I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers. Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.
All servers got deleted and the offsite backups too because the remote storage was mounted just before by the same script (that is a backup maintenance script).
In a nutshell, one bad command erased all his customers’ data as well as all his backups.
Wow.
UPDATE: The story was a viral campaign. Words cannot express how much I hate this. Here’s the Snopes link, if you want the details
Kirk McElhearn debuts a new Macworld column called “Hey Apple, fix this!”
The first of this series focuses on this issue with the Mac’s Notes app:
Apple made a bewildering design decision: They don’t allow users to choose a default font and size in the OS X version of the app. On iOS, the Notes app inherits the overall font settings you choose; if you choose to increase the size of the system font, in Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size, then the font in Notes gets bigger, as it does in apps such as Mail, Reminders, and others. (Not all apps support this Dynamic Type setting.) But there is no such system font size option on OS X. So all notes start out in a tiny (to me) font.
I love the idea for this series. There certainly is no shortage of this sort of issue on both the Mac and iOS. Kirk’s daylighting of this sort of issue can only help bring it attention, get it fixed.
Here’s an issue I’d like to see daylighted in Kirk’s column:
Every so often (perhaps one in five calls), my phone rings and iOS refuses to recognize my slide to answer. The slider appears, but does not recognize my touch. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but once it goes in this mode, there’s no way for me to answer the call. But once the call goes to voice mail, my phone returns to normal.
I’ve done all the normal things, like restart the phone, hit the power button, nothing seems to help.
And I know I am not alone in this. I’ve gotten a wave of Twitter responses from folks experiencing the same issue, with some going as far back as iOS 6 and an iPhone 4s.
A national debate over smartphone encryption arrived in Sacramento on Tuesday as legislators defeated a bill penalizing companies that don’t work with courts to break into phones, siding with technology industry representatives who called the bill a dangerous affront to privacy.
The bill did not receive a vote, with members of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection worrying the measure would undermine data security and impose a logistically untenable requirement on California companies.
This is cooler heads prevailing. Just one bill among many, so this fight is ongoing.
Assembly Bill 1681 would authorize $2,500 penalties against phone manufacturers and operating system providers if they do not obey court orders to decrypt phones.
Note that 1681 was introduced by Assemblyman Jim Cooper and is a California state bill. Not to be confused with Burr-Feinstein, which is a “discussion draft” federal bill. And then there’s Cyrus Vance’s proposal for a New York anti-encryption bill.
On the flip side, there’s Ted Lieu’s H.R. 4528, a proposed federal bill that basically says a state can’t force a manufacturer or seller to change their product to enable surveillance.
Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization Ltd., the forensics unit of a little-known Japanese pinball company, is fast becoming the go-to guys when law enforcement needs to unlock smartphones. Its group chief executive officer has plans to keep the firm on the frontlines against terrorism.
Not a big surprise they have some of the world’s biggest law enforcement agencies as clients.
Teen interest in Apple’s iPhone continues to grow, according to data gathered by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster in the latest semiannual teen survey. 69 percent of teens surveyed own iPhones, up from 67 percent in the Fall 2015 survey. 75 percent of teens queried expect their next device to be an iPhone, up one percent from the previous survey.
This is very important. These are the people that Apple is relying on to purchase the iPhones of the future.
110 years ago next week, on April 18, 1906, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake centered near the city of San Francisco struck at 5:15 AM. The intense shaking toppled hundreds of buildings, but the resulting out-of-control fires were even more destructive.
There are signs that Gibson’s move to diversify isn’t working out as planned. Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded Gibson Brands (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) credit to junk status, and according to reports, the company has put up two of its Nashville warehouses for sale as a result.
Gibson has been in trouble for a long time. I’m not sure if they tried to buy their way out of it or tried to ignore it, but either way, it seems to be getting worse.
That case and others show how cyber-criminals have professionalized ransomware schemes, borrowing tactics from customer service or marketing, law enforcement officials and security firms say. Some players in the booming underworld employ graphic artists, call centers and technical support to streamline payment and data recovery, according to security firms that advise businesses on hacking threats.
I didn’t realize how “professional” these people have become.
Big fan of 2 Cellos, but this might be my favorite yet. If you are new to their work, check out their take on AC/DC’s Thunderstruck. Great production values, great musicianship.
Watch the video embedded below for a fantastic collection of iPhone secrets. My gut tells me there’s something new here for even the most knowledgeable iOS power user.
Here’s just one example. Have you ever had a number showing on the App Store icon, even though you’ve already applied all outstanding updates? Turns out you can reset the App Store mechanism that controls that badge.
Fire up the App Store, then tap the “Featured” icon in the lower left corner. Do this ten times quickly. You’ll see the screen reload. That’s it. This technique will work with any of the tab icons at the bottom of the App Store screen.
This sort of thing is incredibly geeky, which means it’s right up my alley. Love it!
If you haven’t already seen it, click here to watch one of seven new Apple Watch ads posted yesterday. In it, actress and designer Chloë Sevigny uses her Apple Watch to ping her iPhone.
In this post, Keir Thomas takes things one step further, showing you how to add the iPhone’s flash to the equation.
“It’s understandable why media on the web is like it is today,” Williams tells the Guardian. “That’s not to say there’s not a lot of great stuff out there, but a lot of people are dissatisfied with it. A lot of journalists who want to do great stuff are dissatisfied. Advertisers and brands are dissatisfied. We’re still stuck in some very naive thinking, with the idea that people consuming media means that’s what they want – it’s like, well, we put junk food in front of them and they ate that, so that must be what they want.”
Very interesting writing here. Ev Williams, founder of both Twitter and Medium, talks about feedback loops, the mechanisms that reward journalists for writing certain kinds of stories. If journalists are rewarded (with page views, which translates to dollars) for propagating junk food, junk food it shall be.
Today, numerous third-party Reddit clients were removed from the App Store by Apple for breaching clause 18.2 of the App Review Guidelines. This clause states that apps will be rejected if they contain “user generated content that is frequently pornographic”.
The official Reddit app, which launched last week and was featured by Apple on the App Store, currently remains in the App Store, but other Reddit clients including Narwhal, Antenna, Eggplant and BaconReader have all been removed for sale. These third-party Reddit clients were removed from Apple without any advance notice to developers, despite some of the apps being available on the App Store for well over a year. It should also be noted that many of these third-party apps, such as Narwhal, did have a filter to enable or disable NSFW content.
And:
Some of the third-party Reddit clients have now returned to the App Store. Both Narwhal and Antenna are now available in the App Store, but both have been updated to remove the NSFW toggle that used to be in their apps. It is our understanding that Apple’s objection is with the implementation of those NSFW toggles. Apple wants them removed from all Reddit apps so that if a user does want to view NSFW content, that toggle must be manually changed from the Reddit website.
I suspect this was a dawning realization prompted by someone at Apple playing with the official Reddit app. A light switch went on when they realized the NSFW content could be controlled from Reddit’s website and a decision was made to enforce a policy that already existed.
After six months of using an iPhone 6s, I’m afraid that I’ve completely stopped using 3D Touch, to the point where I forget it’s there. My opinion about how brilliantly implemented this feature is hasn’t changed a bit, but I feel like Apple needs to rethink the meaning of the 3D Touch in iOS 10 for it to be a more useful feature.
Everyone’s use-case and perception of value are different, of course, but, for me, 3D Touch is an interface accelerator. Unlike iPad, which is roomy enough to support a two-column view, iPhone can only show one. So, for example, to browse through random items in a list, on iPad I could just tap the items one after the other and skim quickly through whatever caught my eye. On iPhone, however, I had to tap, load the item, then tap back to the list. It’s perceptibly much slower.
Peek solves that problem for me in a very real way. I simply press a little harder on an item that may or may not interest me. If it does, I can pop right in, same as before. If not, I can relax, it goes away, and I can peek at whatever item I want next. No back, no forth, just peek, peek, peek. Perceptibly faster.
I think Jason and Rene, together, make the case that 3D Touch has huge potential but needs some thoughtful tweaks.
Here’s one example. When I try to delete an icon on my home screen, trying to press long enough to get the icon to wiggle so I can delete it, I inevitably take a few tries before I get that wiggle. It takes a subtle navigation between long press and peek. The problem is muscle memory. Here’s what I mean.
The best iOS gestures converts easily to muscle memory. As an example, pinching to zoom in and out requires no thought. Neither does swiping up and down to scroll, or side to side to change pages. Want to return to your first page? Press the home button. Or double-tap to bring up the app switcher. All of these gestures required training at first, but were so distinct from other gestures, they converted quickly to muscle memory.
Part of the problem with 3D Touch is that peeks and long presses are very similar to taps. The difference is a subtle change in pressure, but not one in the dynamics of finger movement. This is harder to convert to muscle memory and harder to remember.
Imagine an elevator with a single button, where you pressed softly for one floor, longer for another floor, and press really hard for a third floor. Think you’d end up going to the wrong floor a lot?
I do think 3D Touch is an important iOS mechanic. A single hard press on the Apple Maps icon to reveal a shortcut to mark my location or quickly get directions home in invaluable. This is just going to take time. Time for developers to find and implement the use cases that make it shine, and time for us users to internalize the goodness.
The Apple Watch Sport band takes up nearly four times as much wrist area as a Watch case.
By this, he means that the Apple Watch body consumes just the top part of your wrist real estate, while the band goes all the way around, with lots of “wasted” wrist real estate.
Obviously, this ratio will change depending on the user, but the primary point is that simply utilizing the top of our wrist is not optimal for wrist wearables. While the top part of the wrist is ideal for viewing data, the rest of our wrist can still be used for other purposes.
Including additional sensors, battery volume, and other components directly into Watch bands will better utilize wrist real estate. Instead of having the Watch case be the only “smart” piece, Apple will likely begin selling Watch bands that go much further than just representing pieces of fashion.
And:
We likely got a glimpse of this future when looking at the New Yorker’s profile of Jony Ive which mentioned that he admitted much of Apple’s Watch R&D was focused on the bands and not the rectangular Watch case.
Interesting post, lots of solid conjecture. Two obvious watch band solutions that strike me:
Batteries that can charge your Apple Watch and, in a pinch, your iPhone, too.
Better sensors for more accurately measuring pulse rate.
Mac malware removal is essential these days. Malware authors are targeting OS X with increasing frequency and even with more Mac malware activity now than ever before, many users are still unprotected against these threats. MacScan protects your Mac by scanning for and removing malware – providing much-needed security and privacy in the face of online threats.
MacScan will find and clean malware threatening your Mac, including:
Join Christy Turlington Burns, ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, and Heather Armstrong, founder of dooce.com, as they share their experiences training for the Boston Marathon. The group runs to raise awareness for Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit organization founded by Christy that is dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother, everywhere. Apple’s Jay Blahnik will moderate a Q&A about their shared passion for running and their experiences training with Apple Watch.
The Verge: >This morning, a fleet of self-driving trucks arrived in the Dutch port of Maasvlakte, completing a cross-continent journey that organizers say demonstrates the future of transport in Europe. The experiment is known as the European Truck Platooning Challenge, and involved trucks from six different manufacturers traveling in miniature convoys. A driver in the lead vehicle of each convoy sets the speed and the route, while the other trucks follow automatically, a Wi-Fi connection keeping their braking and acceleration (but not steering) in sync. > >This isn’t a fully-automated system, but it’s a clear step toward this goal and has tangible benefits of its own. Platooning, as the method is known, could mean less congestion, fewer truck accidents, and reduced fuel consumption.
I think this is where self-driving vehicles will really take off and drive adoption. There are still a lot of hurdles to overcome but businesses like trucking have a lot of incentives to getting greater acceptance of self-driving technology.
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Many seem to be under the assumption that there are no good Mac games. Sure, that was true a few years ago, but a lot has changed since then (Can a Mac be a gaming PC? is a great read). Turns out that 7 out of the 10 most-played games on Steam have a Mac version, and all the best indies support the Mac too. These top Mac games will show you how far Mac gaming has come.
Pretty impressive list. My favorites are all on here (including FireWatch and Braid), but there are many that are new to me.
If you have a few minutes, watch the video embedded below, the webcast of SpaceX’s CRS-8 Dragon launch and the subsequent landing of the reusable first stage on the floating drone raft.
Watch in full screen mode. It makes all the difference.
If you don’t have the time to watch the whole thing, jump to about 18:50 for the liftoff, then about 27:22 to watch the first stage attempt its landing on the drone ship (named “Of Course I Still Love You”. Really.)
The deafening applause you hear is the emotional outburst from a control room full of SpaceX employees who have made this attempt 4 times before, only to watch their dreams crash and burn. This is a beautiful video, full of beautiful moments.
This fascinating anecdote, posted by Reddit member tangoshukudai:
It is actually a funny story. When they were prototyping the iPad, they ported the iOS calc over, but it was just stretched to fit the screen. It was there all the way from the beginning of the prototypes and was just assumed by everyone at apple that it was going to be shipped that way. A month before the release, Steve Jobs calls Scott Forstall into his office and says to him, “where is the new design for the calculator? This looks awful” He said, “what new design?” This is what we are shipping with. Steve said, “no, pull it we can’t ship that”. Scott fought for it to stay in, but he knew he had to get their UI team involved to design a new look for the calculator but there was no way they could do it in that short time frame, so they just scrapped it. It has been such low priority since then that no one cares to work on it since there is more important things to work on. (Source: I worked at Apple)
Anyone at Apple know if this is true? Definitely an interesting anecdote.
