Guess what?!? I’m fully vaxxed! I’m back home, and I’m on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, Apple’s products get ransomed, a bunch of kids in the UK sue TikTok, Apple and Google testify in front of the Senate, and lots of new Apple products. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

APPLE TARGET IN $50 MILLION RANSOMWARE ATTACK

It was bound to happen at some point, even if it was an indirect attack. On the same day of Apple’s Spring Loaded event, the Russian hacking group, REvil, aka Sodinokibi (pick a name) issued a ransom demand to Quanta, a Taiwanese company that manufactures Apple products. Yes, the hackers issued the ransom on the same day of Apple’s event and leaked schematics of the latest iMac to prove their booty was legit. Quanta admitted they were hacked and refused to pay up the $50 million. REvil has now gone directly to Apple and are giving them until May 1st to pay the $50 million or they’ll leak schematics and design documentation for the M1, the 2021 MacBook, and an unnamed upcoming MacBook update. I hope Apple doesn’t pay. If another corporation builds something on their designs Apple can site IP infringement to the other company. That purple iPhone looks hot!

CHILDREN SUE TIKTOK FOR USE OF THEIR DATA

I might be a tad bit dramatic here, but the former UK commissioner for Children’s Affairs, Anne Longefield, has sued TikTok for how it handles and processes children’s data. The legal claim was originally brought by an unnamed 12-year old child and has been filed on behalf of all children in the UK. If the kids win, each child in the UK could be entitled to billions of pounds. TikTok has been fined by the US Federal Trade Commission for how it handles data to the tune of $5.4 million and has also been fined by South Korea. Stay tuned, someone in the US is looking at this case and wondering if and when they’ll file a class action.

APPLE AND EL GOOG UNITE IN FIGHT AGAINST US SENATE

Apple and Google were on the hill yesterday defending their stranglehold on the fees app developers pay to have their applications listed in the stores. For those in the audience, Apple and Google charge app developers 30% on sales of apps and in-app purchases. But, let’s Uber off, and doesn’t charge a fee for physical products. (One of our apps used to sell physical products) A plethora of software companies including Tile, Spotify, and Match dragged themselves up Capitol Hill to complain. Match, the company that owns Tinder, paid Apple $500 million in App Store fees last year. Goodness gracious!

BONUS: LOTS OF COOL NEW STUFF ANNOUNCED AT APPLE’S SPRING LOADED

While REvil was having people proofread its ransom note before sending it to Apple, lovers of the fruit company logged onto their local Internet and tuned in to Apple’s Spring Loaded event. And, there was lots of cool stuff gawk at and drool over.

The new iMac is impossibly thin and looks like a big ole iPad Pro. The computer is only 11.5mm thin, that’s thinner than my laptop and is powered by Apple’s M1 processor. It also comes with a 1080p camera for FaceTime calls, and is seriously thin. I want one. Preorder on April 30th, and have it in mid-May.

There’s also a purple iPhone. I picked up the blue iPhone 12 last year, and I really like the device. It’s the same iPhone as last year, but it’s purple dammit! Preorder on April 30th, and have it in mid-May.

There’s also a new iPad Pro coming out. Again, powered by Apple’s M1 chip the new iPad Pro will be running a new version of iPadOS and at 32 cores on the chip is basically a laptop computer. The new iPad Pro also has a Thunderbolt port that is capable of delivering 40Gb per second. And…it uses USB-C, not a lightning port. But I’m sure somewhere in there they’re cables will be flimsy but cost $30. Preorder on April 30th, and have it in mid-May.

Lastly, Tile is pissed, a day before Tile testified before the US Senate, Apple announced something called an AirTag. AirTags are small BlueTooth devices you can attach to keys, wallets, and children to help you find things after you lose them. You can attach an AirTag to your keys and use the Find My app to locate it in the house. The AirTag even has a speaker that will ding if you can’t find your keys under all the laundry. You can preorder on April 23rd and have it on the 30th.

I have been having a ball in Asheville, North Carolina. I’ve eaten well, I’ve enjoyed the scenery, and Asheville is a very cool town. I’m in the hood with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, the Supreme Court literally saved the software development world with a monumental ruling (if you’re about that life), Facebook competes with the cool kids by setting up a Hotline, and Uber and Lyft struggle just as Outside 2.0 goes through beta test. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

SOFTWARE COMPANIES DODGE A BULLET AFTER SUPREME COURT DECISION

The biggest story of the week! On Monday, the US Supreme Court decided in favor of Google in a decade-long court case in which Oracle Corporation accused Google of infringing on its intellectual property involving Oracle’s Java programming language software and Google’s coding of Java application programming interfaces. Java is the primary language and runtime that runs on all Android devices. Oracle believed that Google should have licensed Java technology from Oracle. Instead Google looked at the Java specification and coded internals in its own code that would be compatible with Java APIs. This case is a big one. Because APIs and other types of software interfaces are how software companies write compatible software. One of the first known instances of a company writing software for an interface is Compaq writing a BIOS for when computers boot up. The Supreme Court ruled that Google’s use of Java’s API is considered fair use. If the Supreme Court ruled against Google, the entirety of the software world would have been turned upside down flooding court systems with lawsuits and essentially ruining competitive markets. There, I said it.

FACEBOOK JUMPS IN ON THE TALK GAME WITH HOTLINE

Yesterday, talk about hot of the Internets, Facebook’s experimental app division announced a ClubHouse competitor app called Hotline. Hotline gives users the ability to host live audio chats, gives host the power to mute some of its members and control audience participation. Hotline also goes one step beyond ClubHouse in that it provides live streaming as well. Hotline has a more formal app usage than ClubHouse’s laid back style. It’s geared towards more formal presentations and Q&As than ClubHouse. You can’t setup a Hotline yet, but you can join a waitlist when you can.

UBER AND LYFT STRUGGLE WITH DRIVER SHORTAGE PROBLEM

This time last year, Uber and Lyft struggled as people stayed home and didn’t that many rides. Their sales took a nose dive of 80% as people quarantined had nowhere to go. Now, as outside is beginning to open up (in a disturbingly big way), Uber and Lyft are facing another problem. There are no more riders than drivers. Riders are reporting longer wait times and higher fares as there are fewer drivers to go around. The driver shortage is to be expected. Although outside is opening and people are getting vaccinated, the risk of catching COVID hasn’t gone away. Fewer drivers are willing to take on the risk of ferrying passenger. Uber and Lyft are spending heavily to recruit drivers with Uber offering up to $250 million of driver incentives. Fewer drivers means more cash for those driving, and Uber is putting its money behind it.

Sometimes you have to be called into the chair at a moment’s notice. Facebook’s largest ever data breach happened over the weekend and Mark Starling is on the case for First News 570 listeners.

First, don’t panic.

Second, this leak comes from a breach Facebook encountered in 2019. The actual breach came from a vulnerability that gave hackers the ability to scrape user account details from the website. Facebook patched this vulnerability after it occurred in 2019. The data has been available in hacker groups for the last two years, but it wasn’t until last week that the data was made available for virtually free. Well, not for free, but $2.19.

Third, find out if you’re a victim by checking your email address at Have I Been Pwned?

(My email isn’t in this specific breach. It’s in others though.)

Facebook hasn’t come out with too many details concerning the breach other than, “why are you bringing up old stuff,” and it’s been patched.

The breach is massive, and global in scale.

Only (ONLY?!) 32 million account records are in the breach, 11 million from the UK, 6 from India, and others from elsewhere. The records contain names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personally identifiable data. The breach also contains…passwords. These passwords were tested by journalists at Business Insider by matching the user account names with the stolen passwords.

Other Tips

Some people may look at these breaches with a yawn, but if you are concerned, now might be a good time to change your Facebook and other social media account passwords. If the burden for keeping track of all of this information is too much, you may want to consider an online vault like 1Password.

Real Talk

Breaches have become a common occurrence. In most cases the breaches are because of negligent behavior on the service you are using due to keeping databases open to the public or keeping the default passwords for services in use. It’s good practice to follow these steps to enhance your security:

1. Change your passwords regularly.
2. Reduce the amount of PII you share on social media sites. Or any site for that matter.
3. Use Two Factor Authentication (2FA or MFA) when you can. Two factor authenticator uses a password and a text or email delivered code to ensure you are who you are at the time you login.

Guess what?. Yours truly will be First News 570’s home, Asheville, North Carolina. It’s Spring Break for the Mapp School of Higher Learning and we are breaking in North Carolina. It’s another week with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, Microsoft and the US Army collaborate on augmented reality combat, hackers ransomware campaigns evolve into extortion, and Joe Biden calls out Amazon on taxes during infrastructure pitch. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

EXTORTIONWARE ON THE RISE AS HACKERS LOOK FOR NEW SCHEME

It’s bad, but it’s true. The United States is still getting hit with high profile attacks. High profile exploits in Microsoft products or SolarWinds may garner headlines, but low profile ransoms are on the rise according to security experts. Extortionware is an evolution of hackers making individuals and organizations pay a ransom for embarrassing information about a corporate leader or in the case of the surgery chain, the Hospital Group, publishing potentially embarrassing before and after pictures of patients. Security companies estimate criminals make tens of millions of dollars a year specifically from extortion ware scams. One of the latest incidents involved a high positioned IT Director who was watching porn on his work computer. So, first; change your passwords. Second, install patches. Third, stop watching porn on your work computer.

MICROSOFT DOES GAMING x MILITARY TECH WITH HOLOLENS CONTRACT

Microsoft was won a whopping, $21.88 billion contract to outfit the US military with 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets. HoloLens is Microsoft’s augmented reality technology and will provide the US Army its Integrated Visual Augmentation System. They’ve been testing the technology since 2018, which will provide the Close Combat Force the ability to rehearse engagements in a mixed virtual and live environment before being deployed. The system has an amazing capability for being able to see through the Bradley fighting vehicle using the IVAS’ sensors. The 10 year contract comes after Google’s Glass product and Snapchat’s Goggles pivoted toward consumer use. Microsoft kept at the technology and has found an enthusiastic customer with the military. The contract is slated to last for 10 years.

BIDENS WAGS A FINGER AT AMAZON FOR PAYING TAXES

I’m interested to see what kind of blow back Bezos will make. Yesterday, President Joe Biden called out Amazon for not paying nary-a-penny in federal taxes. The President was pitching his $2 trillion, trillion with a ‘T’, infrastructure plan stating that a company making billions in profits shouldn’t be paying less in taxes than a firefighter or teacher who is paying 20% of their salary in taxes. I actually agree. In response, Amazon’s public policy and communications chief, Jay Carney, formerly of the Obama administration cited the research and development tax credit for the reason why Amazon pays no taxes. They spend all of their profits in R&D?

With great respect, Senator @ewarren, this isn’t correct about Amazon’s tax payments. But changing the law is certainly more productive than faulting companies for following it-and far better than threatening to break up American companies so they can't criticize elected leaders. https://t.co/borLvn5GZu

— Jay Carney (@JayCarney) March 31, 2021