In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles -- particularly newer models -- can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles' computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place. "I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening."

Law enforcement agencies have been focusing their investigative efforts on two main information sources: the telematics system -- which is like the "black box" -- and the infotainment system. The telematics system stores a vehicle's turn-by-turn navigation, speed, acceleration and deceleration information, as well as more granular clues, such as when and where the lights were switched on, the doors were opened, seat belts were put on and airbags were deployed. The infotainment system records recent destinations, call logs, contact lists, text messages, emails, pictures, videos, web histories, voice commands and social media feeds. It can also keep track of the phones that have been connected to the vehicle via USB cable or Bluetooth, as well as all the apps installed on the device. Together, the data allows investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's journey and paint a picture of driver and passenger behavior. In a criminal case, the sequence of doors opening and seat belts being inserted could help show that a suspect had an accomplice.

This week MSNBC published an opinion piece from a researcher on China (who works on internet censorship and freedom of expression issues) from the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

It examines specific exchanges between a China-based Zoom executive and employees at the company's California headquarters (taken from the 47-page complaint filed by America's Justice Department) showing how Zoom disrupted video meetings commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown: It was a fascinating read, not least because few global tech companies that do business in China have ever made public the details of their communications with Chinese authorities on censorship issues, despite repeated calls to do so from human rights organizations and United Nations experts. What the complaint reveals is Beijing's aggressive pursuit of global censorship of topics deemed sensitive or critical of Beijing, and Zoom's failure to adequately protect its users' rights to free expression and privacy...

Beijing has long leveraged market access to compel foreign tech companies to meet its censorship demands, whether in China or abroad. Apple has removed hundreds of virtual private network (VPN) apps from China's App Store. In 2019, it also removed a mapping app widely used by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong from the App Store. LinkedIn blocked content critical of Chinese authorities for users in China. From the complaint, one can see Zoom's fear that if it didn't terminate meetings or suspend accounts upon request, it risked having its China operation shut down at any time, which loomed large in all of its decisions.

Companies understandably want access to China's huge market, but they also have a responsibility to respect human rights under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Zoom said publicly that it is "dedicated to the free and open exchange of ideas," but when Jin repeatedly framed speech critical of the Chinese government as something that could "do bad things" or "illegal activities," and demanded they be censored, he met no resistance or got any questions from his colleagues at headquarters.
The article also blames Jin for making false claims to a Zoom colleague that a private Tiananmen commemoration meeting was supporting terrorism/inciting violence, after which "the colleague quickly terminated the meeting and suspended the host account without any investigation into the matter."

And it alleges that Jin also forwarded complaints from operatives who'd intentionally joined public meetings with offending content so those meetings could then be reported and shut down, while "a U.S.-based Zoom employee, knowing they were schemes, facilitated it..."

Facebook added banner ads criticizing Apple into some of its iOS apps, 9to5Mac reports, in its ongoing war against Apple's new privacy changes: By tapping the Learn More button, the app opens an article written by Facebook in which the company says Apple's policies announced at WWDC 2020 with iOS 14 will "harm the growth of business and the free internet." Facebook refers both to the new App Store privacy labels and also an option in iOS 14 that prevents apps from tracking users.

The fact that Facebook is now showing these messages in its iOS apps criticizing Apple demonstrates that the company is trying to get popular appeal to change Apple's mind about its new App Store privacy rules. That's because Facebook is one of the companies that will be most impacted by Apple's new privacy policies as its social networks rely heavily on ads and personal data from users.

In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said it doesn't want to force Facebook to change its business model, but the company expects Facebook to be more transparent about how it collects data from users and let them choose whether or not to offer such data.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Ads are the worst, yet we see them everywhere. They fund the content we consume, for free, on a daily basis. It's one thing to receive ads on a website you are going to for free, but it's quite another when an OEM goes out of its way to force an app onto your phone in order to serve you more ads. Sadly, that is exactly what Samsung just did with its new Samsung Visit In update through the Galaxy Store. On December 15, Samsung in the United States updated a system app called "IPS Geofencing" with the new Samsung Visit In app. This offers and coupons app has been rolling out in other countries and regions over the past year, but just hit the United States. IPS Geofencing was previously unused, or at least it was not user-accessible, and its function was unknown. As part of Visit In, it will be used to track your location, see when you're in a store that sells Samsung products or services, then serve you related ads. While you do need to opt-in for this service, the update allowing the functionality was installed automatically in the background of devices via the Galaxy Store. Further reading: Ads Are Taking Over Samsung's Galaxy Smartphones.

Google's cloud gaming service now supports the iPhone and iPad. As expected, the company is using a web app to access the service. From a report: Google also says that you need to update to iOS 14.3, the latest iOS update that was released earlier this week. If you want to try it out with a free or paid Stadia account, you can head over to stadia.google.com from your iOS device. Log in to your Google account, add a shortcut to your home screen and open the web app. After that, you can launch a game and start playing. Most games will require a gamepad, so you might want to pair a gamepad with your iPhone or iPad as well. Apple's iOS supports Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controllers using Bluetooth as well as controllers specifically designed for iOS. You can also play with the Stadia controller, but it's optional. If you just want to check your inventory quickly, Stadia on iOS also supports touch controls.

Todd Haselton from CNBC reviews Apple Fitness+, with some thoughts on how it compares with Peloton's similar app. Here's an excerpt from his report: Apple's subscription fitness app, Fitness+, launches Monday. I've been using it for the past several days and I think it offers a nice variety of workouts that people will like. You need an Apple Watch to take the prerecorded exercise classes, which are available on iPhones, iPads and the Apple TV. It's a smart way for Apple to make the Apple Watch even stickier. If people get really into the fitness classes, like I have, it will be yet another way Apple keeps people locked in to its ecosystem of products. Why buy another phone, tablet or watch if you really like Fitness+? It also comes at a great time, when people aren't in gyms and are at home looking for ways to exercise.

Like other fitness apps, including Peloton's, which starts at $12.99 a month for classes that don't need the company's connected spin bike, you don't need anything to use it. But, you'll get more out of it if you have any indoor cycle, treadmill, rowing machine or free weights, since some of the classes require equipment. But you don't need anything special. I've been riding a hand-me-down exercise bike, for example. Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. It's also part of the Premier Apple One plan, which costs $29.95 per month, and includes other Apple products like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and extra iCloud storage bundled together at a discount.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued Facebook, alleging that the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. FTC: Following a lengthy investigation in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy -- including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers -- to eliminate threats to its monopoly. This course of conduct harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition. The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp; prohibit Facebook from imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers; and require Facebook to seek prior notice and approval for future mergers and acquisitions. "Personal social networking is central to the lives of millions of Americans," said Ian Conner, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. "Facebook's actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition. Our aim is to roll back Facebook's anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive."

Google today launched an experimental app for Android that leverages AI to make communication more accessible for people with speech and motor impairments. Called Look to Speak, it tracks eye movements to let people use their eyes to select prewritten, customizable phrases and have them spoken aloud. From a report: Approximately 18.5 million people in the U.S. have a speech, voice, or language impairment. Eye gaze-tracking devices can provide a semblance of independence, but they're often not portable and tend to be expensive. The entry-level Tobii 4C eye tracker starts at $150, for instance. To address this need, speech and language therapist Richard Cave began collaborating with a small group at Google to develop Look to Speak. The app, which is available for free and compatible with Android 9.0 and above, enables users to glance left, right, or up to select what they wish to say from a phrase list. With Look to Speak, people can personalize the words and sentences on their list and adjust eye gaze sensitivity settings. Google says the app's data remains private and never leaves the phone on which it's installed.

At the end of a record-setting year of news consumption, Amazon Fire TV said local TV stations in 12 U.S. cities will be added to Amazon's news app, with another 90 on deck for 2021. From a report: The initial dozen stations are in New York, LA, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Boston, San Francisco and Seattle. The roster includes CBSN Chicago, ABC7/WABC-TV New York, KIRO7 Seattle, and News 12 New York. In a year marked by Covid-19, a presidential election and racial unrest, overall news consumption has surged 48%, according to Nielsen. Amazon's news app offers free live and on-demand news from ABC News Live, CBS News, Reuters, Cheddar and other providers. The ad-supported app is built into Fire TV streaming media players and smart TVs in the U.S. Local broadcast stations have faced major challenges during the streaming boom, as the pay-TV bundle shrinks and viewership and ad revenues continue to decline. Due to a number of technological and industry-relations issues, most large station groups have not put station signals online in a coordinated fashion, though they stream select content on social media or their own websites.

Growl is being retired after surviving for 17 years.

Its page on GitHub explains: Growl is a notification system for OS X. Growl has been around since 2004, and was originally called Global Notifications Center. The name was changed to Growl (like the noise a dog makes) since we felt the name Notifications Center was too geeky. We were wrong about that haha.

Growl was meant as a proof of concept which became something more for a long period of time. Before Growl was made developers either had to pop up a very basic window or some other ugliness nobody liked. Working with developers on Adium and Colloquy who wanted to implement their own custom notifications into their applications is what birthed this project.

Growl is a retired project, we couldn't think of another thing to change which would be substantial enough to bring out a new updated release. Growl is stable and should work for as long as intel based programs work. Anyone who wants to run Growl is free to do so in an unsupported fashion.
Lead developer Christopher Forsythe writes at 336699.org: With the announcement of Apple's new hardware platform, a general shift of developers to Apple's notification system, and a lack of obvious ways to improve Growl beyond what it is and has been, we're announcing the retirement of Growl as of today.

It's been a long time coming. Growl is the project I worked on for the longest period of my open source career... There's even a SourceForge project for Global Notifications Center still out there if you want to go find it... Without Growl I do not know that we would have any sort of decent notification system in OS X, iOS, Android or who knows what else...

For developers we recommend transitioning away from Growl at this point. The apps themselves are gone from the app store, however the code itself still lives. Everything from our rake build system to our code is available for use on our GitHub page.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is making a big push to entice fans of Zoom over to Microsoft Teams with a new all-day video calling option that can be used for free. While the software giant launched Microsoft Teams for consumers on mobile earlier this year, it's now bringing Teams' friends and family features to the desktop and web allowing you to create a Microsoft Teams meeting for up to 300 friends and family that can run all day free of charge. You won't need a Microsoft Account or the Microsoft Teams app to join calls, as you can join free via a web browser. Microsoft Teams will also support seeing up to 49 friends or family members in a gallery view or through its Together Mode feature that puts you side by side in a virtual environment. With Thanksgiving just a week away, it's clear Microsoft is positioning Teams as a way for families to connect virtually during the pandemic.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bay-area based startup Profitboss is pitching itself as the "easiest, fastest, and most convenient system to get back your customers from third party [services]." Free to restaurants, the service (which launched in 2018) lets restaurants open their own digital storefront. Profitboss CEO Adam Guild likes to compare his service to Shopify and the terms of agreement thread the same point: Profitboss, or "Placebull" deems itself a "virtual marketplace" that connects users to local restaurants.

The way it breaks down is this: The service is free for restaurants for pickup orders, and users are charged a $1.50 fee which Profitboss takes as a cut. For delivery orders, Profitboss sends orders to the API of apps such as DoorDash and charges restaurants a $7 fee, which works out to be cheaper than delivery apps' usual fee and can be split with the customer. The idea is that both the restaurant and the customer end up saving money in fees. Uber Eats, for example, charges users at least $5 in fees (and sometimes more) on top of the food itself being charged at a premium to cover Uber's 30 percent commission.

Profitboss isn't a panacea for all the gig economy's ills, however. While it seeks to cut gig companies out of one part of the equation and help restaurants, it also uses gig workers from Postmates and Doordash to actually deliver orders, Guild said. "In the world of e-commerce, Shopify has millions of merchants but most orders are actually fulfilled by Amazon fulfillment centers," Guild told Motherboard. "In the same sense that Amazon fulfills Shopify orders, DoorDash fulfills our orders but it's just a flat fee so there's a higher profit margin there." Guild said Profitboss can reduce the amount of time drivers spend waiting for orders while increasing their tips and overall earnings because, he claims, "customers are more willing to be generous with a gratuity and we're able to pass that entire tip to the driver."

Parler, which calls itself a "viewpoint-neutral" social network and is growing popular among conservatives who feel mainstream social platforms are censoring them, is now topping the free app download charts, according to both Apple and Sensor Tower. From a report: With Twitter and other mainstream social media apps more strictly enforcing rules against election-related falsehoods, more permissive, often right-leaning platforms have seen a surge of interest. The app for Newsmax, a right-leaning news network, also began surging on the download charts after all the major networks, including Fox News, called the election for Biden. It remains to be seen if the gains are more than temporary, but the shift has certainly raised eyebrows.

In a new essay at EFF.org, Cory Doctorow re-visits HP's anti-consumer "security updates" that disabled third-party ink cartridges (while missing real vulnerabilities that could actually bypass network firewalls).

Doctorow writes that it was just the beginning: HP's latest gambit challenges the basis of private property itself: a bold scheme! With the HP Instant Ink program, printer owners no longer own their ink cartridges or the ink in them. Instead, HP's customers have to pay a recurring monthly fee based on the number of pages they anticipate printing from month to month; HP mails subscribers cartridges with enough ink to cover their anticipated needs. If you exceed your estimated page-count, HP bills you for every page (if you choose not to pay, your printer refuses to print, even if there's ink in the cartridges). If you don't print all your pages, you can "roll over" a few of those pages to the next month, but you can't bank a year's worth of pages to, say, print out your novel or tax paperwork. Once you hit your maximum number of "banked" pages, HP annihilates any other pages you've paid for (but continues to bill you every month).

Now, you may be thinking, "All right, but at least HP's customers know what they're getting into when they take out one of these subscriptions," but you've underestimated HP's ingenuity. HP takes the position that its offers can be retracted at any time. For example, HP's "Free Ink for Life" subscription plan offered printer owners 15 pages per month as a means of tempting users to try out its ink subscription plan and of picking up some extra revenue in those months when these customers exceeded their 15-page limit. But Free Ink for Life customers got a nasty shock at the end of last month: HP had unilaterally canceled their "free ink for life" plan and replaced it with "a $0.99/month for all eternity or your printer stops working" plan...

For would-be robber-barons, "smart" gadgets are a moral hazard, an irresistible temptation to use those smarts to reconfigure the very nature of private property, such that only companies can truly own things, and the rest of us are mere licensors, whose use of the devices we purchase is bound by the ever-shifting terms and conditions set in distant boardrooms. From Apple to John Deere to GM to Tesla to Medtronic, the legal fiction that you don't own anything is used to force you to arrange your affairs to benefit corporate shareholders at your own expense. And when it comes to "razors and blades" business-model, embedded systems offer techno-dystopian possibilities that no shaving company ever dreamed of: the ability to use law and technology to prevent competitors from offering their own consumables. From coffee pods to juice packets, from kitty litter to light-bulbs, the printer-ink cartridge business-model has inspired many imitators.

HP has come a long way since the 1930s, reinventing itself several times, pioneering personal computers and servers. But the company's latest reinvention as a wallet-siphoning ink grifter is a sad turn indeed, and the only thing worse than HP's decline is the many imitators it has inspired.

Owners of iPhones and iPads will soon be able to play Fortnite again, via a cloud service, the BBC has discovered. From a report: Nvidia has developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs in the mobile web browser Safari. Apple will not get a cut of virtual items sold within the battle royale fighting title when played this way. Apple is embroiled in a legal fight with Fortnite's developer Epic, which led the iPhone-maker to remove the game from its iOS App Store. Epic has claimed that the 30% commission Apple charges on in-app gaming purchases is anti-competitive. But Apple has accused Epic of wanting a "free ride". The case is due to go to trial in May and could take years to be resolved. Papers filed in the case indicate that Fortnite had 116 million users on iOS, 73 million of whom only played it via Apple's operating system. Unlike Android, Apple does not allow games or other apps to be loaded on to its phones or tablets via app stores other than its own. But it does not restrict which third-party services can run within Safari or other web browsers available via its store.

New rules from the Trump administration restricting skilled foreign workers are unnerving U.S. startup hubs, as founders and investors say the limitations will hamstring their ability to recruit top-tier talent to grow their businesses [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; free syndicated source]. From a report: The changes to the H-1B visa program announced in October will make qualifying for the work visas much tougher and compel employers to pay foreign workers drastically higher wages. Those rules hit especially hard for technology startups, whose founders and rank-and-file are often immigrants and which usually pay employees a lower salary but compensate with stock options. Many salaries under the new rules start at $208,000, even for inexperienced workers. "It's already expensive, it was already a high bar, and we are making it prohibitive," Kate Mitchell, co-founder of venture-capital firm Scale, said of the H1-B program. The administration has said the rules are designed to ensure U.S. workers get priority for jobs. "For too long, foreign worker programs have been abused at the expense of American workers," a spokesperson for the Labor Department said. The new rules "will help put an end to these harms." The H1-B rules are the latest in a string of immigration restrictions dating back to the travel ban against citizens from predominantly Muslim countries that Mr. Trump issued a week after his inauguration.

The cumulative effect has left some tech startups weary of doing business here, founders say. Some founders say they are shifting hiring and growth plans away from the U.S., establishing engineering hubs in Eastern Europe and sending new recruits from American universities who would require a U.S. visa to work instead at satellite offices in Canada. Nearly a third of all venture-backed startups are founded by immigrants, according to a 2016 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. More than half of startups valued at $1 billion or more have at least one immigrant founder, according to a 2018 paper from the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. Several of the highest-valued venture-backed companies today, including payments company Stripe and stock-trading app Robinhood, have at least one immigrant founder and collectively thousands of employees. Much of the high-tech industry has long wanted overhauls to the H-1B program so companies have an easier path to obtain visas in a competitive hiring environment. The administration says low-cost foreign workers are taking jobs from Americans.

"The Linux Foundation has formed a new group to provide public health authorities with free technology for tracking the spread of the coronavirus and future epidemics," writes Business Insider. Launched in July, the group has already released two apps "that notify users if they've been in contact with someone who has tested positive with COVID-19." Since these apps are open source, people can contribute code and customize them, allowing regions with similar needs to collaborate, general manager at Linux Foundation Public Health, Dan Kohn, told Business Insider. Developers that want to build an app off these projects can access or download the source code.

These apps take advantage of technology launched by Apple and Google, which can be integrated into any app, that uses Bluetooth on people's smartphones to track who a user has been in close proximity with, without identifying the specific people. If anyone tests positive for COVID-19 and uploads that information to a database run by a local public health authority, any user who has been in close contact with that person will get a notification through their app saying they may have been exposed — again, without identifying who has COVID-19. If someone knows that they may have been exposed, they can either self-quarantine or get tested.

"Essentially we think exposure notification could have a big impact on reducing the overall rate of exposure," Kohn said. An Oxford University study in April said that if about 60% of the population used a contact tracing app, it could grind the diseases spread to a halt. Researchers on the team also found that digital contact tracing can cut down spread even at much lower levels of usage.

Apple has launched Apple Music TV, a free 24-hour curated livestream of popular music videos that will also include "exclusive new music videos and premiers, special curated music video blocks, and live shows and events as well as chart countdowns and guests," according to the announcement. From a report: Apple Music TV will be available to U.S. residents only on the Apple Music app and the Apple TV app. It can be found at apple.co/AppleMusicTV and in the browse tab in the Apple Music and Apple TV app. The service premiered Monday morning with a countdown of the top 100 all-time most-streamed songs in the U.S. on Apple Music. On Thursday (October 22), it will celebrate the upcoming release of Bruce Springsteens's "Letter to You" album with an "all day Bruce takeover" featuring music-video blocks of his most popular videos, an interview with Zane Lowe, anchor of Apple Music's radio station, and a special livestream fan event.

The Verge's senior news editor complains that without permission, Windows 10 restarted to install "unsolicited, unwanted web app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook onto my computer." OK, it's not as bad as when my entire computer screen got taken over by an unwanted copy of Microsoft Edge. That was truly egregious. No, this time Microsoft is merely sneaking unwanted web apps onto my PC — and using my Windows 10 Start Menu as free advertising space. Did I mention that icons for Microsoft Office apps have magically appeared in my Start Menu, even though I've never once installed Office on this computer?

These aren't full free copies of Office, by the way. They're just shortcuts to the web version you could already access in any web browser of your choice, which double as advertisements to pay for a more fully featured copy... They're the latest proof that Microsoft doesn't respect your ownership of your own PC, the latest example of Microsoft installing anything it likes in a Windows update up to and including bloatware, and the latest example of Microsoft caring more about the bottom line than whether a few people might lose their work when Windows suddenly shuts down their PC. Luckily, I didn't lose any work today, but a friend of mine recently did...

Microsoft seems to think our computers are free advertising space, a place where it can selfishly promote its other products — even though they were told roundly in the '90s that even bundling a web browser was not OK. Now, they're bundling a browser you can't uninstall, and a set of PWA web apps that launch in that same browser. (Yes, they fire up Edge even if you've set a different browser as default.)

Google will officially transition users from Google Hangouts to Google Chat starting next year. The Verge reports: As part of the change, Chat, a messaging service previously only available to customers who pay for Google Workspace (the recent rebranding of G Suite), will become a free service that's available inside of Gmail and in a standalone app. And some Hangouts features will be going away ahead of its disappearance. The transition from Hangouts to Chat will begin sometime in the first half of 2021, when Google will offer tools to help automatically bring your Hangouts conversations, contacts, and chat history to Chat, according to a blog post. It's unclear what steps will be required for that migration, but Google says it will share guidance at some point.

The switch from Hangouts to Chat will take place gradually, and there will be a period of time when both messaging services are still available. Eventually, all free users and Workspace customers will be moved over to Chat. Once that's done, then Chat will fully replace Hangouts. As for why you'd want to upgrade from Hangouts to Chat before you're forced to, there are both carrots and sticks. On the plus side, Google says Chat not only offers features like direct and group conversations you might be familiar with from Hangouts, but it can also let you more easily plan and collaborate with others. Google also announced that it is planning to remove some specific Hangouts features, such as the ability to manage texts and phone calls from Hangouts. They're also planning to remove Google Voice support from Hangouts early next year, as well as no longer letting you call phone numbers from Hangouts.