Month: November 2016

The BLU R1 HD is one of the devices that was backdoored by a Chinese software provider. (credit: BLU Prod)

Security firm Kryptowire has uncovered a backdoor in the firmware installed on low-cost Android phones, including phones from BLU Products sold online through Amazon and Best Buy. The backdoor software, initially discovered on the BLU R1 HD, sent massive amounts of personal data about the phones and their users’ activities back to servers in China that are owned by a firmware update software provider. The data included phone number, location data, the content of text messages, calls made, and applications installed and used.

The company, Shanghai AdUps Technologies, had apparently designed the backdoor to help Chinese phone manufacturers and carriers track the behavior of their customers for advertising purposes. AdUps claims its software runs updates for more than 700 million devices worldwide, including smartphones, tablets, and automobile entertainment systems. It is installed on smartphones from Huawei and ZTE sold in China.

A lawyer for the company told The New York Times that the data was not being collected for the Chinese government, stating, “This is a private company that made a mistake.”

(credit: Servizi Multimediali)

On Monday, the top trending story if you searched Google for "final election vote count 2016" was a fake story on a site called 70News claiming that Donald Trump had won the popular vote, even though he had not. And in the week before the election, Facebook and Google were being criticized about fake news on their sites, which critics believe could have swayed the presidential race's outcome.

Google responded Monday with a pledge to restrict fake news sites from using its AdSense advertising network. Facebook, for its part, updated its policy to clearly state that its advertising ban on deceptive or misleading content applied to fake news.

"We do not integrate or display ads in apps or sites containing content that is illegal, misleading or deceptive, which includes fake news," Facebook said in a statement. And Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg on Saturday tried to put the kibosh on the idea that Facebook's platform influenced the election.

Enlarge / A picture of some of the pictures in Apple's picture book. (credit: Apple)

Move over, MacBook Pro—there's a new Apple book in town. It's called Designed by Apple in California, and it's a coffee table book filled with pictures of Apple's hardware. The book, like so many other Apple products, is available in two sizes: a 10.20" by 12.75" "Small" version that sells for $199 and a 13" by 16.25" "Large" version that costs $300.

The book is only a partial history of design at Apple, and it would be better described as a portfolio of Jony Ive's work. It starts in 1998 with the iMac and ends in 2015 with the Apple Pencil, and it doesn't just cover the successful designs—oddball one-offs like the G4 Cube are in there, too. The linen-bound book is "printed on specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink" and "was developed over an eight-year period."

Jony Ive is still a part of Apple's executive team and he still occasionally gives interviews and narrates product videos, but in recent years, he seems to have scaled back his role at the company. In mid-2015, he handed off his "day-to-day managerial responsibilities" to Industrial Design VP Richard Howarth and User Interface Design VP Alan Dye.

The first Mario game designed to be played with one hand will hit iPhones and iPads on December 15 and cost $10. That's the word from Nintendo, which announced the specific launch date and price today after first revealing Super Mario Run at an Apple event in September.

Unlike many popular mobile games, Nintendo is charging a one-time fee to play all of Super Mario Run, with no in-app purchases or optional additions to buy. Those who don't want to pay up front, though, will be able to download a free demo that lets them "try elements of the game’s three modes for free." That includes a competitive mode that lets you challenge other players on the Internet, as well as an endless battle mode where levels continue until time runs out.

Nintendo is planning a truly international launch for Mario's first official appearance on smartphones. Users running iOS 8 or later will be able to purchase the game in 151 different countries and play in English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian and traditional Chinese.