Month: September 2012

He-Said, She-Said ⇥ allthingsd.com

Yesterday, hackers claimed to have stolen over twelve million iOS device UDIDs from an FBI employee’s laptop. But now, the FBI claims that it didn’t have any such file:

In a statement released Tuesday afternoon, the FBI said, “The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

Apple gave a statement to AllThingsD stating that they had never provided this information to the FBI, either:

“The FBI has not requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be banning the use of UDID,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told AllThingsD.

In an oddly-similar vein, a hacker claims to have stolen copies of Mitt Romney’s historical tax records from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Franklin, Tennessee office:

Interestingly, the “hacker” described an everyday breaking and entering situation, whereby a human being gained physical access to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers’ office in Tennessee on August 25th, and copied the files to a flash drive. The statement also claimed that encrypted copies had been mailed to PWC, as well as to the Democratic and Republican Party offices in Williamson County. The GOP office confirmed to VentureBeat that a flash drive had been received and that the Secret Service had confiscated it and is examining it currently.

But PWC issued a statement to the Wall Street Journal:

A PwC spokesman said in a statement: “We’re aware of the allegations that have been made about improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time, there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”

iPhone 5: The Rumours ⇥ macstories.net

Not to be left out of New Telephone Day, the dudes at MacStories have compiled the best guide to iPhone 5/The New iPhone/iPhone 6/iPhone 4G rumours that I’ve seen so far. Despite Tim Cook “doubling down” on secrecy, prototypes and components have been leaking out at a steady clip over the past few months. But the best part of the keynote day is when we get to see what hasn’t been leaked. There’s always a little surprise in store.

All this might be irrelevant to customers in China, as a company there has hilariously cobbled together an iPhone-lookalike based on the leaked parts and they’ve claimed to have patented it.

New Telephone Day: Nokia Edition ⇥ theverge.com

Before Motorola did their thing, Microsoft and Nokia representatives woke up bright and early¹ to launch phones called the 820, and 920 (both “Lumia” devices). Both run Windows Phone 8 and look amazing. Wired has a great profile of Nokia’s head of design, Marko Ahtisaari:

“Our products are human,” he says. “They’re natural. They’re never cold. That’s partly driven by color, but also partly how they feel in the hand. This looks less like a product coming off a production line in a factory—though it does—than a product that might have grown on a tree. The grandest way I could put it, is post-industrial.” […]

The dream, if not the exact language, is very familiar. Nokia is marketing its phone directly into the teeth of Apple’s strength: Design.

While Google’s Android pressures Apple in terms of features, there hasn’t really been a competitor to the iPhone’s incredible industrial design until the Nokia Lumia 900 was launched earlier this year. I’m glad that Apple finally has a competitor as serious about industrial design as they are. They need a Nikon.

The new 820 looks fairly staid, but the 920 looks like an incredible piece of kit. It’s the first device I’d seriously consider changing to from an iPhone. Of course, I’m waiting for reviews of it, but it looks phenomenal.

Joshua Topolsky sat down with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop:

The polished and professional Elop was visibly excited about the newest crop of hardware and software headed out of the Finnish phone-maker’s doors, and he was eager to share that excitement. Most of our conversation stayed on-message with what was discussed at the event today — the Lumia 920 and 820, City Lens, and those colorful docks — but Elop also fielded questions on exactly what Nokia’s PureView camera branding means, as well as just what the company is saying to buyers of the recently-released Lumia 900.

Great interview by Topolsky.

Speaking of The Verge, Chris Ziegler is mourning the lack of a cyan option on the 920. Really.

I don’t know how true this is, but I live in Mountain Time, and it was pretty early here. ↥︎

New Telephone Day: Motorola Edition ⇥ bits.blogs.nytimes.com

Both Motorola and Nokia introduced a plethora of new phones today. I guess it’s important to get these things in before next week’s big Apple event.

Brian X. Chen writes for the New York Times‘ Bits blog:

After being quiet for nearly a year, Motorola Mobility, recently acquired by Google, is making its return to the mobile market with three new smartphones.

At a press conference in New York on Wednesday, the company introduced three smartphones under its famous Razr brand that will become available for Verizon customers. It said the focus of these phones was speed, because they could connect to Verizon’s faster fourth-generation network. And they have larger screens than their primary rival, the Apple iPhone.

That’s right: three new phones, all called the Droid RAZR-something: the Droid RAZR M, the Droid RAZR HD, and the Droid RAZR Maxx HD¹. That seems like a confusing amount of choice, but it appears to be the “good-better-best” model spread across three names.

Now that Motorola is part of Google, there are some improvements on the software side. There are new “developer editions“, which allow modifications to Android (wasn’t it already “open”?), and “most” devices released in the past year will receive the latest incremental Android update. If Motorola can’t be bothered to ship an update, they’ll give you a hundred bucks towards a new phone.

Despite the closer alignment with Google, however, Android is still skinned on these new phones. It’s less thorough than TouchWiz, but it’s surprising that the Google-owned company isn’t going to ship the stock Google OS. Don’t tell me that you’ll be surprised if the next “Nexus” phone is made by Motorola, though.

Even text messages spelled “i luv u” weep for this disaster of a name. ↥︎

Noah Kalina Takes a Picture of His Face Every Day ⇥ blog.noahkalina.com

Remember this viral video from six years ago? Noah has just completed the 12.5-year edition, and it’s so cool.

Nice Try ⇥ twitpic.com

A Dutch blog has posted an image of the alleged new iPhone box art. Steven Troughton-Smith has re-posted the image on Twitpic. Aside from the obviously-wrong “The New iPhone” text on the side (the new iPad simply has “iPad” on the sides), the art on the front uses the same screen as this mockup.

What A Surprise ⇥ engadget.com

Apple has just sent out the invites to their September 12th event. Nice shadow.

“A Total Clusterfuck” ⇥ thenextweb.com

Josh Ong reports for Read Write Web:

The AntiSec hacking group claims to have released a set of more than 1 million Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) obtained from breaching the FBI. The group claims to have over 12 million IDs, as well as personal information such as user names, device names, notification tokens, cell phone numbers and addresses.

I think there are three questions on everyone’s mind right now:

How was this list acquired in the first place?
Why would the FBI even have 12 million iOS UDIDs?
Am I affected?

Regarding the first point, the hackers explain their technique:

During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of “NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.

But this doesn’t explain how the FBI got the list. A quick Google search reveals that “NCFTA” is the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, which is a private company that “functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement”.

NCFTA appears to be the company that compiled the list, but it’s very difficult to see where they could have acquired 12 million UDIDs. A developer would be able gain access to this information, but how many apps have been downloaded 12 million times? Marco Arment and “teflon” think it’s the NCFTA’s “AllClear ID” app (iTunes link):

AllClear ID is the first 100% free, basic identity protection that includes Fraud Detection, Monthly Reports, and Fast & Secure Phone Alerts when your identity is at risk. Millions trust AllClear ID, and it has been featured by NBC’s TODAY show, the Clark Howard Show, The NY Times and Wall Street Journal.

This sounds very sketchy, similar to the Trusteer browser plugin. I never trust any app that purports to protect against identity theft by requiring the user to enter a lot of information about their identity, for obvious reasons.

Update: Arment’s post (above) contains a correction to note that AllClearID denies any involvement:

AllClear ID sent a statement saying they do not collect UDIDs and are not affiliated with the NCFTA, for whatever it’s worth.

My comment regarding providing personal information to an app to “protect” that personal information still stands, but they weren’t involved.

In regards to question three—”am I affected?”—that’s a good question. The Next Web has built a tool to check your UDID. It’s clever, because you can check a partial ID. But remember that this list represents just one million UDIDs—8% of what the hackers claim to have access to.

But question two is still a mystery. Why would the FBI have a list this large? Surely the vast majority of the IDs on this list aren’t involved in any sort of crime. Hell, I’d wager that not even a small minority of these are suspect, or involved in an investigation.

As usual, Mr. Gruber says it best: “this sounds like a total clusterfuck.”

When A Kickstarter Campaign Fails, Does Anyone Get The Money Back? ⇥ npr.org

Aarti Shahani writes for NPR‘s All Things Considered blog:

Crowd funding began as a way to support the arts on the Internet. Artists could go online to pitch a new album, for example, in the hope that thousands would give small amounts. But now it’s expanded to entrepreneurs, and the rules aren’t quite as clear.

On Kickstarter, the largest crowd-funding site, a handful of entrepreneurs have raised millions of dollars more than they’d expected, by selling the concept of products they have yet to make. But financial backers have no clear way of getting a refund if the young businesses fail to deliver.

This has emerged as a very real risk. I’ve only backed a few small things on Kickstarter (Kirby Ferguson’s new film, and the Kaffeologie S-Filter) because I’m still a little wary of the process. I don’t think it’s paranoia. Shahani’s article mentions that the Pebble watch missed its first scheduled shipping date, and Ben Brooks notes that the Elevation dock arrived very late, and broke soon after.

These are all very real concerns, and that’s why I have a hard time rolling the dice on a hundred dollars for the chance that a product might ship, and there’s no recourse for the backers if the project fails.

September 3, 2012 ⌥

Google Gets Umbrella Patent for Cloud Operating Systems ⇥ tomshardware.com

Chief legal officer David Drummond responds on the official Google blog when his employer failed to outbid an Apple- and Microsoft-led consortium to buy old Nortel patents (emphasis mine):

Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.

Google would never attempt to file for “dubious patents”, now would they?

Wolfgang Gruener writes yesterday for Tom’s Hardware:

Google just patented Chrome OS, but the tone of the patent is much more than that. Google may have, in fact, received a patent that covers client cloud operating systems in general.

The patent is entitled “Network based operating system across devices” and was filed in March of 2009, about two months before Chrome OS was officially announced. What makes this patent special is the fact that it covers virtual all aspects of “providing an operating system over a network to a local device” in a manner that would apply to any cloud OS that uses software other than a web browser. And even the web browser, as an entity that is regularly updated and would, conceivably, fill the role as operating system framework, would be touched by this patent.

Grosjean Responds ⇥ formula1.com

Romain Grosjean began the Belgian Grand Prix today by crashing into Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren before the first corner, and sending three others into the wall. Huge mistake on his part, but at least he’s taking responsibility:

“I honestly thought I was ahead of him and there was enough room for both cars; I didn’t deliberately try to squeeze him or anything like that. This first corner situation obviously isn’t what anyone would want to happen and thankfully no-one was hurt in the incident. I wish to apologise to the drivers who were involved and to their fans. I can only say that today is part of a process that will make me a better driver.”

The stewards have handed him a one-race ban.

This is in stark contrast to Pastor Maldonado’s reaction to his jump start, which you can see in the same video above. He claims that his hand slipped off the clutch. The stewards are demoting him ten grid places in Monza.

My Broken Mailbox

I, as with most people, have an odd and somewhat irrational dislike of certain software features and anomalies. I really hate when applications use anything other than Cmd + , for the shortcut key to their preferences. I don’t know what it is about that, but it drives me so far up the wall that I will spend valuable time searching for ways to remap it. It’s just a stupid little thing, but it presses my berserk button.

Mail application user interfaces are another example of things that kill a small part of me. I don’t know why, but nearly every email application has the same crappy user interface. I don’t know what would be ideal, but I know that the current Mail-Outlook-Thunderbird paradigm doesn’t fit with the way I work with email.

For some reason, usenet (and more recently, RSS) clients were lumped in with email, and have therefore adopted the same user interface concepts. It’s a broken paradigm, and it makes it almost comically difficult to find an RSS reader that I can love.

Owing to this irrational hatred towards email-like interfaces, my RSS client for the past couple of years on both my iPad and Mac has been Acrylic Apps’ Pulp. It’s a beautiful app. I love the Magic Reader feature, the shelf, and the smart home page. But I have been torn from it lately for two reasons:

While it handles a dozen or two RSS feeds with aplomb, it’s extremely cumbersome with any more feeds than that. It also doesn’t handle oft-updated feeds—like TechMeme or The Verge—very well.
The developers have been acquired by Facebook, so their software has been abandoned.

It became clear that it was time to find a new reader. Happily, my recent purchase included the back to school promotional $100 Apple ID gift card.

I have heard nothing but rave reviews for Reeder, so I figured I should at least try it. It’s a very clean, well-detailed application. It also has a bunch of great keyboard shortcuts, so it’s really easy to fly through a bunch of articles.

There are a few faults, though. I am one of the few people who dislikes Google Reader syncing, because it’s an unpublished, unofficial API, and therefore subject to change. Acrylic Apps solved this the smart way with Pulp by building their own syncing service (followed by using iCloud to handle it). I don’t like the lingering prospect that one of my applications might break on Google’s whim.

It’s also marred by a few usability issues. There’s no way to rename a feed after adding it, and there’s no drag-and-drop support for recategorizing feeds into the correct folder. One must remove the feed, then add it back in the correct folder. Setting Reeder up is a painful, tedious experience.

But the most substantial reason I dislike Reeder is that it uses my most-hated of application user interfaces. It even inherets email’s irritating unread badge. It’s a weird tick which I cannot ignore. It renders a beautifully-detailed, elegant application unfeasible for me.

Much in the same way that Tobais van Schneider wants to redesign the email application, I would love to see a better RSS reader, losing the legacy mailbox metaphor. I don’t think Pulp or Flipboard hit it quite right, either. I know that Twitter has replaced RSS for many people, but there’s still a special place for feeds, where they won’t get mixed in with dick jokes.

Samsung Flew Bloggers to Berlin for IFA, and Threatened to Leave Them There ⇥ thenextweb.com

Brad McCarty writes for The Next Web:

Let’s pretend that you’re a blogger. You’re given the chance to review new, hot hardware from a major company. All that’s required is that you participate in some tasks, but these tasks would fit into your coverage so you agree. In return you get to be one of the first to go hands-on with devices and give your opinion on them. Sounds like a good deal? Well that’s what a couple of Indian participants in Samsung’s Mob!ler program thought too, until Samsung threatened to leave them stranded in Berlin, Germany.

Stupid TNW title notwithstanding, this sounds like a very dirty case of trying to massage coverage. A small glimmer of hope arose from this experience for Clinton Jeff (one of the stranded bloggers), as Steve Streza notes on Twitter:

Gained a ton of respect for @Nokia for saving @clintonjeff’s bacon after Samsung screwed him without asking for anything in return.

Nice move by Nokia, and it doesn’t sound like there are any strings attached.

Update: Looks like a French blogger was paid for this, too:

I decide with absolutely no reason (consciously) to go out to enjoy my last night without sending my report. Except… They’re all waiting for me in the lobby. They challenge me and I replied that I did not intend to write this document. I was provocative. “Just tell me what I should write so that it suits you. I can be sick or drunk. Or being a so bad ambassador that don’t respect the rules, I don’t care, really.” The person with whom I was talking gave up.

I left the hotel. But I saw two others following me in the street. WTF!?

Brutal. While they didn’t include the brand name, the photos this blogger uploaded make it very clear that they were representatives of either Samsung or Best Buy, and the latter didn’t have any Olympic presence.