Recent Articles

Bare Feats:

> The iPad Air is truly twice as fast as the iPad 4 running the three CPU crunch tests and two GPU intensive tests above. BrowserMark was the only exception.

Julian Borger:
> The German, French, Spanish and Swedish intelligence services have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years in close partnership with Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency.

And, my favorite bit:

> The German, French and Spanish governments have reacted angrily to reports based on National Security Agency (NSA) files leaked by Snowden since June, revealing the interception of communications by tens of millions of their citizens each month. US intelligence officials have insisted the mass monitoring was carried out by the security agencies in the countries involved and shared with the US.

Gabe Weatherhead:

> This is the bag you finish with, not the bag you start with.

Oh, and that’s 8lbs *empty*.

[Kerry Dawson](http://dailymacview.com/2013/11/02/twenty-four-hours-with-the-ipad-air/) on the iPad Air:

> It is probably one of the most exciting devices to have emerged from Apple for a while. Although the iPad Air has predecessors and nobody can say it doesn’t have a great lineage to call its own, it stands unique in its line.

*Agreed.*

[Jim Dalrymple](lhttp://www.loopinsight.com/2013/10/31/j-d-power-tablet-numbers-dont-add-up/):

> So cost is the lowest percentage of importance. Apple scored higher in every category, except price which is ranked the lowest by percentage, but yet Samsung wins?

Matt Drance on the patent filings against Google:

> If you think that sounds like nearly 95% of Google’s revenue, you’re not alone. This sole patent feels like enough motivation for Google to have won this auction at all costs. Not only did Google not win, it made joke bids. What were they thinking?

Joe Mullin:
> The complaint tries to use the fact that Google bid for the patents as an extra point against the search giant. “Google subsequently increased its bid multiple times, ultimately bidding as high as $4.4 billion,” write Rockstar’s lawyers. “That price was insufficient to win the auction, as a group led by the current shareholders of Rockstar purchased the portfolio for $4.5 billion. Despite losing in its attempt to acquire the patents-in-suit at auction, Google has infringed and continues to infringe the patents-in-suit.”

This is going to get nasty. Can’t wait.

I’ve been using BTSync for a while now and it is fantastic. I have a Mac mini server to sync with, but if you don’t then this solution from Shane Reustle looks like a great solution. I’d love it if the hard drive could be encrypted too — I am sure it is possible.

Bruce Schneier:

> Although the Washington Post article specifically talks about Google and Yahoo, you have to assume that all the other major — and many of the minor — cloud services are compromised this same way. That means Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Badoo, Dropbox, and on and on and on.

You heard you can now use your iPad during all phases of the flight, right? Well don’t get too excited:

> Can I use my e-book reader/tablet/cell phone throughout my flight now?
> Once your airline has shown the FAA its airplanes can safely handle radio interference from portable electronics, they can let you use your devices in airplane mode only most of the time. At certain times — for example, a landing in reduced visibility — the Captain may tell passengers to turn off their devices to make absolutely sure they don’t interfere with onboard communications and navigation equipment.

So the FAA has approved it, but now the airlines themselves have to send data to the FAA to allow passengers to use these devices. That shouldn’t take *any* time.

Adam L. Penenberg:

> The newly updated OSX malware, which another member of the team, digital forensics specialist Josh Grunzweig coded, was dropped on to her machine. SpiderLabs now had complete access to her laptop whenever it was on the Internet.

> On Charlotte’s machine were our family’s W2s, which included our social security numbers as well as our income and all of our deductions, paperwork and copies of credit card and banking statements. They also came upon a password to our home router. More frightening, they discovered her password and log in to our Chase online banking account.

> To bring the world our unique end-to-end encrypted protocol and architecture that is the ‘next-generation’ of private and secure email. As founding partners of The Dark Mail Alliance, both Silent Circle and Lavabit will work to bring other members into the alliance, assist them in implementing the new protocol and jointly work to proliferate the worlds first end-to-end encrypted ‘Email 3.0’ throughout the world’s email providers. Our goal is to open source the protocol and architecture and help others implement this new technology to address privacy concerns against surveillance and back door threats of any kind.

Sarah Kessler:

> Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar. For one, they probably think they’re doing you a favor when they invite you to a party using Evite, add you to LinkedIn or Facebook, or keep your information in a contact book that they sync with their computer.
> But from your perspective, as someone trying to remain as untraceable as possible, they are selling you out. “Basically what they’ve done is uploaded all of my contact information and connected it to them,” Sell says.

Proof that I am not nearly paranoid enough.

New Snowden documents are out, and show how the NSA captures data traveling between Yahoo and Google servers, thus giving the NSA access to a large swath of data. Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani for The Washington Post:

> In an NSA presentation slide on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” however, a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where their data resides. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is “added and removed here!” The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security.
> Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said.

The Google engineer reactions are great. I think companies like Google have long suspected that these things *could* happen, but now that they know it will be interesting to see how they combat it. And I think they must combat it to stay competitive.