Android 9 Pie (Go edition) arrives this fall

With Android Pie now available (on a handful of devices, at least), Google’s prepping the launch of its low-powered counterpart. Android 9 Pie (Go edition) — the successor to the more pithily named Android Go — will be hitting arriving on devices this fall.

Like Android Oreo (Go Edition), the latest OS is a stripped down version of its latest full operating system, designed to run on devices with 1GB of RAM. The more modest hardware requirements make it a compelling match for low-cost devices and thus a solid option for developing markets.

Among other things, it will offer faster boot times than standard Android and will free up space on the phone’s storage. There are new security features on board as well, along with a dashboard for monitoring data consumption. There are a number of updates to individual Go apps, too, including the ability to read sites’ content aloud in Google Go and navigation in Maps Go.

According to Google, the Android (Go edition) is currently available on 200 devices in more than 120 countries.

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“Unhackable” BitFi crypto wallet has been hacked

The BitFi crypto wallet was supposed to be unhackable and none other than famous weirdo John McAfee claimed that the device – essentially an Android-based mini tablet – would withstand any attack. Spoiler alert: it couldn’t.

First, a bit of background. The $120 device launched at the beginning of this month to much fanfare. It consisted of a device that McAfee claimed contained no software or storage and was instead a standalone wallet similar to the Trezor. The website featured a bold claim by McAfee himself, one that would give a normal security researcher pause:

Further, the company offered a bug bounty that seems to be slowly being eroded by outside forces. They asked hackers to pull coins off of a specially prepared $10 wallet, a move that is uncommon in the world of bug bounties. They wrote:

We deposit coins into a Bitfi wallet
If you wish to participate in the bounty program, you will purchase a Bitfi wallet that is preloaded with coins for just an additional $10 (the reason for the charge is because we need to ensure serious inquiries only)
If you successfully extract the coins and empty the wallet, this would be considered a successful hack
You can then keep the coins and Bitfi will make a payment to you of $250,000
Please note that we grant anyone who participates in this bounty permission to use all possible attack vectors, including our servers, nodes, and our infrastructure

Hackers began attacking the device immediately, eventually hacking it to find the passphrase used to move crypto in and out of the the wallet. In a detailed set of Tweets, security researchers Andrew Tierney and Alan Woodward began finding holes by attacking the operating system itself. However, this did not match the bounty to the letter, claimed BitFi, even though they did not actually ship any bounty-ready devices.

Something that I feel should be getting more attention is the fact that there is zero evidence that a #bitfi bounty device was ever shipped to a researcher. They literally created an impossible task by refusing to send the device required to satisfy the terms of the engagement.

— Gallagher (@DanielGallagher) August 8, 2018

Then, to add insult injury, the company earned a Pwnies award at security conference Defcon. The award was given for worst vendor response. As hackers began dismantling the device, BitFi went on the defensive, consistently claiming that their device was secure. And the hackers had a field day. One hacker, 15-year-old Saleem Rashid, was able to play Doom on the device.

Well, that's a transaction made with a MitMed Bitfi, with the phrase and seed being sent to a remote machine.

That sounds a lot like Bounty 2 to me. pic.twitter.com/qBOVQ1z6P2

— Ask Cybergibbons! (@cybergibbons) August 13, 2018

The hacks kept coming. McAfee, for his part, kept refusing to accept the hacks as genuine.

The press claiming the BitFi wallet has been hacked. Utter nonsense. The wallet is hacked when someone gets the coins. No-one got any coins. Gaining root access in an attempt to get the coins is not a hack. It's a failed attempt. All these alleged "hacks" did not get the coins.

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) August 3, 2018

Unfortunately, the latest hack may have just fulfilled all of BitFi’s requirements. Rashid and Tierney have been able to pull cash out of the wallet by hacking the passphrase, a primary requirement for the bounty. “We have sent the seed and phrase from the device to another server, it just gets sent using netcat, nothing fancy.” Tierney said. “We believe all conditions have been met.”

The end state of this crypto mess? BitFi did what most hacked crypto companies do: double down on the threats. In a recently deleted Tweet they made it clear that they were not to be messed with:

I haven’t really been following this Bitfi nonsense, but I do so love when companies threaten security researchers. pic.twitter.com/McyBGqM3bt

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) August 6, 2018

The researchers, however, may still have the last laugh.

Claiming your front door has an unpickable lock does not make your house secure. No more does offering a reward only for defeating that front door lock, and repeatedly saying no one has claimed the reward, prove your house is secure, especially when you’ve left the windows open.

— Alan Woodward (@ProfWoodward) August 14, 2018

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iOS 12 beta 7 pulled after reports of bugs, crashes

Beta software always presents a risk going in. Companies usually recommend not installing it in primary devices for that very reason. For those who like to live on the edge, however, the latest beta of iOS 12 presented some very real issues.

Reports of buggy performance lag, freezes and crashes were pretty widespread for the seventh beta of the upcoming mobile operating system, causing some pundits to recommend skipping the install outright.

It’s a marked change over previous builds, which largely seemed to run fairly smoothly. Seems there were enough reports to cause Apple to pull the over the air update, however, less than 24 hours after it first started hitting devices. All of this doubly surprising, given the fact that iOS is likely near final, at this point, with the public version of the software expected to arrive at some point next month (along with, one hopes, some new hardware).

We’ve reached out to Apple to find out when we can expect beta 7 to rise again.

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Group FaceTime isn’t arriving in September

Group FaceTime’s launch is going to be delayed. The feature, which supports up to 32 people in a single audio or video call, was pulled from the latest iOS 12 and macOS Mojave betas released on Monday, and will be held until a later date, says Apple. According to the company’s Release Notes for both operating system updates, Group FaceTime will “ship in a future update later this fall.”

The feature was introduced at this year’s WWDC, with the goal of capitalizing on the growing popularity of larger group video chat sessions – especially among younger people. Today, apps like Houseparty, Instagram, and Snapchat, among others, cater to this audience with group video calling support of their own. But they don’t offer support for up to 32 people – a feature that requires a lot of technical overhead, and apparently, more time to prep than Apple had planned.

Apple didn’t offer any official explanation for the delay, but early beta testers have said the feature has been working well so far. Of course, it’s one thing to go from supporting some 4 million beta testers, to supporting everyone who installs the iOS 12 and macOS Mojave updates.

It’s not unusual for Apple to hold back features from its September OS releases. With iOS 11, Apple held back AirPlay 2, Messages in iCloud, and Apple Pay Cash, for example.

 

 

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Here’s where to sign up to get Fortnite for Android

Fortnite’s journey to Android has been a complicated one. A few months back, Epic Games promised to bring the wildly popular survival sandbox title to the mobile OS, but only after side stepping the traditional process for doing so. Fittingly, while it now appears to be live for Android, the process of actually getting the game is, well, complicated.

If you want to get started, you’ll need to sign up for a beta of the game. That’s right, while the title has been up and running on any number of other platforms (including its three-day head start on Samsung devices), it’s still in beta on Android. Give Epic your email address, and they’ll send you an invite…”as soon as you can play.”

How soon is that? Well, there appears to be a waiting list at the moment. How long all of this will take is anyone’s guess, though the company says it can take “a few days” for all of it to go through. Since the whole thing is bypassing the Google Play store (much to Google’s chagrin), you’ll need to install the Fortnite Installer APK to install Fortnite the game.

I went through a similar process to get the game on the Note 9. It’s weird and kind of annoying, but when it’s done, it’s done.

Oh, and you’ll want to make sure your phone is compatible. Epic’s got the full list here, which seems to include a pretty broad range, including Pixel devices and handsets from Huawei, LG, Nokia, OnePlus, Xiaomi, ZTE and Razer.

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Qualcomm settles antitrust case in Taiwan

Qualcomm may have lost its long-winded deal to buy NXP on account of China and it continues to battle lawsuits worldwide, but the company does have a dose of good news out of Asia today after it settled an antitrust investigation in Taiwan.

The U.S. chip firm was hit with a record $773 million fine last October when it was accused of monopolistic practices, but Qualcomm and the Taiwan Fair Trade Commission (TFTC) said today they have reached an agreement that sees the charges dropped in exchange for the firm investing $700 million in the country.

The TFTC will keep hold of the NTD 2.73 billion ($93 million) portion of fines that Qualcomm paid this summer in exchange for a promise that Qualcomm will make the $700 million investment over the next five years, according to Bloomberg.

Qualcomm didn’t explicitly mention that figure in its statement on the agreement, but it did outline its proposed “commercial initiatives:”

Qualcomm will drive certain commercial initiatives in Taiwan over the next five years for the benefit of the mobile and semiconductor ecosystem, SMEs and consumers, including 5G collaborations, new market expansion, start-up and university collaborations and the development of a Taiwanese center for operations and manufacturing engineering. Qualcomm will work with the TFTC and sister agencies within the Taiwanese government to implement these initiatives and investments.

Crucially, the deal will also allow Qualcomm to continue with its current pricing strategy in Taiwan. That pricing policy has triggered a wave of lawsuits worldwide which has left Qualcomm reeling — indeed, its falling share price made it a target for an ultimately unsuccessful takeover attempt from Broadcom.

The most notable pending legal spat is with Apple.

In January 2017, Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion claiming that it is charged a hefty price for royalties on technologies that Apple said the chipmaker should not be associated with. It also alleged that Qualcomm had been withholding payments it was owed.

The Apple suit came quickly after an antitrust lawsuit filed against Qualcomm by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for using its position as the leading supplier in the handset market to charge fees on technologies that amount to industry standards.

Earlier this year, Qualcomm was hit with a $1.23 billion fine from the EU for abusing its market position between 2011 and 2016, relating to its relationship with Apple. That figure works out to 4.9 percent of Qualcomm’s revenues in 2017.

Qualcomm has also sued Apple, alleging that the iPhone X infringes on Palm patents which are now owned by the chipmaker. But the hostility seems likely to hurt Qualcomm’s bottom line since Apple has reportedly been building iPhone prototypes that eradicate usage of Qualcomm technologies altogether.

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Apple hints at plan to build a car after all as it rehires ex-Tesla engineering head

If you’re looking for hints that Apple might deliver on its long-rumored plan to develop its own car, a significant one landed this week after it emerged that Doug Field — Apple’s former VP of Mac hardware engineering — has rejoined from the company after a spell with Tesla.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball broke the news of Field returning to Apple following five years at Tesla where he oversaw the production of the Model 3.

Apple confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch that it has rehired Field, but it declined to give information about this role. Gruber reports, however, that Field will link up with Bob Mansfield, the former colleague he worked with on the Mac hardware business. Mansfield just so happens to be the person who is heading up Apple’s ‘Project Titan’ car project, having been tempted back and out of retirement, so there’s a lot to dig into.

There’s been plenty of speculation about the secretive Project Titan, most notably it was reported in 2016 that Apple had abandoned plans to develop a car. Instead, it was said to be focused on autonomous driving technology. While the project remains pretty opaque and tough to gauge, the hiring of the man who oversaw Tesla production — right after Apple poached a Waymo self-driving engineer — is a pretty interesting clue that suggests Apple might be reviving plans to develop a car once again.

Ex-Apple employee charged with stealing self-driving car secrets

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