GTA Online and the Loading Wheel of Doom
GTA Online launched today and mostly what I saw of it was a loading wheel. Some notes on a rough launch night, an old modem, and a weirdly fitting news day.
Wood Glue Beat Apple's Fingerprint Sensor
A German hacker collective cracked Touch ID with a photographed fingerprint and some wood glue days after the iPhone 5s launch, and the security angle got buried under launch-weekend hype.
Touch ID, Wood Glue, and a Billion Dollar Weekend
A week after the iPhone 5s launched, the Chaos Computer Club cracked Touch ID with a fake fingerprint made from wood glue. Some thoughts on why that's less alarming than it sounds, plus a GTA V sales number that's hard to process.
iOS 7.0.2 and the Lockscreen Hole Nobody Should Have Shipped
Apple's iOS 7.0.2 quietly patches a fifteen-second lockscreen bypass anyone could pull off with your phone in their hands, plus a rant about the parallax motion sickness nobody warned us about.
The Lock Screen Bug Took Apple Six Days to Fix
Apple's iOS 7.0.2 patches the lock screen bug that let anyone into your photos without a passcode. I tried it on my own phone before the fix landed, and it worked.
Touch ID Lasted About Two Days
Touch ID launched Friday and was bypassed by Saturday. A look at how the Chaos Computer Club's fake-fingerprint trick actually worked, and why that matters more than the keynote hype did.
Fingerprints, Wood Glue, and a Two-Day-Old Sensor
The Chaos Computer Club cracked the iPhone 5s's Touch ID sensor with a wood-glue fake fingerprint just two days after launch, and it's got me rethinking what "sub-epidermal" scanning actually means.
The iOS 7 Bug That Skips Your Passcode
There's a lock screen bug in iOS 7 that skips your passcode entirely and gets straight into your photos. I tried it myself last night, it works, and here's how to shut it off.
The Gold iPhone Is Already a $1,500 Item on eBay
A day after the iPhone 5s launch, the gold model is already flipping for absurd markups on eBay. Some notes on scalper math, Touch ID skepticism, and why I went home with a plain black one.
Why I Skipped the iPhone 5s Line
The iPhone 5s went on sale today and there was a real line outside the Apple Store. I skipped it — here's why Touch ID has me hesitating, plus some iOS 7 vertigo complaints.
Voyager 1 and the Slowest Modem in the Universe
NASA confirmed this week that Voyager 1 has left the solar system, and I got stuck thinking about the seventeen-hour signal delay and its 69 kilobytes of memory instead of the new iPhones.
Twitter Announced Its IPO the Only Way It Knows How
Twitter announced its confidential IPO filing this week with nothing but a tweet, and that says more about the company than any actual paperwork will for months.