MikeChino writes: Is Apple branching out into clever clothing? On January 1, 2019, the tech giant was awarded an original design patent for "Fabric." First filed for in September 2016, the "Fabric" patent shows a swatch of a ridged material in gray, dark gray, and white to represent contrasting appearances. Apple has filed for several patents in the last few years related to combining technology with fabric, but this is the first glimpse we've had at what that fabric might look like. The "smart" fabric could sense environmental changes, warn the wearer of various events, and/or respond to pressure and touch.

As Dwell notes, "Apple's other fabric-related patents have involved a jacket that sends tactile or audible signals to visually and hearing impaired users -- so they can walk around without a cane or guide dog -- and a force-sensing fabric with interwoven circuits that could be used in a glove to track a wearer's vital signs and control devices wirelessly."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple CEO Tim Cook published a letter to investors today warning of weaker than expected first-quarter earnings, citing "fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated." The weakened demand came primarily from China, although Cook notes that "in some developed markets, iPhone upgrades also were not as strong as we thought they would be." In his letter, Cook offers several explanations for the lower earnings guidance: earlier launch timing of the iPhone XS and XS Max compared to the iPhone X, the strength of the US dollar, supply constraints due to the number of new products Apple released in the fall, and overall economic weakness in some markets. But the core issue remains simple: people just aren't buying as many new iPhones as Apple hoped. All in all, Apple's revised Q1 guidance forecast is dropping by up to $9 billion in revenue compared to its original estimate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: AT&T customers will start to see a 5G logo appear in the corner of their smartphone next year -- not because they're using a 5G phone connected to a 5G network, but because AT&T is going to start pretending its most advanced 4G LTE tech is 5G. According to FierceWireless, AT&T will display an icon reading "5G E" on newer phones that are connected to LTE in markets where the carrier has deployed a handful of speed boosting -- but still definitively 4G -- technologies. The "E," displayed smaller than the rest of the logo, refers to "5G Evolution," the carrier's term for networks that aren't quite 5G but are still faster than traditional LTE. AT&T pulled the same stunt during the transition to LTE. "The company rolled out a speed-boosting 3G tech called HSPA+, then got all of its phone partners -- even Apple -- to show a '4G' logo when on that kind of connection," reports The Verge.

A reader shares a report from The Verge: Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some of its 2018 iPad Pros are shipping with a very slight bend in the aluminum chassis. But according to the company, this is a side effect of the device's manufacturing process and shouldn't worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad's performance in any practical way. Apple does not consider it to be a defect. The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro's metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple. Both sizes of the new iPad Pro can exhibit it.

Those who are annoyed by the bend shouldn't have any trouble exchanging or returning their iPad Pro at the Apple Store or other retailers within the 14-day return window. But it's not clear if swaps will be permitted outside that policy. I've asked Apple if it has communicated with stores about the issue, as I've read some accounts of employees telling people it's accidental damage and warrants an AppleCare+ claim (and deductible) to replace. That shouldn't be the case for a slight bend. Apple also says it has not seen a higher-than-normal return rate for the 2018 iPad Pro so far.

In September, a nonprofit deployed a multimillion-dollar floating structure designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean. But, according to CBS News, the 2,000-foot-long structure hasn't picked up any plastic waste. Slashdot reader pgmrdlm shares the report: A floating device sent to corral a swirling island of trash in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii has not swept up any plastic waste. But the young innovator behind the project said Monday that a fix was in the works. Boyan Slat, 24, who launched the Pacific Ocean cleanup project, said the speed of the solar-powered barrier isn't allowing it to hold on to the plastic it catches. The plastic barrier with a tapered 10-foot-deep screen is intended to act like a coastline, trapping some of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic that scientists estimate are swirling in the patch, while allowing marine life to safely swim beneath it. The garbage patch isn't an island and it's even difficult to see with the naked eye, "60 Minutes" reported in September -- it's a vast soup of floating debris, much of it tiny and below the surface.

According to MacRumors forums, some users are complaining of a display issue that causes a bright spot to appear right above the Home button on some 2017 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models. The first complaints popped up in April 2018. From the report: According to iPad Pro users who have the problem, it appears to be an issue with uneven backlighting in that area. MacRumors can confirm the problem, as we have a 10.5-inch iPad Pro on hand that appears to be experiencing the same issue outlined on the forums. Customers have been complaining of the problem for months now, though it continues to be unclear how many iPad Pro models may be impacted by the issue. It is not known if a similar issue will impact the new 11 and 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro models, as these devices are too new and the problem appears to surface after several months of usage.

Multiple users who were affected with the bright spot on their screens have been able to take their iPad Pro models to Apple for a replacement, but users who are no longer under Apple's one-year warranty or AppleCare+ have not had luck getting a free replacement device. Out of warranty, Apple is asking customers to pay the display replacement fee, priced at $449 for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and $599 for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

DarkRookie2 shares a report from Ars Technica: Many users of Logitech's Harmony Hub smart home hub and remote were recently met with a nasty surprise. The device's latest firmware update, version 4.15.206, reportedly cuts off local access for Harmony Hubs. As a result, many users who created home automation and smart home systems using third-party APIs haven't been able to control many, and in some cases, all of their connected IoT devices. Logitech began pushing out firmware update 4.15.206 last week, its release notes stating that it addresses security and bug fixes. Users immediately flocked to Logitech's community forms to complain once they realized the systems they built up to control their smart home devices essentially became unresponsive. Users with Homeseer and Home Assistant APIs have reported parts of their systems broken, preventing them from controlling things like smart TVs, sound systems, and more using the Harmony Hub and its remote. In a statement to Ars, a Logitech representative confirmed that local access was removed in the latest Harmony Hub firmware update for security reasons: "The XMPP interface was used as part of the setup process and was pointed out as an insecure communication. We removed that interface as part of an effort to make to improve the Hub security. That interface was never designed to be used by third parties. The reason for the firmware update was to make the Harmony Hub more secure, therefore we do not have an official downgrade option. We recommend that users do not try to prevent the automatic firmware update process. We update the firmware as security issues are discovered, so users preventing the automatic firmware update process would not benefit from these future fixes."

Cydia, the App Store for jailbroken devices, is shutting down purchases as its creator moves to shut down the store entirely in the near future. "Cydia's creator Saurik made the announcement on Reddit after a bug was discovered in the platform that may have put user data at risk," iPhonehacks reports. "This bug prompted Saurik to clarify the issue and reveal that he has been planning on shutting down Cydia for quite a while now." From the report: The founder clarifies that the bug only puts a limited number of users at risk who are logged into Cydia and browse a repository with untrusted content -- a scenario which Saurik has strongly advised against right from day one. Plus, he also says that this is not a data leak and he has not lost access to PayPal authorization tokens. Coming to the harsh reality, Saurik says that he has been looking to shut down Cydia Store before the end of this year. The reports of a data leak have acted as a catalyst to bring the timetable further up. There are multiple reasons as to why he is looking to shut down the service including the fact that he has to pay for the hefty hosting bills from his own pocket.

Saurik has already gone ahead and shut down the ability to buy jailbreak tweaks in Cydia. This means that one can no longer use the Cydia Store to buy jailbreak tweaks on a jailbroken iPhone. On the bright side, Saurik does intend to allow users to download jailbreak tweaks that they have already paid for. Saurik will also make a more formal announcement about the shutting down of Cydia sometime soon. Do note that this change relates only to Cydia Store and not Cydia the installer which is used to install tweaks on a jailbroken device. The latter will continue to work as usual.

Last week, Samsung introduced its latest smartphone, the Galaxy A8s. Not only is it the first phone of theirs with a laser-drilled hole in the display for the front-facing camera sensor, but it is also their first phone to ditch the headphone jack. Slashdot reader TheFakeTimCook shares a report from Mac Rumors that takes a closer look at the move and the hypocrisy behind it: [The A8s] is also Samsung's first smartphone without a headphone jack, much to the amusement of iPhone users, as Samsung has mocked Apple for over two years over its decision to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016, a trend that has continued through to the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. While on stage unveiling the new Galaxy Note 7 in 2016, for example, Samsung executive Justin Denison made sure to point out that the device came with a headphone jack. "Want to know what else it comes with?" he asked. "An audio jack. I'm just saying," he answered, smirking as the audience laughed. And earlier this year, Samsung mocked the iPhone X's lack of a headphone jack in one of its "Ingenius" ads promoting the Galaxy S9. Samsung isn't the first tech giant to mock Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack, only to follow suit. Google poked fun at the iPhone 7's lack of headphone jack while unveiling its original Pixel smartphone in 2016, and then the Pixel 2 launched without one just a year later.

Thelasko quotes a report from Ars Technica: A half century ago, computer history took a giant leap when Douglas Engelbart -- then a mid-career 43-year-old engineer at Stanford Research Institute in the heart of Silicon Valley -- gave what has come to be known as the "mother of all demos." On December 9, 1968 at a computer conference in San Francisco, Engelbart showed off the first inklings of numerous technologies that we all now take for granted: video conferencing, a modern desktop-style user interface, word processing, hypertext, the mouse, collaborative editing, among many others. Even before his famous demonstration, Engelbart outlined his vision of the future more than a half-century ago in his historic 1962 paper, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework."

To open the 90-minute-long presentation, Engelbart posited a question that almost seems trivial to us in the early 21st century: "If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display, backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day, and was instantly responsible -- responsive -- to every action you had, how much value would you derive from that?" By 1968, Engelbart had created what he called the "oN-Line System," or NLS, a proto-Intranet. The ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet itself, would not be established until late the following year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The year was 2010 and the future of mobile computing was looking bright. The iPhone was barely three years old, Google's Android had yet to swallow the smartphone market whole, and half a dozen alternative mobile operating systems -- many of which were devoutly open source -- were preparing for launch. Eight years on, you probably haven't even heard of most of these alternative mobile operating systems, much less use them. Today, Android and iOS dominate the global smartphone market and account for 99.9 percent of mobile operating systems. Even Microsoft and Blackberry, longtime players in the mobile space with massive revenue streams, have all but left the space. Then there's Jolla, the small Finnish tech company behind Sailfish OS, which it bills as the "last independent alternative mobile operating system." Jolla has had to walk itself back from the edge of destruction several times over the course of its seven year existence, and each time it has emerged battered, but more determined than ever to carve out a spot in the world for a truly independent, open source mobile operating system.

Jolla's Sailfish OS rose from the ashes of Nokia and Intel's ill-fated collaboration, MeeGo. The MeeGo project launched in 2010 in an attempt to merge Intel's Linux-based Moblin OS and Nokia's Maemo software platform into a single open-source mobile operating system that could take on Google. By 2011, Android had already surpassed Nokia in the smartphone market, a fact that wasn't lost on Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop, who in a memo described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Nokia only ever released one phone running MeeGo: the Nokia N9, which ended up being well received despite its limited release. But it was too little, too late. By 2011, Nokia was bleeding talent and it was clear that MeeGo wasn't going to keep the company competitive in the rapidly changing smartphone market. In a last-ditch effort, Nokia struck a partnership with Microsoft to provide the hardware for its next generation of Windows Phones, abandoning MeeGo entirely. The same couldn't be said for those developers who had worked on MeeGo and, before that, an open source mobile OS called Mer, based on Intel's Maemo system. In October 2011, three developers that had worked on Mer sent a message on a mailing list calling for the creation of a "MeeGo 2.0." At the same time, developer Sami Pienimaki and two others left Nokia to found their own company, which would use this new version of MeeGo as the basis for an open source mobile OS. And thus, Sailfish was born. In a cheeky homage to the "burning platform" memo, Pienimaki and his fellow defectors decided to name their company Jolla, a Finnish word connoting a small boat or life raft. Jolla has since turned to Russia and China, both of which were hungry for a secure alternative to Google-based systems. In late 2016, Sailfish OS achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate us. Around the same time, Sailfish was also making moves in China. In early 2017, the Sailfish China Consortium gained the exclusive rights and license to develop a Chinese OS based on Sailfish.

shanen writes about Vitaminwater's latest "publicity stunt," where they will pay $100,000 to one select contestant who can live without their smartphone for a year: All you have to do is come up with the most amusing entry [about how you will spend 365 days without the device] and have sufficient willpower to give up your smartphone for a year. They obviously have to pick a power user to make it interesting, but that's not the reason I'm disqualified. I would just read more books, which is boring from their perspective. So maybe you want to share your idea here? If it's really good, you don't have to worry about someone stealing it. After all, you'd have the evidence that it was your idea first, but you might be able to refine your entry while amusing the mob. The company will reportedly give you a 1996 cellphone to use in times of emergencies. Also, they will reward you with $10,000 if you are able to get through 6 months. According to Tech Times, contestants can use computers or desktops, "but not smartphones or tablets, even those owned by other people, or anything which the candidate can scroll or swipe on." Always-listening smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, are permitted.

To make sure the candidate doesn't cheat, Vitaminwater will subject them to a lie-detector test at the end of the year.

After securing a win in court earlier this week to ban Apple's older phones, Qualcomm is trying to get the newer iPhones banned too. "According to the Financial Times, Qualcomm has now asked Chinese courts to issue an injunction that bans Apple from selling the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR within the country due to the same case of possible patent infringement," reports The Verge. From the report: The new filing will escalate the companies' legal conflict in China, where Apple has so far ignored a court-ordered sales ban. Apple claims the ban only applied to phones running iOS 11 and earlier. Since its phones have now been updated to iOS 12, Apple believes they can remain on sale, and so it has continued to sell them. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese court's order doesn't specifically mention any version of Apple's operating system. That doesn't necessarily mean Apple is wrong, but it does mean that there's more to be hashed out.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm, according to several new Apple job listings that task engineers to design and develop a layer 1 cellular PHY chip -- implying that the company is working on actual, physical networking hardware. Two of the job posts are explicitly to hire a pair of cellular modem systems architects, one in Santa Clara and one in San Diego, home of Qualcomm. That's alongside several other job postings Apple has listed in San Diego for RF design engineers. The Information, which spotted the first job posting, cites sources that go a step further, claiming that Apple is not only potentially working to develop its own modem, but is in fact specifically targeting it for use in future iPhones, with the company looking to leave longtime partner Intel behind in favor of its own, in-house solution.

According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.

The Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog, known as the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the majority of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents fail to delete the personal data they collect from travelers' devices. Last year alone, border agents searched through the electronic devices of more than 29,000 travelers coming into the country. "CBP officers sometimes upload personal data from those devices to Homeland Security servers by first transferring that data onto USB drives -- drives that are supposed to be deleted after every use," Gizmodo reports. From the report: Customs officials can conduct two kinds of electronic device searches at the border for anyone entering the country. The first is called a "basic" or "manual" search and involves the officer visually going through your phone, your computer or your tablet without transferring any data. The second is called an "advanced search" and allows the officer to transfer data from your device to DHS servers for inspection by running that data through its own software. Both searches are legal and don't require a warrant or even probable cause -- at least they don't according to DHS. It's that second kind of search, the "advanced" kind, where CBP has really been messing up and regularly leaving the personal data of travelers on USB drives.

According to the new report [PDF]: "[The Office of the Inspector General] physically inspected thumb drives at five ports of entry. At three of the five ports, we found thumb drives that contained information copied from past advanced searches, meaning the information had not been deleted after the searches were completed. Based on our physical inspection, as well as the lack of a written policy, it appears [Office of Field Operations] has not universally implemented the requirement to delete copied information, increasing the risk of unauthorized disclosure of travelers' data should thumb drives be lost or stolen." The report also found that Customs officers "regularly failed to disconnect devices from the internet, potentially tainting any findings stored locally on the device." It also found that the officers had "inadequate supervision" to make sure they were following the rules. There's also a number of concerning redactions. For example, everything from what happens during an advanced search after someone crosses the border to the reason officials are allowed to conduct an advanced search at all has been redacted.

An anonymous reader writes: Karspesky security researcher Sergey Golovanov writes about recent cybertheft incidents involving hardware backdoors planted by criminals. Each attack had a common springboard: an unknown device directly connected to the company's local network. In some cases, it was the central office, in others a regional office, sometimes located in another country. At least eight banks in Eastern Europe were the targets of the attacks, which caused damage estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Hardware backdoors are cheap and immune to antivirus. A firmware modified OpenWrt based router can provide covert remote access, painless packet captures, and secure VPN connections with the flip of a switch. Will a flashlight and a ladder be common tools of computer security someday? After the cybercriminals entered a organization's building, connected a device to the local network and scanned the local network seeking to gain access to the resources, they proceeded to stage three. "Here they logged into the target system and used remote access software to retain access," writes Golovanov. "Next, malicious services created using msfvenom were started on the compromised computer. Because the hackers used fileless attacks (PDF) and PowerShell, they were able to avoid whitelisting technologies and domain policies. If they encountered a whitelisting that could not be bypassed, or PowerShell was blocked on the target computer, the cybercriminals used impacket, and winexesvc.exe or psexec.exe to run executable files remotely."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The world relies on encryption to protect everything from credit card transactions to databases holding health records and other sensitive information. A new report from the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says we need to speed up preparations for the time when super-powerful quantum computers can crack conventional cryptographic defenses. The experts who produced the report, which was released today, say widespread adoption of quantum-resistant cryptography "will be a long and difficult process" that "probably cannot be completed in less than 20 years." It's possible that highly capable quantum machines will appear before then, and if hackers get their hands on them, the result could be a security and privacy nightmare.

Today's cyberdefenses rely heavily on the fact that it would take even the most powerful classical supercomputers almost unimaginable amounts of time to unravel the cryptographic algorithms that protect our data, computer networks, and other digital systems. But computers that harness quantum bits, or qubits, promise to deliver exponential leaps in processing power that could break today's best encryption. The report cites an example of encryption that protects the process of swapping identical digital keys between two parties, who use them to decrypt secure messages sent to one another. A powerful quantum computer could crack RSA-1024, a popular algorithmic defense for this process, in less than a day. The U.S., Israel and others are working to develop standards for quantum-proof cryptographic algorithms, but they may not be ready or widely adopted by the time quantum computers arrive.

"[I]t will take at least a couple of decades to get quantum-safe cryptography broadly in place," the report says in closing. "If that holds, we're going have to hope it somehow takes even longer before a powerful quantum computer ends up in a malicious hacker's hands."

An anonymous reader writes from a report via ZDNet: Three academics from Northeastern University and three researchers from IBM Research have discovered a new variation of the Spectre CPU vulnerability that can be exploited via browser-based code. The vulnerability, which researchers codenamed SplitSpectre, is a variation of the original Spectre v1 vulnerability discovered last year and which became public in January 2018. The difference in SplitSpectre is not in what parts of a CPU's microarchitecture the flaw targets, but how the attack is carried out. Researchers say a SplitSpectre attack is both faster and easier to execute, improving an attacker's ability to recover code from targeted CPUs. The research team says they were successfully able to carry out a SplitSpectre attack against Intel Haswell and Skylake CPUs, and AMD Ryzen processors, via SpiderMonkey 52.7.4, Firefox's JavaScript engine. The good news is that existing Spectre mitigations would thwart the SplitSpectre attacks.

Tokyo Telemessage, Japan's last pager provider, has announced that it will end service to its 1,500 remaining users in September 2019. It will bring a national end to telecommunication beepers, 50 years after their introduction. The BBC reports: The once-popular devices are able to receive and show wireless messages. Users would then find a phone to call the sender back. Developed in the 1950s and 1960s, they grew in popularity in the 1980s. By 1996, Tokyo Telemessage had 1.2 million subscribers. However, the rise of mobile phones rendered the pager obsolete, and few remain worldwide. Emergency services, however, continue to use the reliable technology -- including in the UK.

Intel has filed a lawsuit last week against one of their former hardware engineers, alleging they tried to steal confidential chip blueprints to potentially pass on to Micron. "The lawsuit [...] is the latest twist in the tale of Intel and Micron's difficult partnership over 3D XPoint memory," reports The Register. From the report: The legal complaint, aimed at former employee Doyle Rivers, alleges that having "secretly" accepted a position at Chipzilla's former bedfellow, Micron, Rivers had a go at taking confidential trade and personnel data with him as he left. Intel alleged that a few days before leaving, "Rivers tried to access and copy a 'top secret' designated Intel file that Intel's electronic security system blocked from being copied."

Chipzilla said the document was related to what it was at pains to say is its "independent" work to productize the 3D XPoint tech into its Optane product line. In other words, blueprints secret to Intel. No one outside Intel, "including Micron" had been privy to such data, the complaint alleged. Intel's security system stopped the file from escaping, but according to the complaint, that did not stop Rivers from allegedly hoovering up a selection of personnel files into a USB device plugged into his computer. The chipmaker also claimed that Rivers "aggressively" recruited his former colleagues to join him on his grand adventure to pastures new. Intel demanded that Rivers return the USB drive, but he apparently "never responded" to them. Instead, "he handed the USB device over to his new employer." It was later discovered by a forensic investigator that it had been wiped. Intel is now demanding "a neutral forensic investigator" be allowed to take a look at Rivers' PC to see what was on there, and when exactly the USB stick was erased. There's a deadline of November 16 for Rivers to agree to this probing.