I got this lovely message when I turned on the xBox in my office this afternoon.
It told me to “sit tight” as though I am a small child.
How rude?
Microsoft Edge Being Forced on Users
Sad. But true. I can’t believe this is still happening in 2020. This article mentions that Microsoft had a bad experience with forcing users to use their product before. It is shocking that they would try to do this again. Especially when Apple is now doing the exact opposite.
And I’m not surprised that some angry Windows users are already railing against the fact that this came as part of a forced Windows update, which Microsoft has already had a damn hard time justifying without invading people’s desktops as well. It’s going to be harder to buy the argument that forced updates are necessary for security when they’re pulling double-duty as an intrusive marketing tool.
via The Verge
New York Times Leaving Apple News+
…and I say, so what?
I’m fairly certain that Apple will be around a lot longer than The New York Times. Legacy newspapers are dying. Having said that, I don’t think snubbing your nose at Apple is helping your brand stay afloat.
Subscriptions are down. They will continue to do so.
Article and links are over at Six Colors.
More on TikTok…
I found this on slashdot. If you don’t read slashdot, you are missing out. The comments have been known to make my coffee flow out of my nose. The original article was posted on reddit.
So I can personally weigh in on this. I reverse-engineered the app, and feel confident in stating that I have a very strong understanding for how the app operates (or at least operated as of a few months ago).
TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device… well, they’re using it.
Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)
Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload – maybe using as cached value?)
Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)
Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken
Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds – this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC
They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication
If true, this is damning evidence.
Using Chinese applications can be dangerous. Android users have it worse than Apple users. Apple is actively working on security. They also care about it. In Android’s case, having a platform that is more open to do what you want on it may sound great. You also leave yourself wide open for security breaches.
WidgetKit
John Sundell has a pretty cool post over at his WWDC website about how to use Apple’s new WidgetKit.
