Archive for December 20, 2017

Toronto Based InstaRyde is Giving Away 2500 Rides for 99c for Boxing Day

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

Toronto based rideshare InstaRyde has just announced some incredible gifts for Torontonians and for their drivers this holiday season.

Boxing Day: InstaRyde will be giving away the first 2500 rides anywhere in the GTA for only 99cents, starting at 7am December 26th through 11pm in their “Ryde” category (4 people max). Riders will be charged and then reimbursed less the 99cents.

New Year’s: InstaRyde is committed to the safety of our city and everyone in it.  That’s why starting at 4pm on December 31st they will be giving away 5000 free rides anywhere in the downtown core until January 1st at 8am. Riders must use the “Ryde” category (4 people max) and will be charged the full amount and then reimbursed. The downtown core goes from Bloor Street to the Gardiner Expressway, and River Street to Dufferin Street.

New Driver Benefits:

  • InstaRyde pays for driver’s car payments! InstaRyde has just announced they will take care of their driver’s car payments if they only drive with InstaRyde, are committed for one month entirely, work 40hrs minimum per week and have a 90% ride acceptance rate. *Terms and conditions apply.
  • Drivers get guaranteed earnings for hours worked based off maintaining an acceptance ratio of 90% * Terms and conditions apply:
    • 20hrs = $500
    • 40hrs = $1000
    • 60hrs = $1500
  • Drivers get $100 for each driver referral after 50 trips in 30 days from date of approval.
  • Drivers get access to a fuel savings program with Shell.
  • More money goes to the drivers. InstaRyde takes a flat rate of 99c from the drivers’ share for every ride.

Rider Benefits:

  • Riders pay less. Rides cost average about 20% less than other ridesharing services on average.
  • No surge pricing!
  • Made in Toronto, for Toronto. The InstaRyde team is from Toronto. They love our city, know it well and have taken the time to listen to the riders and drivers needs and concerns when creating InstaRyde. They celebrate inclusivity, diversity and changing the ridesharing experience for the better.
  • Rider incentives. InstaRyde has a great incentives programme that ups the rewards the more you ride.

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Getting a phone for Christmas? Gift yourself an extra $75 Via Flipsy

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

Flipsy.com’s mission is to help people get more money for their used phones! Millions of people will be selling their used phones over the next three weeks, but most will get less money than they could due to post-holiday price drops. The good news is they can maximize their payouts with price locks offered by online buyback stores.

In fact, the same phone sold on the same day could sell for $225 without price locks, but $300 with price locks — a $75 difference. 

Whether they know they’re getting new phones or they’re wishful thinkers, people can do themselves a favor by taking advantage of price locks now – before Christmas.

This is important because values for used phones typically drop anywhere between 5 and 40 percent after the holidays, when the market is flooded with used phones. For flagship smartphones like the iPhone, prices can drop $75 or more.

Price locks:

  • Let people beat the price drops by locking in prices now, when values are high; then sell later, after they’ve received and set up their new phones
  • Do not obligate people to sell their phones; they simply lock in prices in case they decide to sell, up to 30 days later
  • Do not cost anything – they’re free, and it only takes a few minutes to set one up

Flipsy.com makes it easy to cash in on price locks. Our free service instantly compares the highest-paying buyback offers and displays which stores offer price locks, and for how long. Best of all, online stores pay an average of 30 percent more than carriers – and they pay in cash instead of store credit.

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Apple Addresses Geekbench Claims Of Them Slowing Down iPhones

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

Earlier today I posted a story about a report from Geekbench showing evidence that Apple was slowing down iPhones via software as the device ages. At the time I said this:

Assuming that this is accurate, this is craptastic. Users expect their shiny iPhone to run at full power all the time. But if it can’t, the phone has to tell the user that it’s scaling back the performance to save battery life or whatever other reason it needs to scale back performance. By not telling the user that this is happening really makes Apple look like they’re doing something underhanded. Now to be clear, I don’t know if they are or not. But they need to explain this right the hell now. If they don’t, Apple’s bad year where the “it just works” mantra went out the window will simply get worse and carry on into 2018.

Now Apple has said something via a statement to TechCrunch:

Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices. Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components. 

Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.

So in short, Apple says it’s a feature and not an evil plot to get you to buy a new iPhone. I am not sure that this will put this thing to bed. But Apple is hoping that it does. Let’s see how that plays out.

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Alteryx Data Found On Amazon S3 Bucket Unsecured…. Data On 123 Million US Households Exposed

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

The latest company to be a victim of not properly securing customer data is Alteryx which is an analytics company. A database containing information on more than 123 million American households was sitting unsecured on the internet in an Amazon S3 bucket. Security company UpGuard made the discovery in October.

#Fail

The data set included 248 different data fields covering a wide variety of specific personal information, including address, age, gender, education, occupation and marital status. Other fields included mortgage and financial information, phone numbers and the number of children in the household. If you wanted to get some data to steal an identity or two, this is a great place to start.

#EpicFail

But it gets worse. The database contained data sets belonging to Alteryx partner Experian which is a consumer credit reporting agency that competes with now famous for being pwned Equifax. It also contained data from the US Census Bureau. Alteryx apparently purchased the data from Experian’s ConsumerView marketing database, a product sold to other companies that contains a combination of publicly available information and more personal data.

#CueTheCongressionalHearing

You have to wonder what it will take for companies to properly secure customer data. Stuff like this is completely unacceptable and clearly there is a need for swift and severe punishments for this level of stupidity. Otherwise the pwnage and leaks will continue and we will all suffer as a result.

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2017’s List Of Worst Passwords Released….. No Wonder People Get Pwned

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

Splash Data has come out with the list of 100 worst passwords for 2017 and it illustrates while pwnage is epic at the moment. The worst password is “123456” along with “password” being next on the list, followed by “12345678”. Of note, there’s also “Starwars” and a bunch of swear words on this list as well.

Folks, if you use any password on this list, you deserve to get pwned and I will have no sympathy for you. However, if you want to make yourself secure, here’s some tips from Intel Security on how to create a strong password. I suggest you follow their advice as you can bet that miscreants will be pwning people right left and center by trying passwords that are on this list. If they’re aren’t already.

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Apple Called Out By Geekbench Over Slowing Down iPhones

Posted in Commentary with tags on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

It’s been a bit of an urban legend that Apple deliberately slows down iPhones so that you’ve be more likely to buy one. Thanks to Geekbench, there may, and I say MAY be proof that this may not be an urban legend.

Geekbench benchmarked the performance of iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 devices running on different versions of iOS to see how the kernel density changes as the operating system is updated. What they found is that the iPhone 6’s score for iOS 10.2.0 appears ‘unimodal’. Meaning that it doesn’t change in performance. However when it studied the iPhone 6 running iOS 10.2.1, the phone’s performance peaked at the average score and several other peaks around some of the lower scores. It reported that there was even more of a disparity when the iPhone 6 was tested on the latest version of iOS 11.2.0. For the iPhone 7, the scores were pretty much identical across iOS 10.2.0, iOS 10.2.1, and iOS 11.1.2. However, when using iOS 11.2.0, the graph showed more peaks again, suggesting the performance is impacted as the device ages.

Here’s what Geekbench says is the reason behind this:

First, it appears the problem is widespread, and will only get worse as phones (and their batteries) continue to age. See, for example, the difference between the distribution of iPhone 6s scores between 10.2.1 and 11.2.0.

Second, the problem is due, in part, to a change in iOS. The difference between 10.2.0 and 10.2.1 is too abrupt to be just a function of battery condition. I believe (as do others) that Apple introduced a change to limit performance when battery condition decreases past a certain point. Why did Apple do this? kadupse on Reddit offers the following explanation:

Many iPhone 6s devices were shutting down unexpectedly, even after the battery replacement program (Which many people weren’t entitled to use). Because degraded batteries last much less and end up with a lower voltage Apple’s solution was to scale down CPU performance, it doesn’t solve anything and is a bad experience… but it’s better than having your device shutdown at 40% when you need it the most.

Assuming that this is accurate, this is craptastic. Users expect their shiny iPhone to run at full power all the time. But if it can’t, the phone has to tell the user that it’s scaling back the performance to save battery life or whatever other reason it needs to scale back performance. By not telling the user that this is happening really makes Apple look like they’re doing something underhanded. Now to be clear, I don’t know if they are or not. But they need to explain this right the hell now. If they don’t, Apple’s bad year where the “it just works” mantra went out the window will simply get worse and carry on into 2018.

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US Holds North Korea Responsible For WannaCry

Posted in Commentary with tags , on December 20, 2017 by itnerd

You might recall that there was an epic cyberattack where a piece of ransomware pretty much pwned the entire planet including the UK’s National Health Service. Well, that was WannaCry and as far as the US is concerned, North Korea is behind it:

“The [WannaCry] attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible,” Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s homeland security adviser, said in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. “We do not make this allegation lightly. It is based on evidence. We are not alone with our findings, either.”

At the White House on Tuesday, Bossert called the WannaCry attack “a defining moment,” saying it affected individuals, businesses and governments worldwide, and put money as well as lives at risk.

“This was a reckless attack and it was meant to cause havoc and destruction,” he said at a news conference. Drawing a connection between North Korea’s alleged cyber activities and its development of nuclear weapons, he added, “I think, at this point, North Korea has demonstrated that they want to hold the entire world at risk, whether it be through its nuclear program or cyberattacks.”

Assuming that the North Koreans are behind it, I am not sure that they care that they’ve been called out by the US. After all, it’s not as if these two are on great terms at present. I am also dubious that this will alter their behavior if they are the ones behind it. So other than grabbing some headlines, I am not sure what this declaration really accomplishes other than to state what we already know. Which is that North Korea and those who act on their behalf do this sort of thing.

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