Category: Links

Natasha Lomas:

“Imagine you go to an investment bank for a job interview — what will you think if the person who’s interviewing you knows that you also make the same interview at a competitors’ bank a few streets away?” he said.
“That’s a bit creepy and with this technology… developed [by Kismet creator Mike Kershaw] specially for the Blackphone it takes control of the Wi-Fi chip, it learns where your safe locations are — home and work normally — and when you leave your home.. if you’re not in a safe environment it will switch the Wi-Fi off.”

I’d love to get my hands on this phone to check it out. But the above strikes me as odd, why not automatically flip on the VPN that is bundled, once the phone detects it is not on a “trusted” network? That seems like the smarter move.

I also don’t like that the local data isn’t encrypted by default — yes it is nice to give users options, but why bother on a phone this privacy focused? That seems like an odd choice.

Darrell Etherington:

It’s not yet clear exactly how Samsung stores and transmits its own fingerprint information to apps and services, but even opening up use of the scanner itself and fingerprint activity to third-party devs already marks a considerable departure from Apple’s approach. Samsung already announced a partnership with PayPal to allow fingerprints to enable payment verification for making purchases, and even that offers a fundamentally different philosophical take on how to use biometric information.

This is very interesting. On the one hand, Samsung has addressed the biggest complaint about Apple’s Touch ID: that developers can’t use it for app security. That’s great and that’s where I hope Apple goes (as I have said before).

On the other hand Samsung seems to be completely ignoring the biggest concern about Touch ID: security. Senator Al Franken wrote Apple concerned about the security of the system, and yet Samsung releases bullet point info that is essentially meaningless and the response has been — well — crickets. This is very bad.

Tiffany Bridge:

No matter what they do (delete your data, privacy breach, overcharging, whatever), you don’t get to sue. Instead, THEY get to choose the arbitrator according to whatever criteria they want, and thus any dispute is decided by someone they’re paying.

That’s some bullshit. If you can, go for OwnCloud, BitTorrent Sync, or a File Transporter (in that order).

This is a fascinating idea from Chee and Amtrak — using the service as a residence while you write. I love the idea. ((I could see Patrick Rhone sitting there, quietly writing in his journal, with a soft smirk on his chin.))

Marco Arment:

Had Google just produced Glass, and harm resulted from misuse outside of their control, it wouldn’t be reasonable to ascribe much blame to them. But to actively fight against clear, valid safety concerns makes them an accomplice — morally, if not legally.

I actually hadn’t thought about what Google was really doing until I read this bit from Marco. When it comes right down to it, there’s little difference between having a cell phone mounted in front of your eye, and Google Glass when you are driving. Both will be equally dangerous — so if you think Google Glass should be allowed, you too should be fine with people texting while they drive.

William Waldon:

The construction of the luna ring would more than likely take place in multiple phases, possibly through 2 generations. The first step is to set up an infrastructure to get the materials needed for the project into space which would include a space port that could robotically build ships in low Earth orbit.

It sounds so crazy futuristic, but at the same time it’s pretty amazing that something like this hasn’t been attempted.

Sounds better than heating stuff up as hot as the Sun… On Earth.

Since I am posting about a lot of secure messaging systems, TextSecure has a new version out (I’m not sure if it is out for iOS yet), but this feature looks great:

The new TextSecure also introduces support for private group chat. Users can now create groups with a title and avatar icon, add their friends, join or leave groups, and exchange messages/media, all with the same end-to-end encryption properties pairwise TextSecure chats provide.

In fact, TextSecure is probably the most robust and full featured. Glad there are so many options.

I guess Telegram might be more secure than their silly App Store description would lead one to believe.

Andrew Kim on the iPod mini:

This is it. The greatest thing mankind has ever made.

Great read, this is the one iPod I never owned.

Yasha Levine takes Whatsapp's security claims to task:

WhatsApp might have played fast and loose with the security of its hundreds of millions of users up to now, but that’s about to change. After all, if there’s one company WhatsApp users can trust to safeguard their privacy, surely that company is… uh… Facebook.

I don't think I will ever get the appeal of Whatsapp, but man does it have a shit privacy record. It does seem though that users are paying attention to security in some way. Over the past week an app called Telegram Messenger has passed Whatsapp in the free rankings, and it boasts better security than Whatsapp.

Humorously, under 'security', the app just assures you it is secure. So, yeah.

On the paid side an app called Threema has been sliding up the charts. For $1.99 it claims to offer true end to end encryption on messaging, but to be fair Apple's native iMessage offers end to end encryption too. The big question is where, who, and how the encryption keys are stored. For its part Threema is based in Switzerland, who knows if that helps anything.

It's encouraging that users seems to be paying attention to more secure messaging platforms, but crazy that so many large news outlets billed Whatsapp as secure, ignoring the evidence to the contrary.

Dan Bailey, in his XT-1 commentary:

Remember, when you’re shooting JPEG, you’re basically taking the 4,056 levels of color and brightness information that are captured by the sensor and letting the camera’s image processor compress it into an 8-bit file that only contains 256 levels of color and brightness information.

Wow.

The best article I found on the Netflix-Comcast agreement. It’s troubling, and one area where I actually think Google can help by way of Google Fiber. Make something like Google Fiber popular enough, and open, and you start to take away the power from the idiots running Comcast/Verizon, et al.

Interesting new security minded cell phone from (in part) the Silent Circle team. Seems like a good deal, but I am far more interested in how much more annoying it is to use than an iPhone.

The crux of most privacy things, is that they are substantially more annoying to use than the non-privacy minded things — which in turn is why few use them.

Linda Poon:

Researchers at Northwestern University say that for people 60 and older, each additional hour a day spent sitting increases the risk of becoming physically disabled by about 50 percent — no matter how much exercise they get.

I am now wondering how long it is before we see more of those articulating wheelchairs to help people who have no choice but to sit.

James Brandon:

If you stand 4 feet from your subject and point the camera up at the subjects face, then you are no longer 4 feet away from what you’re focusing on. If the length from your camera to your subjects chest is 4 feet and the length from your subjects chest to their eye is 2 feet, then the length from your subjects eye to your camera is 4.5 feet. Are you getting this!? That means that if you focus on your subjects eye, move the camera down to their chest to recompose, then your focal plane is now half a foot behind your subject!

Makes perfect sense, so get used to moving your focus points on your camera.