Archive for March, 2018

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PaMu: Wireless & Water Resistant Earbuds For $29

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 29, 2018 by itnerd

PaMu is the closest thing to what people have always wanted in a sports earphone – a pair of lightweight and compact earbuds that stay connected, stay in, and sound amazing. You can call it a technology-packed solution!

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  • Auto-Pairing simply removes these earbuds from the charger and connects them with your smartphone and you are ready to go in just seconds.
  • Intuitive Touch Control with Microphone – play music and take calls, leaving your smartphone in your pocket.
  • Ergonomic Design – stay comfortable while knowing they will never fall out.
  • Waterproof – designed to keep rain and moisture out to keep you focused on your activities.
  • Starts at only $29 (Retail starting at $109) for a limited time and limited quantity!

Get yours here.

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Boeing Pwned By WannaCry Ransomware

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 29, 2018 by itnerd

Jet maker Boeing has been hit by the WannaCry ransomware according to The Seattle Times. This is the same ransomware that pwned the NHS in UK among other places on Earth last May:

Boeing was hit Wednesday by the WannaCry computer virus, raising fears within the company that it could cripple some vital airplane production equipment. Mike VanderWel, chief engineer at Boeing Commercial Airplane production engineering, sent out an alarming memo calling for “All hands on deck.” “It is metastasizing rapidly out of North Charleston and I just heard 777 (automated spar assembly tools) may have gone down,” VanderWel wrote, adding that he’s concerned the virus will hit equipment used in functional tests of airplanes ready to roll out and potentially “spread to airplane software.” Indicating widespread alarm within the company at the potential impact, VanderWel said the attack required “a battery-like response,” a reference to the 787 in-flight battery fires in 2013 that grounded the world’s fleet of Dreamliners and led to an extraordinary three-month-long engineering effort to find a fix.

My first thought upon reading this is if their infrastructure is fully patched as having up to date patching is how this ransomware spreads. If they didn’t up their patching game given the events of a year ago, then that’s a serious problem. My other thought is if this is a new variant of this ransomware. It isn’t clear from the story but if that’s the case, then that’s a huge problem. Either way, Boeing doesn’t look good at the moment because of this and I would hate to be the guy who runs IT over there.

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#Fail: Windows 7 Meltdown Patches From January and February Made PCs MORE Insecure

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 29, 2018 by itnerd

Well this isn’t good. Ulf Frisk who is the guy that highlighted that Apple had some really huge security holes in their FileVault encryption is going public with the fact that Microsoft’s Meltdown fixes for Windows 7 made PCs more insecure as opposed to less insecure:

We’re told Redmond’s early Meltdown fixes for 64-bit Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 left a crucial kernel memory table readable and writable for normal user processes. This, in turn, means any malware on those vulnerable machines, or any logged-in user, can manipulate the operating system’s memory map, gain administrator-level privileges, and extract and modify any information in RAM. The Meltdown chip-level bug allows malicious software, or unscrupulous logged-in users, on a modern Intel-powered machine to read passwords, personal information, and other secrets from protected kernel memory. But the security fixes from Microsoft for the bug, on Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, issued in January and February, ended up granting normal programs read and write access to all of physical memory.

Now if you’re running Windows 8 or 10, you’re not affected by this. But if you are running Windows 7, the March Patch Tuesday dump of fixes should address this. Thus if you haven’t updated your Windows 7 computer, you should do so ASAP. You can copy and past that advice for Windows Server 2008 R2 as well.

#Fail

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Mazda Canada To Bring Apple CarPlay And Android Auto To Owners Of Existing Vehicles This Fall (?)

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 29, 2018 by itnerd

The New York International Auto Show is currently going on this week and my inbox is being flooded with press releases from many car manufacturers. One that caught my attention was this one from Mazda Canada. Besides announcing a refreshed version of their CX-3 crossover, there was the announcement that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were going to start showing up in their vehicles starting with the 2019 CX‑9. But there was also this:

In Canada, these mobile device connectivity technologies will first be offered in the 2019 CX‑9 launching this summer, and then rolled out across the entire model line-up thereafter. In addition, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will be available as a Genuine Mazda Accessory retrofit for MAZDA CONNECT systems starting this fall.

So, the way I read this is that if you own an existing Mazda vehicle and you want Android Auto or Apple CarPlay in it, you have to get it from your dealer. Though I suppose it could also mean that it could be obtained in some other way from Mazda Canada directly. Such as a download for example. In hopes of clearing this up, I am reaching out to my contact in Mazda Canada to see if there are additional details. Seeing as this is a holiday weekend in Canada, I don’t expect feedback until next week at the earliest. Thus you might want to bookmark this page for an update.

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Facebook Outlines Beefed Up Privacy Tools So You Won’t #DeleteFacebook

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 28, 2018 by itnerd

Facebook is clearly still feeling the heat because they can’t or won’t keep users data safe. To try and crank down the heat, they’ve announced that they’ve beefed up their privacy tools:

Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So in addition to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.

Now if you’re a Facebook user, you should go through this stuff to make sure your privacy is on point. Really, you should do this. Assuming that you’re not about to join the #DeleteFacebook camp of course. In the end, I am not sure if this helps as Facebook has been exposed as a company who doesn’t care about your privacy and about securing your personal data unless it’s forced to as it would affect their profitability if they actually took stuff like this seriously. Thus if it were me and I had the choice of running through their beefed up privacy tools, or joining the #DeleteFacebook crowd, I’d choose the latter.

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Oh Noes! New Intel CPU Flaw Discovered! Is It A Big Deal?

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 28, 2018 by itnerd

Here we go again.

Researchers have found a new CPU flaw that is similar to the Spectre CPU flaw. This one is called BranchScope and was found by researchers from the College of William and Mary, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California Riverside and Binghamton University.  A report on the flaw indicates that the attack uses some of the same predictive execution vulnerabilities as Spectre, exploiting the branch predictors of chips by using them to inadvertently leak sensitive information.

The folks at Ars Technica got this comment from Intel on this new CPU flaw:

We have been working with these researchers and we have determined the method they describe is similar to previously known side channel exploits. We anticipate that existing software mitigations for previously known side channel exploits, such as the use of side channel resistant cryptography, will be similarly effective against the method described in this paper. We believe close partnership with the research community is one of the best ways to protect customers and their data, and we are appreciative of the work from these researchers.

In other words, nothing to see here, move along. We’ll find out if there’s nothing to see here as now that this is public, hackers will be looking at this to see if they can utilize it to pwn computes all over hell’s half acre.

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Technology Industry’s Impact Felt in US Economic Growth, Workforce Gains

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 27, 2018 by itnerd

Tech employment in the United States expanded by nearly 200,000 jobs in 2017, to an estimated 11.5 million workers; and at $1.6 trillion, the tech sector is one of the largest components of the nation’s economy, according to Cyberstates™ 2018, the definitive annual analysis of the nation’s industry published today by CompTIA, the world’s leading technology industry association.

The economic might of the tech industry is felt in nearly every state. The industry is a top-five economic contributor in 22 states; and in the top 10 of 42 states.

The outlook for technology employment points to a continuation of the growth trend, which has seen tech jobs increase by about 200,000 each year since 2010. Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate the base of tech occupations will increase by 626,000 jobs by 2026. When factoring in the need to replace retiring or career-change workers, the total potential tech workforce reaches  1.2 million through 2026.

Beyond the raw numbers of new jobs, many of these positions have salaries well above those in other industries. According to Cyberstates 2018, the average annual wage in the tech industry is $112,890; 107 percent higher than the average annual wage for all jobs ($54,420).

Among other key findings from Cyberstates 2018:

  • 38 states saw positive tech employment growth in 2017, slightly better than 2016, when 36 states experienced growth. The top five states for net job gains in 2017 were California (43,600), Texas (13,400), Michigan (13,200), Florida (12,000), and New York (10,400).
  • On a percentage change basis, the top five states for 2017 tech job growth were Utah (+ 3.6 percent), Michigan (+ 3.4 percent), North Carolina (+3.1 percent), Washington (+ 2.9), and Idaho (+ 2.8 percent).
  • At 10.6 percent, Massachusetts has the highest concentration of tech workers relative to its overall employment base. Following are Washington (9.9 percent), Virginia (9.9 percent), the District of Columbia (9.7 percent), and Colorado (9.7 percent).
  • Nationally, the composition of the tech sector workforce is 66 percent men and 34 percent women, unchanged from 2016. The District of Columbia (39.8 percent) has the highest concentration of women in its tech workforce, followed by South Dakota, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
  • The number of tech business establishments across the country grew for the sixth consecutive year, and now totals nearly 503,000 businesses.

Cyberstates 2018 (#cyberstates) is based on CompTIA’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, EMSI, Burning Glass Technologies Labor Insights, and other sources. Estimates for 2017 are subject to change as government data is revised and updated. The complete Cyberstates 2018 report, with complete national, state and metropolitan level data, is available at http://cyberstates.org/

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GoLookUp Provides Users With a Comprehensive Reverse Phone Search Service

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 27, 2018 by itnerd

Meeting new people is easier now more than ever, and many use dating apps, social media accounts and other online services to expand their social circle. The internet provides a great opportunity to meet people, but it can also hold threats in such encounters. Meeting people online and also in person can be a means for them to commit fraud or even hurt others for whatever reason it may be.

In order to prevent fraud, mental harm or even bodily harm, GoLookUp is providing users with an advanced Reverse Phone Lookup service that allows them to discover important information about others.

Providing Accurate Information Based on Phone Numbers

The only accurate information about people is found in public records held by different authorities across the United States. The public records include contact information, criminal records, mugshots, birth records, records about unclaimed money and much more, and people can access them after filing the proper forms.

In order to allow people to find accurate information about people, GoLookUp provides users with a reverse phone lookup for known and unknown numbers.

After users type in the phone number in question, the people search directory scans billions of public records and provides a detailed report about the person or even company behind the phone number. The report includes contact information, the origin of the phone number, the full name of the person calling, arrest records, sexual offences records and much more.

The people search directory essentially conducts a background check that lets users find out if the person who is calling them has a violent criminal past and whether they should avoid certain people.

Meeting people in the 21st century is easy, but there is no guarantee that they are telling the truth about themselves. In order to allow users to find accurate information about people or even companies whose number they have, GoLookUp has set up a reverse phone directory that scans public records and creates a report about them.

 

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Mozilla Releases Firefox Addon That Isolates Facebook From The Rest Of Firefox

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 27, 2018 by itnerd

Now this is something that a significant number of those who still use Facebook for whatever reason will use. A Firefox add-on that isolates the Facebook website and all its domains to a separate “container” has been released by Mozilla today. The add-on is named Facebook Container and it is meant to address Facebook’s more “sinister” data collection habits.

When you first use Facebook Container, it will zap any existing Facebook cookies and prompt you to log back into their Facebook. The add-on will then create a separate database that will keep all Facebook-related data, such as cookies, cache data, and more. If you go anywhere else other than Facebook, the normal Firefox database will be used. Thus Facebook has no clue what you’re doing.

This is a brilliant idea and hope that those behind Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari as well as other browsers are paying attention as this make Mozilla look like heroes at a time when we could use a hero to protect the world from the evils of Facebook.

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Apple Has Education Focused Event To Unveil New iPad And Other Education Focused Items

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 27, 2018 by itnerd

Apple held its first 2018 product launch event at Lane Tech College Prep School in Chicago. The location isn’t an accident as the event focused on education. Something that has traditionally been a focus for Apple in the past, but not so much in the last few years. Now there was no livestream of the event, though a video was promised after the event. But via some live blogging and tweeting, I was able to find out what Apple announced in almost real time:

  • A new 9.7-inch iPad with Touch ID was announced. And interestingly enough, it supports the Apple Pencil which is clearly aimed at the education market. Specs include 8-megapixel rear camera, FaceTime HD front camera, A10 Fusion chip, up to 10 hours of battery life, Touch ID, up to 300 Mbps LTE, GPS and Compass, Apple Pencil support, stereo speakers, accelerometer, and gyroscope. Oh yeah it weighs 1 pound. It’s priced at $329 USD for consumers, $299 USD for schools. So you get more power at the same price point as the previous iPad. The new 9.7-inch iPad is available today and ships later this week.
  • Apple is updating its iWork suite with new versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that support Apple Pencil. For example, you can use Apple Pencil to add drawings to reports in Pages or Keynote. This update is coming “soon.” And it will be preloaded on iPads free of charge.
  • GarageBand for iOS also getting updated with new sound packs for students. And there will be a new version of Clips as well.
  • Pages will also integrate a facility to make digital books for classrooms. Previously, teachers required a Mac with iBooks Author to do this. Now, it’ll be built into the Pages app. Book authors can include photos, videos, graphics from Apple Pencil and more. Book authoring can be created collaboratively as a group project. Teachers can annotate sent in documents to mark work.
  • Apple will now offer students 200GB of iCloud storage for free, up from 5GB previously.
  • To assist teachers in terms of better leveraging Apple tech, Apple debuted its Classroom app for Mac which will be available in beta this June. Apple also introduces Schoolwork, a new, free cloud-based app designed for assigning handouts and tracking student progress. Schoolwork will also be available in June. Apps integrate with it via Apple’s new ClassKit framework. Oh yeah, Apple also announced ClassKit which is part of iOS 11.3.
  • Swift Playgrounds is getting a new augmented reality module. Likely to fit in with Apple’s larger push into AR via ARKit.
  • Apple is putting together a brand new curriculum called “Everyone Can Create.” Everyone Can Create will be focused on four areas: music, video, photography, and drawing. Everyone Can Create is available for preview starting today. More content will be added to the curriculum this summer.

Now this is what was announced. There’s likely going to be other stuff that “pops up” today. Watch this post for updates. Particularly after 1PM EST today which is when Apple likes to release software updates. I’ll also update this post when the video becomes available for you to see.

UPDATE: The opening video that was used in today’s event is now posted:

UPDATE #2: Apple’s online store was down as usual during today’s event. But it’s come back up now.

UPDATE #3: A new video for the new iPad and Apple Pencil support has been posted:

UPDATE #4: The update to Garageband for iOS that was mentioned in the event is now available. The new GarageBand seems to have ARKit support if you have an iPhone X along with new sounds and effects.

UPDATE #5: Another new video has been posted. This time it’s about how Apple envisions homework.

UPDATE #6: It appears that Clips for iOS has been updated too with new fonts, colors, layouts, animated labels and stickers etc.

UPDATE #7: It seems that Apple will release updates to iWork on both macOS and iOS today based on this press release.

UPDATE #8: Updates to iWork on both macOS and iOS are now available.

UPDATE #9: The full video has now been posted on Apple’s website.

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