Enlarge (credit: Apple) In a post to its portal for developers, Apple has outlined a number of new changes to its App Store Review Guidelines—including the requirement that developers request user opt-in to track users with IDFA (ID for advertisers) device identifiers. That specific change was expected soon; Apple announced that it will come with […]
Enlarge / What a lovely little green robot! Have we met before? (credit: Aurich Lawson) Huawei is China’s—and formerly the world’s—largest smartphone vendor, and over the past 18 months, it learned an important lesson: the company can’t rely on the US supply chain. In 2019, the US government banned US exports to Huawei, which cut the company […]
Enlarge / Why convert Flash upload forms to Javascript, when you could just contract a couple of Russian dudes to build a custom browser with deprecated, unsafe plugins? (credit: Aurich Lawson) The South African Revenue Service ran into a big problem this month: Adobe Flash stopped working on January 12, 2021, and the agency (still) […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) Network security provider SonicWall said on Monday that hackers are exploiting a critical zeroday vulnerability in one of the firewalls it sells. The security flaw resides in the Secure Mobile Access 100 series, SonicWall said in an advisory updated on Monday. The vulnerability, which affects SMA 100 firmware versions 10.x, isn’t […]
Enlarge / The update prompt for macOS Big Sur 11.2. (credit: Samuel Axon) Today, Apple pushed out a small update to its macOS 11 Big Sur operating system for supported Mac laptops and desktops. Labeled Big Sur 11.2, the update “improves Bluetooth reliability” and fixes a number of bugs. Those bugs include one widely reported […]
Enlarge / Circuit board with speed motion and light. (credit: Getty Images) Researchers have uncovered a software supply-chain attack that is being used to install surveillance malware on the computers of online gamers. The unknown attackers are targeting select users of NoxPlayer, a software package that emulates the Android operating system on PCs and Macs. […]
Enlarge / The two messages Facebook users will see in this test. On the left, Facebook’s prompt, and on the right, the one required by Apple. (credit: CNBC) Today, Facebook began testing prompts to iPhone and iPad users championing the importance of being tracked by the social network for the benefit of small businesses that […]
Enlarge (credit: Pavlo Gonchar / Getty Images) One of the Trump administration’s last acts in mid-January was to declare Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi a “Communist Chinese military company.” The ruling from the Department of Defense (which is different from the Department of Commerce’s export ban against Huawei) bans US citizens from holding Xiaomi stock or other investments […]
Enlarge (credit: Innocenti | Getty Images) Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that was wrongfooted by retail traders who drove up shares in GameStop and other companies it had bet against, lost 53 percent in January, according to people familiar with the firm’s results. The New York-based hedge fund sustained a $4.5 billion fall in its […]
Enlarge The latest app to catch an illogical ban from the Google Play Store is Element, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging client for the federated Matrix chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban which Element said “is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a […]