#NC 622 Tech Stories From South American Travel, Maps Without Data, Dumb Question Corner, Security Bits

posted the photos of our Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu hike in Peru on Google Photos with links to both here Photos from South America – Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu. There’s no Chit Chat Across the Pond this week but Bart’s back next week to teach us Test Driven Development in Programming By Stealth. I was on Clockwise this week: relay.fm/clockwise episode #183 and on Let’s Talk Apple: lets-talk.ie Episode #43. I’ll regale you with tech stories from our travels in South America, Rally Barnard will give you a quick and very slick tip on how to get turn-by-turn directions without using any data while on international travel, in Dumb Question Corner I’ll answer Kurt’s question about how to automatically archive iTunes Podcasts. Bart was out ill this week so I did my first ever solo Security Bits.

mp3 download

Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday April 9, 2017 and this is show number 622.

I can’t tell you how good it is to be back at home. Steve and I had a fantastic time in the Galápagos Islands and hiking Machu Picchu and touring Peru, but there’s something about the smell of your own air at home that’s just wonderful.

Thanks to Allister and Bart

Before I get into things on the show I want to take a moment to thank Allister and Bart for holding down the fort while we were gone. Allister’s review of using the Apple Watch for swimming was really interesting, especially as we tried it out while snorkeling in the Galápagos Islands. We didn’t have much to benchmark around though so it wasn’t much of an experiment. I liked the idea of looking through the standard Mac apps; that’s always a good exercise. I loved Terry Vogelaar’s review of GhostReader for text to speech. First of all, what a cool tool. I’ve tried to use macOS’s built-in functionality to read things to me, and as Terry said, it works great unless it’s long form. No easy way to stop and start. When I was listening I was confused by Terry’s voice because it almost sounded mechanical. When he confessed he was using GhostReader I had to laugh at myself. But the funniest thing to me was that when I gave the shout out to Terry, I meant Terry Austin! He’s been promising me a review for at least a year now. But I’m glad at least A Terry answered the call.

I loved Bart’s Chit Chat Across the Pond with Dermot Daly from Tapadoo. I had heard Dermot on Bart’s awesome Let’s Talk Apple show before and really enjoyed his contributions. It was really cool to hear from inside a development house what it’s like dealing with Apple and their approval processes. It was great to hear such an optimistic view of things. They didn’t talk about this (much?) but Dermot is one of the co-founders of an Apple conference called Úll which is in Killarney, Ireland right near Bart. I’ve been planning on tricking Steve into going back to visit Bart in Ireland by using Úll as an excuse!

I had known that Bart would do a great job of the NosillaCast, of course, but that doesn’t mean I take his work for granted. I liked hearing his continued analysis about how his tech tools have helped him not just become healthy but stay healthy. I was poking around in some old photos and found the shot of Bart and me sitting across a real table at his house recording the only in-person Chit Chat Across the Pond we’ve ever done. It was long ago, and you would simply not recognize Bart in the photo if you met him today in his new and improved healthy condition. He’s an inspiration to us all!

Thank you so much, Allister and Bart, you made my vacation truly relaxing knowing the NosillaCastaways were in good hands.

My Summer Vacation

My goal is to not turn this episode into, “My Summer Vacation”, and yet there seems to be some interest in the trip. I created two photo albums on Google Photos that are the best of the trip, one for Galápagos and one for Peru. I’m really pleased with how Google Photos presents them and allows me to do pretty close to full resolution for free. Since I’m purposely sharing these photos with the world, I have no privacy concerns about what they do with my data, so it’s all good.

I did a little blog post about the two albums so you can head over to see them if you like. This is not mandatory, so it will not be on the final exam.

Photos from South America – Galápagos Islands and Machu Picchu

I will also be doing a segment in a few minutes, all about using tech in travel for the trip to South America. It’s sort of a hodge podge of what worked and what didn’t.

Chit Chat Across the Pond

There was no Chit Chat Across the Pond this week, as Bart has been under the weather, so next week will be a new Programming By Stealth episode where after a very long tease, he’s going to teach us about Test Driven Development, or TDD. This idea came up because listener Jill brought it up ages ago. Bart started studying it and he’s a convert now. I’m really looking forward to it, as I’ve been doing a little bit of it but not with the full rigor that I think we’re going to learn.

Clockwise

We got home from the trip on Tuesday and I found an email from Dan Moren of relay.fm asking if I’d be on Clockwise the next morning! It was madness to agree, but since the most awesome Mikah Sargent was going to be on, and we have an ironclad contract that one of us is not on without the other, I said yes. It was a super fun episode where we talked about Apple and their new focus on the pro market, we discussed the right lifetime for our gadgets, I worked in a discussion on how much tech to bring on vacation. Oh – and Lex Friedman was on it too and I’d never “met” him before so that was super fun. Check it out at relay.fm/clockwise episode #183.

Let’s Talk Apple

Bart was feeling under the weather this week as I mentioned so I offered to jump on Let’s Talk Apple to help carry the energy so he didn’t have to. I was surprised at how energetic he was on the show (I don’t think he needed my help at all!) It was great fun to chat with Gazmaz and Nick Riley (whom I hadn’t “met” before), and Bart about this last month’s Apple news. It was extra fun for me because the news was pretty much all new to me! Check it out at lets-talk.ie Episode #43.

Blog Posts

Tech Stories From Travel in South America

Turn by Turn Directions without Using Data – by Rally Barnard

Dumb Question Corner – How to Automatically Back Up Podcasts from iTunes

Patreon and Amazon

While we were gone on vacation, I decided not to charge the Patrons for those shows produced by Allister and Bart. Let’s be real though, people probably got more value from those shows than when I’m on! But it still didn’t seem right.

If you’d like to help support the show by pledging a small amount per show like Terry Austin did right before we left, head on over to podfeet.com/patreon and show your support. Maybe I shouldn’t have teased Terry for not doing a review…

Security Bits (Allison with help from Bart)

Followup – WikiLeaks continues to trickle out more Vault7 documents:

Wikileaks releases code that could unmask CIA hacking operations (code-named Marble) – arstechnica.com/… & nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
Wikileaks also released documents relating to a set of hacking tools the CIA uses to hack Windows PCs and by-pass counter-measures like AV while doing so (code-named Grasshopper) – arstechnica.com/…

Important Security Updates

Hot on the heals of iOS 10.3, Apple have released iPhone 10.3.1, which provides just a single security patch, but a vitally important one. A flaw has been discovered in the firmware shipped with Broadcom Wifi chips used in the iPhone which allows the phone to be hacked over wifi until you install 10.3.1 – arstechnica.com/…
- After the release of iOS 10.3.1, Apple issued a warning that a bug in the update could sometimes re-enable iCloud services you had previously disabled, and suggested customers check that they are not using more services than they want to – www.imore.com/…
Apple are not the only vendor selling phones with the Broadcom wifi chips with the vulnerable firmware, many Android devices use them too. While Google have released a patch, but as usual, that update is not making it’s way to many many phones that really need it – arstechnica.com/… & nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…

Important Security News

Apple have released an update to their Security White Paper (the document that describes the security and privacy architecture protecting Apple products and users). Tech Crunch have a nice summary of the changes – social.techcrunch.com/…
Security researchers demonstrate a powerful attack that will work against many smart TVs and requires not physical access – instead, the attack only requires the attackers to transmit over-the-air TV signals towards the TV, and depends on that fairly good assumption that most smart TVs contain old and out-dated open-source software with known bugs. The proof of concept was demonstrated against fully-patched Samsung TVs, but is not limited to Samsung TVs – arstechnica.com/…
Security researches examined Tizen, Samsung’s custom OS they use to power a broad range of their IoT products, an were horrified by what they found. Some choice quotes from the researchers: “It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen” & “Everything you can do wrong there, they do it” – arstechnica.com/…
Sophos are reporting that the AKBuilder malware is succeeding in compromising computers via RTF files and out-of-date versions of MS Word. Be sure you are running a supported versions of MS Office, and, that it is fully patched – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
Do not use the facial recognition lock feature on the new Samsung Galaxy S8 – it’s so poor it can be tricked by taking a photo of the phone’s owner, and displaying it on a smart phone, and waving that in front of the supposedly locked phone – nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
TMO warn that Find My Mac can be disabled by resetting the PRAM/NVRAM on a Mac. They suggest setting a BIOS password to prevent any hypothetical thieves from resetting the PRAM/NVRAM (Editorial by Bart – I took great umbrage at their chosen headline, it tricked me into thinking Find My Mac could used to hack my Mac, so I consider it misleading and OTT, the author disagrees) – www.macobserver.com/…
Security researchers find a new family of malware they are naming BrickBot which is successfully permanently bricking poorly designed/secured IoT devices (Editorial by Bart – a good reminder that IoT is still in it’s wild west phase) – arstechnica.com/…
Jonathan Zdziarski’s Little Flocker for Mac purchased by F-Secure – www.imore.com/…

Notable Breaches

Gamestop.com Investigating Possible Breach – krebsonsecurity.com/…

Palette Cleanser

CGP Grey’s humorously informative video explaining the complex process of how YouTube ads work – www.cgpgrey.com/…

That’s going to wind this up for this week. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter @podfeet. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com/. podfeet.com/patreon, podfeet.com/facebook, podfeet.com/googleplus, podfeet.com/amazon! And if you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.