ring entirely true. In his piece, which included pictures of an iPhone 5C’s circuit board, Gillmor described how investigators could work around the auto-erase feature by removing the device’s NAND flash memory and backing it up, then trying every conceivable four-digit passcode combination. “If the FBI doesn’t have the equipment or expertise to do this, they can hire any one of dozens of data recovery firms that specialize in information extraction from digital devices,” he wrote. It’s not known for certain if the F.B.I. used the method that Gillmor recommended to get into Farook’s phone. But the post suggested that the Bureau hadn’t exhausted all of the technological possibilities for accessing the data. This may damage its credibility if it gets into a similar legal dispute in the future."
Lessons from Apple vs. the F.B.I. - The New Yorker
Lessons from Apple vs. the F.B.I. - The New Yorker
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Google unveils Fiber Phone, a $10/month home phone service coming to all Fiber cities
"Fiber Phone includes unlimited local and nationwide calling (“nationwide” means U.S.-only because Google Fiber is still only available in one country), as well as “the same affordable rates as Google Voice for international calls.” You can keep your old phone number(or pick a new one), use call waiting, caller ID, and 911 services. Like Google Voice, Fiber Phone also transcribes your voice messages for you and sends them over as a text or email."
Google unveils Fiber Phone, a $10/month home phone service coming to all Fiber cities
Google Penetrated China's Firewall for 102 Minutes
Google Penetrated China's Firewall for 102 Minutes
"After parting ways with The People's Republic Of China a few years back, Google saw their services replaced by local elements such as Baidu and WeChat, even as their market share grew globally, for the most part. Although they recently began an initiative to get back in the good graces of the most populous nation in the world, their services are still mostly blocked by China's Golden Shield Project, also known as the Great Firewall. This means that any IP address in mainland China cannot access Google's services without going through a virtual private network. Between the hours of 11:30 PM Sunday night and 1:15 AM, Chinese local time, Google's newest servers' IP addresses weren't registered to the Great Firewall's databases. This meant that, for just over an hour and a half, everybody in China was able to access Google."
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Don't give a crap about VR? Here's why you should - CNET
Don't give a crap about VR? Here's why you should - CNET
"If your eyes glaze over and your senses go numb at the mere mention of virtual reality, this is a message for you. Because I think you'll come around, and you'll thank me when you're prepared for the rush of VR experiences to come. Maybe not today, but in the next couple of years when it becomes part of your everyday life.
That's because virtual reality is one of those things that really hits home when you've actually tried it for yourself. Suddenly, all the videos of people riding a VR roller coaster and gushing after they'vetried VR for the first time make a whole lot of sense. You get to be part of the club."
'Burner' phones could be made illegal under US law that would require personal details of anyone buying a new handset | News | Lifestyle | The Independent
"Burner phones might be about to be banned in the US.
A Congresswoman has proposed that everyone buying a phone in the country would have to register with personal ID, to stop criminal activities being planned with handsets that can be bought anonymously and then thrown away.
Forcing shops to require customers to give over identification when buying cheap phones or pre-paid SIMs could be one of the most important ways that terrorists are able to communicate, according to California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who proposed the bill.
"Burner phones might be about to be banned in the US.
A Congresswoman has proposed that everyone buying a phone in the country would have to register with personal ID, to stop criminal activities being planned with handsets that can be bought anonymously and then thrown away.
Forcing shops to require customers to give over identification when buying cheap phones or pre-paid SIMs could be one of the most important ways that terrorists are able to communicate, according to California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who proposed the bill."
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
How the hell could the FBI hack into that iPhone? - CNET
"Harry Potter spoke Parseltongue to get into the Chamber of Secrets. The FBI would have to resort to a less magical (and a lot more tedious) solution to getting into the iPhone.
How the hell could the FBI hack into that iPhone? - CNET
It's called NAND mirroring, and it requires copying part of the iPhone's memory. Right now, the iPhone will wipe itself clean after 10 wrong passcodes. But with a copy of the phone's flash memory, the FBI can just keep restoring the data.
"It can then retry indefinitely," wrote ACLU technology fellow Daniel Kahn Gillmor.
Gillmor wrote about NAND mirroring earlier this month, but that's when the FBI was publicly focused on forcing Apple to write a new version of the phone's operating system that would let it try unlimited passwords. Now Gillmor's theory is looking like the FBI's best bet. It wouldn't be as fast as a simple "brute force" effort password guessing, but it wouldn't require Apple's help."
How the hell could the FBI hack into that iPhone? - CNET
Monday, March 21, 2016
The Justice Department Backs Down - NYTimes: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone
NYTimes: U.S. Says It May Not Need Apple’s Help to Unlock iPhone
"RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The Justice Department said on Monday that it might no longer need Apple’s assistance to help open an iPhone used by a gunman in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., mass shooting, leading to a postponement of a key hearing over the issue and potentially sidestepping what has become a bitter clash with the world’s most valuable company.
The dramatic turn of events came after the Justice Department said in a new court filing that as of Sunday, an outside party had demonstrated a way for the F.B.I. to possibly unlock the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino attackers. The hearing in the contentious case — Apple has loudly opposed opening up the iPhone, citing privacy concerns and igniting a heated debate with the government — was originally scheduled for Tuesday."
One year later, Apple's 12-inch MacBook has become my favorite laptop
Sarah Tew / CNET
"It's been nearly one full year since I reviewed Apple's 12-inch MacBook. That slim, light system was not only Apple's only completely new laptop design since the 2012 MacBook Pro, but also among its most controversial.
The knocks against this system -- an odd-man-out, not part of either the Air or Pro MacBook lines -- were numerous. Its screen was too small; the keyboard too shallow; not enough ports; no MagSafe power connection; underpowered, even compared to the base MacBook Air; and battery life that didn't measure up to the MacBook standard.
All legitimate concerns, and ones that I shared both when the 12-inch MacBook was announced in March of 2015, and when I got my hands on the final product several weeks later in early April. In my original review of the $1,299 MacBook (£1,049 or AU$1,799), I was impressed with its overall design, the excellent high-res display, and extreme portability, but cautioned that it wasn't the laptop for everybody, or for all-day work. The single USB-C port could lock out most of your accessories (without a pricey adaptor) and the performance and battery life from the first-gen Intel Core M processor was not on par with mainstream Core i5 laptops that cost hundreds less."
One year later, Apple's 12-inch MacBook has become my favorite laptopSunday, March 20, 2016
Sometimes A Chromebook Is Better
"A few days later, we had her up and running with Chrome OS and a handful of extensions as well as a short explainer on Google Drive, the cloud and what she could and couldn't do. She loves her new laptop, because it does everything she wants it to do without any fussing.
And that's the important thing — Chrome OS can do everything she needs a laptop to do. She's not writing software or playing immersive 3D games. She doesn't need Photoshop — Google Photos lets her look at her pictures and share them. All her passwords are safely stored in her personal cloud (as safe as a cloud can be, anyway) and her laptop remembers who she is and signs her in when she wants to do some online shopping or visit her bank's website as long as she's signed in with her Google account."
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