Pro Apple, Not Anti-Repair

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Pro Apple, Not Anti-Repair
Number 3383
Broadcast Date OCTOBER 5, 2018
Episode Length 31:22
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Patrick Norton, Len Peralta

An Apple memo regarding showing certain Mac models must pass Apple diagnostics for certain repairs to be completed raises concerns that the company is trying to block 3rd parties from repairing Macintosh computers.

Guest

Quick Hits

Microsoft announced its Surface Pro 6 starting at $899 and Surface Laptop 2 starting at $999. At first, laptops at these prices were only offered as part of bundles. Then Thursday versions of both products were offered at the starting price but only in the platinum color. If you wanted other colors you could only get more expensive versions with higher specs like 256GB of storage instead of 128.
Samsung issued its Q3 forecast, expecting record operating profits of around 17.5 trillion won up 20.4% from a year ago, beating analyst estimates. Demand for Samsung's memory chips makes a large part of the growth. Chips account for 80% of Samsung's operating profit.

Top Stories

Amazon, Apple, Supermicro and China all issued more detailed denials of the Bloomberg story that claimed motherboards from Supermicro were found to contain chips that created backdoor access. Amazon denies finding malicious chips or working with the FBI and says its third party only found software issues with SuperMicro chips. Apple denied finding malicious chips or having contact with the FBI and disputed the number of Supermicro motherboards it employed. Supermicro denied any investigation or contact with any government agency regarding the issue. China continued its call for cooperation on supply chain security.

In addition, the National Cyber Security Center, part of the UK's GCHQ told Reuters it has no reason to doubt Apple and Amazon. It added that it, "urges anybody with credible intelligence about these reports to contact us." Multiple anonymous US officials told the Washington Post they were unsure of the accuracy of the story.


Bloomberg posted a follow up to the chip hack story alleging Supermicro was the target of two software attacks as well. Bloomberg's sources say a customer portal used for critical software updates was breached in 2015 to deliver infected firmware that granted outside access to server communication. Facebook apparently was affected by this breach and said in a statement that it had purchased supermicro motherboards for use in a lab and the hardware was never put into production. Apple also described a firmware issue in its denial of knowledge of the hardware attack. Another source says Apple also found that some cards from Supermicro came with outdated firmware that included a known and patched vulnerability.
The US State of California passed a law requiring net-connected devices to use unique passwords when sold to consumers or force consumers to chose passwords before putting devices into operation. Customers can also sue for damages if they experience harm as a result of ignoring the law.
TechCrunch reports screenshots from tipster Jane Manchun Wong show Instagram has prototyped a privacy setting to let you share your location history with Facebook. If turned on it would use the GPS location from Instagram to target ads in Facebook and Instagram and populate the Facebook Profile Activity Log. The Prototype Wong saw defaulted to location being off and had to be turned on by the user. Facebook told TechCrunch it has not changed Instagram's location settings. Instagram does not store location data now.
London's National Theater and Accenture's Extended Reality Group have created Augmented Reality glasses for patrons with hearing impairments to allow them to better enjoy the theaters productions. The Epson Moverio BT-350 smart glasses show a live captioning service. Voice-following software detects where the production is in a script and shows the proper text including lighting and sound cues. 90 glasses are available for Hadestown and War Horse and will roll out to all productions later this month.

Discussion

Mailbag

As for the Chinese hack, ... participate in quite a few organizations within the automotive cybersecurity field, including an advisory board and a standards committee. We speak to (mostly US) government representatives frequently; just last week, there was quite the passionate, maybe even inflammatory, presentation from a member of the CIA talking about the offensive cyber-capabilities of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Some of my European colleagues were, if not dismissive, of the opinion this was partisan rhetoric. I'll be very interested if their opinions have changed with this news. Then again, supply chain security is a very concerning topic with us, so really, this isn't particularly surprising other than someone evidently got caught.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I already gave you guys a raise last year, and you may be due one this year as well.
Sent by Dave from soon to be snowing Michigan

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