Andrew

In August of 1995, Apple launched a computer that would change the fate of the world: the PowerBook 5300. This 5.9lb fusion of black polycarbonate and capacitors had a modest debut, but little did anyone know that less than a year later, on July 4th...

Following hot on the heels of the recent SSL connection update -- and in response to criticism that the company is too slow to fix critical software issues -- Apple today released an update to its vintage System 7 OS that corrects a crucial...

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Nearly 20 years after he finished the beloved comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson has gone back to the drawing board for one more panel. Watterson has contributed the movie poster for Stripped, a new documentary about cartoonists struggling with the death of newspapers and the future of the medium. There, he joins such a host of fellow comic strip legends such as Jim Davis of Garfield fame, Cathy Guisewite of Cathy, and Bill Amend of Foxtrot, not to mention their internet successors at Penny Arcade, The Oatmeal, and many others. According to the directors, the movie contains Watterson's first recorded interview.

Regardless of what he says on tape, it's refreshing to see that Watterson's work hasn't lost its charm. In the movie...

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Apple today posted an updated security document [PDF] on its iPhone in Business site, offering details on the inner workings of both Touch ID and the "Secure Enclave" built into Apple's A7 processor (via TechCrunch).

Since its 2013 release, Touch ID has faced scrutiny over privacy concerns from both users and government officials, and while Apple has previously offered few details on how Secure Enclave works, it has assured users that the system stores only fingerprint data rather than images.


According to the updated security document, Secure Enclave is a coprocessor within the A7 chip that uses a secure boot process to ensure that its separate software is both verified and signed by Apple. All Secure Enclaves can function independently even if a kernel is compromised and each one contains a unique ID inaccessible to other parts of the system and unknown to Apple, preventing the company or any other third parties from accessing data contained within.

Each Secure Enclave is provisioned during fabrication with its own UID (Unique ID) that is not accessible to other parts of the system and is not known to Apple. When the device starts up, an ephemeral key is created, tangled with its UID, and used to encrypt the Secure Enclave's portion of the device's memory space.

Additionally, data that is saved to the file system by the Secure Enclave is encrypted with a key tangled with the UID and an anti-replay counter.

Fingerprint data collected from Touch ID is stored within the Secure Enclave, which is used to determine a match and then enable a purchase. While the A7 processor collects data from the Touch ID sensor, it is unable to read it because it is encrypted and authenticated with a session key built into Touch ID and the Secure Enclave.

It's encrypted and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using the device's shared key that is built into the Touch ID sensor and the Secure Enclave. The session key exchange uses AES key wrap- ping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption.

Along with details on the function and security of the Secure Enclave, the document contains details on Touch ID, most of which have been previously published by Apple in other documents and literature on the feature. It also offers some specifics on the security of fingerprint capturing and a reminder that fingerprint data is accessible only to the Secure Enclave and never sent to Apple or backed up to iTunes or iCloud.

The document's section on Touch ID and the Secure Enclave ends with a detailed description of how both Secure Enclave and Touch ID work together to unlock an iPhone 5s, which is well worth a read for users interested in how the technology functions.

Apple's updated security document has been added as part of a larger redesign of the IT section of its iPhone in Business site, which now features a cleaner design with navigation icons at the top of the page.

Every year, half a million horseshoe crabs are captured and bled alive by biomedical companies, according to a fascinating story in The Atlantic. The blood, colored baby blue because it contains copper, coagulates when it detects bacteria and can therefore be used to test for contamination. The crabs are strapped into harnesses, spiked with shunts, drained of up to 30 percent of their blood, and eventually released. "I don't know about you, but the idea that every single person in America who has ever had an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of a forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower makes me feel a little bit crazy," Alexis Madrigal writes.

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Christopher Nolan's mind-bending 2010 film Inception was a box office hit, entertaining audiences with a fantastical world of subconscious alternate realities. Could that work out as a board game? Board games company Pilot Study has taken a crack at it with Inceptor, a game that takes some of the core concepts of Inception's world, and filters them into a mission-oriented multiplayer game. Players take turns rolling the dice and drawing mission card to navigate on a board that takes them through various "dream levels."  The ultimate goal is to plant your idea and get out before time runs out, all the while avoiding the attacks from the cards and your fellow players.

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Bluetooth speakers are super handy for when you're out and about and want a little music. Unfortunately, most Bluetooth speakers are just little blocks of easy-to-destroy plastic. If you're looking for something a little heftier, Instructables user ASCAS built their own rugged Bluetooth speaker.

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An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing more and more reports of ISPs throttling Netflix and other high-bandwidth services lately. The ISPs have denied it, and even Netflix itself seems to believe them. If that's the case, what's going on? Well, according to this article, the blame still lies with the ISPs. While they may not be explicitly throttling connection speeds, they're refusing to upgrade network connections as they demand more money from content distributors. For example, Netflix pays Cogent to distribute their internet traffic. Cogent has an agreement with Verizon to exchange traffic — which works fine until the massive amount of traffic from Netflix makes it a lopsided arrangement. Verizon wants more money from Cogent, and one of their negotiating tactics is simply to stop upgrading their infrastructure so that service degrades. 'There are about 11 Cogent/Verizon peering connections in major cities around the country. When peering partners aren't fighting, they typically upgrade the connections (or "ports") when they're about 50 percent full, Cogent says. ... With Cogent and Verizon fighting, the upgrades are happening at a glacial pace, according to Schaeffer. "Once a port hits about 85 percent throughput, you're going to begin to start to drop packets," he said. "Clearly when a port is at 120 or 130 percent [as the Cogent/Verizon ones are] the packet loss is material."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fleksy announced this week that its SDK for iOS has exited the private beta stage and is now available for all developers to use. Integration with Fleksy is easy for developers to implement and takes a few steps for users to setup on their device. To...

If you need a kid-friendly light (or just a fun portable, sturdy, and functional lantern) for any room in your house, this DIY lantern jar uses a CFL bulb, the parts from a disposable camera, some wire, and a AA battery. Best of all, it's fun to build, and a primer for some basic electronics hacking.

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alphadogg writes "In February 2011, the global Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last blocks of IPv4 address space to the five regional Internet registries. At the time, experts warned that within months all available IPv4 addresses in the world would be distributed to ISPs. Soon after that, unless everyone upgraded to IPv6, the world would be facing a crisis that would hamper Internet connectivity for everyone. That crisis would be exacerbated by the skyrocketing demand for IP addresses due to a variety of factors: the Internet of Things (refrigerators needing their own IP address); wearables (watches and glasses demanding connectivity); BYOD (the explosion of mobile devices allowed to connect to the corporate network); and the increase in smartphone use in developing countries. So, here we are three years later and the American Registry for Internet Numbers is still doling out IPv4 addresses in the United States and Canada. Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What's that you're hearing? Could it be the real stirrings of actual competition in the American broadband market? Google on Wednesday announced it was considering expanding its services to nine different metropolitan areas and it turns out that several of those areas are strongholds for Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two cable titans that want to merge and create an ISP superpower.

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“The things that are crossed off. Does that mean they’re done?”

-

The client was referring to items under the heading “What’s Been Done.”

Client: I think it would save us both a lot of time and effort if I got the final files now and you just trusted me when I said the check for the full $500 was on its way.

Me: I quoted $1000.

Client: See, this is the sort of issue I didn’t want the project to get hung up on. 

Though we keep track of video card pricing regularly on an internal basis, it’s not something we normally publish outside of our semi-regular buyer’s guides. More often than not video card pricing is slow to move (if it moves at all), as big price shifts come in concert with either scheduled price cuts or new product introductions. But in a process that has defied our expectations for more than a month now, even we can’t fail to notice what Radeon prices are quite literally up to.

In a sign of the daffy times we live in, Radeon R9 290X prices have hit $900 this week at Newegg. Every card, from the reference models to the water block model, is now at $899, with Newegg apparently doing brisk enough business to be sold out of more than half of their different 290X SKUs. This of course is some $350 over the 290X’s original launch price of $550, a 64% price bump. Meanwhile the Radeon R9 290 has been similarly affected, with 290 cards starting at $600, $200 (50%) over MSRP.

The culprit, as has been the case since the start, continues to be the strong demand for the cards from cryptocoin miners, who are willing to pay a premium for the cards in anticipation of still being able to turn a profit off of them in the long run. Interestingly this also comes right as Chinese New Year comes to a close. Chinese New Year doesn’t typically affect video card prices for cards that are already released and on shelves, but the lack of production for the roughly 2 week span certainly isn’t doing the 290X market any favors given the strong demand for the cards. In the meantime however this does mean that 290X cards are unfortunately priced out of the hands of gamers more than ever before; at $900, we’d be just $10 short of a GTX 780 Ti and a Core i5-4670K to go with it.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that this phenomena remains almost entirely limited to North America. Our own Ian Cutress quickly checked a couple of UK retailers, Scan.co.uk and Overclockers.co.uk, and found that both of them had 290 series cards in stock at pre-VAT prices that were only marginally above the North American MSRPs. A PowerColor R9 290 OC can be found for £275 (~$460 USD) and an XFX R9 290X for £334 (~$560 USD). The European market of course has its own idiosyncrasies, but ultimately it’s clear that UK pricing has gone largely unaffected by the forces that have driven up North American pricing, making this one of those rare occasions where hardware is more expensive in North America than in Europe, even after taxes.

Radeon R9 290 Series Prices
	North America	UK (excluding VAT)
Radeon R9 290X	$899	£334 (~$560 USD)
Radeon R9 290	$599	£275 (~$460 USD)

Update (11:30 PM): It’s interesting just how greatly things can shift in only half a day. This morning 290X prices were $899 with Newegg having 5 models in stock. But as of late this evening prices have dropped rather quickly by $200, bringing them down to $699 (just $150 over MSRP). All the while however, Newegg’s selection has dwindled to just two models, showcasing just how high the demand for these cards is and how quickly buyers will snatch them up even when they’re still well over MSRP.

Sorry, due to the unusual nature of today's comic, you may just have seen a static image in your feed reader, but you can check out the full comic here!
-Randall

Even as Time Warner Cable keeps arguing that people really don't want super-fast Internet, Google is plowing ahead with plans to make its Google Fiber network even more of a beast. USA Today reports that Google CFO Patrick Pichette told the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference this week that Google is working on technology that will boost Fiber speeds up to 10Gbps, or around 10 times what they already deliver. In what reads like a veiled barb against other American ISPs, Pichette pointedly said that there was no reason to wait when it comes to deploying the fastest Internet technology available.

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An anonymous reader writes "This NY Times articles makes the case that Comcast's planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable is part of a strategy to fight back against the millions of people ditching cable subscriptions. 'The acquisition rests on the assumption that as people cut back on their monthly TV plans, the cable lines coming into their homes won't lose their value.' The idea is that switching away from cable TV will simple make consumers more beholden to their internet connections, and removing (i.e. acquiring) the competition will let Comcast raise rates without losing customers. The article concludes, 'The steady price increases in broadband rates cast a pall over any cord cutter's dreams. It's possible that you might still save money now by cutting off your cable. But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don't expect to save money forever.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After rumors broke late last night, Comcast announced this morning that it had reached an agreement to acquire rival Time Warner Cable in a deal worth around $45 billion. The news brings months of machinations to a close: Comcast ended up besting the efforts of the much smaller Charter Communications, which had been trying to advance its own hostile takeover of Time Warner as recently as yesterday.

But with the prospect of a combined Comcast and Time Warner on the horizon, the question turns to what a merger would actually mean — both for consumers and the industry at large. If the move is approved by federal regulators, it could cement the kind of monolithic monopolies that have plagued cable subscribers all along, raising concerns...

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If you were casually browsing the internet on Tuesday, you may have noticed a big black bar. "Today we fight back," it read. It's more likely, though, that you saw an unobtrusive Ben Franklin image macro in a Reddit sidebar. Or nothing at all. As many have pointed out, organizers for the Day We Fight Back set a high bar by comparing it to the SOPA blackout of 2012, and the protest didn't come close to reaching that bar. TechCrunch collected a series of screenshots contrasting the two: Google and Wikipedia didn't mention the event on their home pages, and participating sites like Reddit and Boing Boing were relatively muted in their protest. About 6,000 sites participated in the Day We Fight Back, compared to an estimated 75,000 or more...

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Last year ahead of Apple's iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launch, lines began forming outside Apple stores weeks in advance. At the time, we thought it was pretty crazy that anyone would line up that far in advance to buy a cell phone — but now we know what crazy really looks like.

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cartechboy writes "Man the automotive dealer associations don't like Tesla. Remember that time the Ohio dealers attempted to block Tesla from selling its electric cars in in the Buckeye State. Now, it's happening again. The car dealers are once again pushing legislation that would keep Tesla from selling cars in Ohio. Senate Bill 260 would prohibit the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles from issuing car-dealer licenses to auto manufacturers. Since Tesla owns and operates its own network of 'dealerships' (aka galleries), this would make it so the automaker couldn't acquire a car-dealer license. Section 11 of the bill lists 'a manufacturer... applying for license to sell or lease new motor vehicles at retail' as one of the types of organization ineligible for a dealership license. On top of all this, the language isn't on the Senate floor as a standalone bill. No, it's inserted as an amendment to Senate Bill 137 which is an unrelated bill requiring Ohio drivers to move to the left while passing roadside maintenance vehicles. Is this yet another slimy tactic to try and undercut the new kid on the block?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US banks and merchants are shifting to a more secure way of authorizing credit card transactions in which customers will enter a personal identification number (PIN) at checkout instead of signing a receipt.

The US is the last major market in the world using the signature system, which is part of the reason why a disproportionate amount of credit card fraud happens here. The change is especially relevant given the massive fraud perpetrated against customers of Target in the fall. During a Congressional hearing last week, Target CFO John Mulligan said the company is accelerating the $100 million effort to switch to the so-called "chip and pin" system.

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Of Microsoft’s many challenges in mobile, none loom larger than the app deficit: it only takes a popular new title like Flappy Bird to highlight what the company is missing out on. Windows 8 apps are also few and far between, and Microsoft is stuck in a position where it’s struggling to generate developer interest in its latest style of apps across phones and tablets. Some argue Microsoft should dump Windows Phone and create its own "forked" version of Android — not unlike what Amazon has done with its Kindle Fire tablets — while others claim that’s an unreasonably difficult task. With a new, mobile- and cloud-focused CEO in place, Nokia's decision to build an Android phone, and rumors of Android apps coming to Windows, could...

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mask.of.sanity writes "CloudFlare has been hit by what appears to be the world's largest denial of service attack, in an assault that exploits an emerging and frightening threat vector. The Network Time Protocol Reflection attack exploits a timing mechanism that underpins a way the Internet works to greatly amplify the power of what would otherwise be a small and ineffective assault. CloudFlare said the attack tipped 400Gbps, 100Gbps higher than the previous record DDoS attack which used DNS reflective amplification."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Models for design house Rodarte made their debut at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week today with Star Wars prints emblazoned on their dresses, making it probably the best show of the week. Rodarte's fall line — showing off five dresses with accents from the original trilogy — is a breathe of fresh air at a decidedly un-geeky event devoted more to couture than to, say, science fiction.

Fashion is having a more pronounced crossover moment than it has in previous years with respect to technology...

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Staying hydrated is essential for your health, particularly when you're working out and possibly losing a lot of water through sweat. This infographic from Greatist and CamelBak take the mystery out of how much water you need to drink, depending on the kind of exercise you do and other factors.

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TimePIN is a new Android app that aims to improve the security of your Android device by changing its lockscreen PIN code every minute. The user will not even have to remember the code, as TimePIN simply assigns the current time as the PIN number. As long as other users don’t know the smartphone is protected by TimePIN, this security measure will almost certainly block any attempts of accessing the content on the device.

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