The Lighthouse IT Podcast - October 21st, 2022
This week, Matt & Griff discuss the impending Musk Twitter takeover, Kanye purchasing Parler, what's going on with Meta and their new headset, another round of TikTok copying, Apple becoming a bank, DALL-E 2 integration into Microsoft, Netflix's ad tier, the massive SHEIN data leak, and more!
Listen here!
News
Musk and Twitter will soon be one in the same, officially
- On Tuesday, representatives of the billionaire notified Twitter through a letter that he intends to move forward with the tumultuous deal, confirming earlier reports that things were back on track.
- "We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by the April 25, 2022, Merger Agreement, on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth therein"
- Elon Musk has big plans for Twitter, and they include people paying money to tweet, bots getting the boot, and a social media network that doesn't care what you say as long as it's legal.
- "There's no WeChat equivalent outside of China... You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we'll be a great success."
- Musk continues to refer to the future of the Twitter app as "The everything app."
- The trial between Elon Musk and Twitter that was scheduled to begin on October 17th is suddenly on hold. Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted the Musk side's request for a stay, pending the closing of their deal for Musk to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, just like the two sides agreed to on April 25th
"I'mma let you finish, but Parler had the best social media network of all time"
- - Kanye West, probably.
- Kanye West is buying controversial social media platform Parler.
- Parler was shut down by Amazon Web Services after stating it was spreading hate speech around the January 6 riots.
- 'Ye was kicked off of Twitter recently for making antisemitic remarks. He has since said he doesn't believe in antisemitism. So yeah, he's a crazy person.
Meta 's new Headset and Horizon Worlds failing short
- Meta's VR social network Horizon Worlds — the company's flagship "metaverse" app — is suffering from too many quality issues and even the team building it isn't using it very much.
- In short, there are too many bugs (even though they have billons in dev) and this has taken a lot of the social immersion out of the 'game'
- Meta announces Quest Pro, a $1,499 "mixed reality" device coming Oct. 25
- Meta's New Headset Will Track Your Eyes for Targeted Ads
The internet space race
- China asked Elon Musk not to sell Starlink within the country
- Elon Musk revealed that figures in the Chinese government have asked him directly to withhold Starlink access within China.
- Starlink's service map shows no plans to deploy in China.
- Amazon's set to launch its prototype internet satellites early next year
- Amazon is getting ready to launch two test satellites for its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation, built to compete with services like SpaceX Starlink and OneWeb.
What's the next thing TikTok can copy? Photos apparently
- TikTok is now copying apps like Instagram with 'Photo Mode'
- Innovative, I know.
- The update allows TikTok users to share multiple still photos in a post, along with captions of up to 2,200 characters. These can also feature music.
Apple Becoming a Bank and the iPad Dock
- Apple looks even more like a bank now that it's adding a savings account to Apple Card
- The new savings account will earn interest on Daily Cash rebates from purchases as well as money deposited from a linked account or your Apple Cash balance.
- There's also no specific timeline for when consumers can access these savings accounts.
- Apple reportedly wants to turn the iPad into a smart display with a new dock
- The company is working on a dock that would you let you place your iPad on a desk.
- Weirdly, they are promoting it as more of a Smart-Display, like and Amazon Echo Show.
- The company is also working on other devices in the smart home space, including an updated version of the HomePod.
- This may let users make calls through FaceTime and gain hands-free control of smart home devices.
- A docking station may be introduced next year.
Microsoft 365 looking to integrate DALL-E 2
- Remember us chatting about how cool DALL-E was? Apparently, it's coming to Microsoft Office — errr Microsoft 365 (since MS is re-naming the well-known productivity suite to 365, which shouldn't be confusing at all).
- Imagine instead of ClipArt, you can type what image you want in your presentation or Word document!
Check out the DALL-E Prompt Book
Netflix's ad tier will cost $6.99 a month and launch in November
- Netflix Basic with Ads will be available in 12 countries.
- In exchange for making you watch an average of four to five minutes of ads per hour, Basic with Ads will give subscribers access to a large swath of Netflix's programming. Not the platform's full catalog, though.
- Each of Netflix's ads will run anywhere from 15-30 seconds, and will be placed before and during programs.
- and video quality is capped at 720p…
The best part of remote work? Having two jobs
- Equifax did some reconnaissance on some 1,000 remote workers recently.
- The result was the termination of 24 employees.
- Those 24 employees were caught using their Equifax equipment to do work for Equifax, but also for another company in which they were full time employees.
Warning labels for your smarthome
- The White House is looking to create a labeling initiative for internet of things (IoT) devices such as those used in your smart home setup to indicate potential security risk.
- They are working with EU (who is trying to also adopt similar standards) as well as NIST (responsible for security frameworks/best practices) to create a widely adoptable standard for labeling.
- Given that security is an ever-moving standard, this is a waste of time.
SHEIN busted for covering up data breach
- Rewind to June of 2018, Zoetop (SHEIN's parent company's name at the time - it's SHEIN Distribution Corporation here in the US) when Zoetop's payment processor identified that a lot of customers reporting fraud all had a major thing in common - purchases from the fast fashion retailer.
- It was discovered that they were using weakly Hashed passwords
- Logged Data fully/recklessly (which included Credit Card Numbers in plain text with CVV and expiration)
- Had No Incident Response Plan (and may still not have one)
- Had its payment processing application, which fed the payment gateway the payment information, compromised, so all credit cards could be stored elsewhere
- THEN when it was time to face the facts…
- Stated that 6.4 million users were affected. It was actually closer to 39 million
- Stated that all 6.4 million users were contacted. It actually only contacted those users in Canada, US, and Europe (those with massive penalties).
- Assured customers that no credit card information was taken. Despite indisputable proof that the data had been extricated.
- As a result of a case levied against them by the State of New York, they've been assessed a fine of $1.9m
Teens experiencing gas in droves, making it #1 app on Apple Store
- Gas is an app for teens designed to focus on positivity with teens within their schools.
- Only available in a few states
- Users respond to anonymous poll questions, which feature friends as options.
- Respondents receive "coins" for answering questions, which can be used elsewhere within the platform
Peek-a-boo courtesy of Zoom
- Running Zoom on a Mac? You should update pretty soon to 5.12.0 or later.
- Devices that would enable the Zoom Layers API would allow a debug port to open. This port required no authentication to see what was going on.