China to Trump: Dump the iPhone for a Huawei

A China foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying dismissed yesterday’s damning report about spying on Trump’s unsecured iPhone, calling it, “fake news,” according to The South China Morning Post. She had a few other choice words for the president, suggesting he switch to a Huawei handset, or, failing that, just stop communicating.

The shade amounts to a pretty solid bit of trolling from the spokesperson, who added, “Seeing this report, I feel there are those in America who are working all-out to win the Oscar for best screenplay.”

The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2018

Yesterday’s New York Times report noted that, “American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.”

Trump shot back on Twitter this morning, attempting to correct the record, while stating that he didn’t have time to do so, adding that it was “soooo wrong.” The president also insisted, contrary to the report, that he only uses “government phones.”

Hua’s statement takes things a few steps further, while wading into various on-going U.S. bans against Huawei handsets and networking equipment over government spying concerns.

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Apple picks Thailand for its second retail store in Southeast Asia

Apple continues to increase its efforts in Southeast Asia’s fast-growing market after it picked Thailand as the location for its second Apple Store in the region.

A post on Apple’s website reveals that it will operate a retail store at the soon-to-open Iconsiam which is set to become Bangkok’s largest mall when it opens next month. The Apple Store is set to open its doors on November 10. An Apple representative confirmed to TechCrunch that the details on the website are indeed accurate.

The new store follows the opening of an Apple Store in Singapore last year, which marked the U.S. firm’s first official brick and mortar presence in Southeast Asia, a region of 650 million consumers that has more internet users than the U.S. population.

Apple doesn’t break out sales figures for Southeast Asia. The region is part of the ‘rest of Asia Pacific’ bracket which excludes Japan and China and accounts for around six percent of Apple’s global revenue.

That is a drop in the proverbial ocean for Apple, but Southeast Asia is one of the few parts of the world where smartphone sales continue to grow at a double-digit percentage. With its devices accounting for a minor share of the region’s markets, primarily due to pricing and a lack of carrier subsidies, it makes sense that Apple is stepping up its retail focus.

The Iconsiam mall which will house Bangkok’s first Apple Store is still under construction but scheduled to open next month

Apple’s official presence in Asia had been limited to China, Hong Kong and Japan until recent times when it opened stores in Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. TechCrunch understands from sources within the real estate industry that Apple is considering Indonesian capital Jakarta and Vietnam as its next store launch markets in Southeast Asia. It intended to open the Thai store as soon as last year but struggled to find a location that it deemed to be fitting for its store, we understand.

Right now, most countries in Southeast Asia are served by ‘licensed’ Apple stores from third-parties, unofficial retailers, Alibaba-owned e-commerce service Lazada and Apple’s own online store. Outside of the region, it has long tried to bring its iconic stores to India, but regulations on operating physical stores have hampered its progress.

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Trump has two ‘secure’ iPhones, but the Chinese are still listening

President Trump has three iPhones — two of them are “secure” and his third is a regular personal device. But whenever the commander-in-chief takes a call, his adversaries are said to be listening.

That’s according to a new report by The New York Times, which put a spotlight on the president’s array of devices — and how he uses them.

Trump reluctantly gave up his old and outdated Android-powered Samsung Galaxy phone when he took office in 2016 and was transitioned to Apple devices. iPhones have historically been seen as more secure than their Android counterparts. Although one of his devices is a regular iPhone that he can use to store his contacts, the two other iPhones for official business have been modified and locked down by the National Security Agency to prevent eavesdropping.

Except — even when you’re in the White House, you can’t escape the aging, ailing and insecure cell network that blankets the capital and the vast majority of the U.S.

A crucial cell network system that helps broker and pass information between networks — known as Signaling System No. 7 (or just SS7) — have made it easier in recent years for hackers to intercept phone calls and text messages. SS7 is the protocol that cell networks use to establish and route calls and texts, but SS7 so broken that codes used for two-factor authentication have been intercepted and used to break into and drain bank accounts.

Those largely unfixed flaws make it far easier for governments — and anyone else — to tap into calls as they’re being made. That includes China, Russia — and any reasonably knowledgable attacker with the resources to pull off a successful intercept.

Trump’s reliance on three iPhones may seem cumbersome, but it’s a step up from what his predecessor got.

President Obama once likened his government-issued iPhone — given to him during his second term — to a “play phone [that] your 3-year-old has.” It was modified so that it could receive email but couldn’t make calls, and didn’t have a camera or microphone that foreign adversaries could use to glean any knowledge that the president was working on. He wasn’t even allowed to text — not necessarily for technical reasons, but to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which requires high-ranking government officials to store their official communications.

As much as Trump has been given more leniency than Obama, the president is still supposed to receive new, clean devices every month to cut off any hidden persistent malware that could be lurking within. But that policy isn’t enforced as closely as it should be, the report says, because of the inconvenience of having to manually port over the old data to the new phone without accidentally transferring any lingering malware — if any.

Although flaws in SS7 remain an issue for the average person, they’re apparently no match for the president’s own terrible “opsec” — or operational security, an awareness of the threats that he faces and the effort to mitigate them. Even if the Chinese or the Russians aren’t listening to his calls, they could always try their luck by hanging around one of his golf courses — where the president sent staff into a scramble after losing one of his phones in a golf cart.

And this is someone we trust with the nuclear codes.

Trump’s new cyber strategy eases rules on use of government cyberweapons

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Dash Radio raises $8.8M as it reaches 10M monthly listeners

For Dash Radio founder Scott Keeney, streaming music and radio are two very different things. On the streaming side, Apple and Spotify dominate, and “there’s not going to be room for much else.” But when it comes to radio, he argued, “It’s the wild, wild west.”

Keeney, a.k.a. DJ Skee, was already one of the biggest radio DJs when he started Dash. For him, radio is a more curated, personality-driven, “lean back” experience — so Dash Radio focuses on live shows, with a lineup of more than 400 shows across 75 stations, with big names like Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne and Ice Cube as hosts.

The startup is announcing that it’s now reaching 10 million monthly listeners, and that it’s raised an $8.8 million seed round.

Investors include Nimble Ventures, Slow Ventures, Lazerow Ventures, Muzik, Arab Angel, G Ventures, Lindzon Capital Partners, Jason Flom, Orin Snyder and Ian Schaefer. Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara and Alibaba’s former chairman of U.S. investments Michael Zeisser also invested and are joining the company’s board, as is Passport Capital founder John Burbank.

“I’m honored to be joining the board at Dash, and excited about the real change they’re driving across radio,” said Tsujihara in the funding announcement. “With their great leadership team, terrific original curated content and an offering unmatched in the market, Dash is positioned to disrupt analog radio and convert listeners to Dash users.”

Speaking of analog radio, Keeney acknowledged that there are other services (like iHeartRadio) that bring live radio broadcasts online, but he suggested that they’re coming from “legacy players” who are “all burdened by legacy infrastructure.”

Dash is able to take a different approach. For one thing, it’s cut out the long stretches of advertising — as Keeney put it, “We figured a business model that goes around these traditional insertion-based advertising models.”

That doesn’t means it’s avoiding sponsorships. In fact, it recently opened a studio in the Empire State Building (it already has a studio in Los Angeles) in partnership with Build-A-Bear, which also operates a branded kids’ station on Dash. What Dash isn’t going to do is interrupt the music and shows with ads.

Keeney also suggested that Dash might eventually introduce a paid, premium plan with features like on-demand show archives.

He made it clear that if Dash really is going to be the future of radio, it needs to allow new talent to succeed as well. That includes surfacing new artists (Keeney said Post Malone’s first radio interview was on Dash), and also new DJs. After all, Snoop Dogg is “an incredible talent,” but he’s never going to be known primarily as a Dash Radio personality.

“Now we’re starting to see people emerging, they are going to be known as somebody from Dash Radio,” Keeney said.

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Apple patent shows new way to create 3D printed models

A patent filed by Apple Inc. shows a new method to print 3D models using triangular tessellation. The patent office approved the method, which breaks smooth surfaces into little triangles that approximate the shape of the original model, on October 23, 2018.

The unique aspect of the patent involves the infill and surface. The infill are little patterns inside an object that help it retain rigidity. Most infill is usually fairly simple and involves drawing shapes or squiggles inside an object in a uniform way to keep the shape from collapsing. This means that the entire inside of the object is uniform, leading to cracking or brittleness in the finished product. Apple’s solution would change the shape of the internal infill to differently-sized triangles, depending on the print, ensuring that there is more infill on the edges of the object. The same system is used on the surface of the print to approximate smooth surfaces.

Apple listed Michael R. Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer at Apple Inc., Canada, as the sole inventor. Sweet has patented at least 13 other 3D printing inventions according to 3D Printing Industry.

“In one embodiment, the triangles making up the triangular tessellations are fixed-size triangles. In another embodiment, the triangles making up the triangular tessellations are dynamically sized triangles. By way of example, small triangles could be used to form an object’s edges or other regions in which strength/support is needed. Larger triangles could be used to build-up or construct areas where strength/support is not as critical,” wrote Sweet in the patent. The patent notes that this system can speed up printing considerably as the print head does not have to move back and forth and instead only moves forward to make the triangular shapes. As an example, Sweet points out that circular infill, as shown below, is inefficient.

This obviously doesn’t meet Apple is making a 3D printer. It simply means that a printing researcher at Apple is looking into the problem and has created a slightly more efficient method for designing 3D printed parts.

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Mobvoi launches new $200 smartwatch and $130 AirPods alternative

Chinese AI company Mobvoi has consistently been one of the best also-rans in the smartwatch game, which remains dominated by Apple. Today, it launched a sequel to its 2016 TicWatch, which was a viral hit raising over $2 million on Kickstarter, and it unveiled a cheaper take on Apple’s AirPods.

The new TicWatch C2 was outed at a London event and is priced at $199.99. Unlike its predecessor, it has shifted from Mobvoi’s own OS to Google’s Wear OS. That isn’t a huge surprise, though, since Mobvoi’s newer budget watches and ‘pro’ watch have both already made that jump.

The C2 — which stands for classic 2 — packs NFC, Bluetooth, NFC and a voice assistant. It comes in black, platinum and rose gold. The latter color option — shown below — is thinner so presumably it is designed for female wrists.

However, there’s a compromise since the watch isn’t shipping with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip. Mobvoi has instead picked the older 2100 processor. That might explain the price, but it will mean that newer Android Wear watches shipping in the company months have better performance, particularly around battery life. As it stands, the TicWatch C2 claims a day-two life but the processor should be a consideration for would-be buyers.

Mobvoi also outed TicPods Free, its take on Apple’s wireless AirPods. They are priced at $129.99 and available in red, white and blue.

The earbuds already raised over $2.8 million from Indiegogo — Mobvoi typically uses crowdfunding to gather feedback and assess customer interest — and early reviews have been positive.

They work on Android and iOS and include support for Alex and Google Assistant. They also include gesture-based controls beyond the Apple-style taps for skipping music, etc. Battery life without the case, which doubles as a charger, is estimated at 18 hours, or four hours of listening time.

The TicPods are available to buy online now. The TicWatch C2 is up for pre-sale ahead of a “wide” launch that’s planned for December 6.

Mobvoi specializes in AI and it includes Google among its investors. It also has a joint venture with VW that is focused on bringing Ai into the automotive industry. In China it is best known for AI services but globally, in the consumer space, it also offers a Google Assistant speaker called TicHome Mini.

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Mobvoi launches new $200 smartwatch and $130 AirPods alternative

Chinese AI company Mobvoi has consistently been one of the best also-rans in the smartwatch game, which remains dominated by Apple. Today, it launched a sequel to its 2016 TicWatch, which was a viral hit raising over $2 million on Kickstarter, and it unveiled a cheaper take on Apple’s AirPods.

The new TicWatch C2 was outed at a London event and is priced at $199.99. Unlike its predecessor, it has shifted from Mobvoi’s own OS to Google’s Wear OS. That isn’t a huge surprise, though, since Mobvoi’s newer budget watches and ‘pro’ watch have both already made that jump.

The C2 — which stands for classic 2 — packs NFC, Bluetooth, NFC and a voice assistant. It comes in black, platinum and rose gold. The latter color option — shown below — is thinner so presumably it is designed for female wrists.

However, there’s a compromise since the watch isn’t shipping with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon Wear 3100 chip. Mobvoi has instead picked the older 2100 processor. That might explain the price, but it will mean that newer Android Wear watches shipping in the company months have better performance, particularly around battery life. As it stands, the TicWatch C2 claims a day-two life but the processor should be a consideration for would-be buyers.

Mobvoi also outed TicPods Free, its take on Apple’s wireless AirPods. They are priced at $129.99 and available in red, white and blue.

The earbuds already raised over $2.8 million from Indiegogo — Mobvoi typically uses crowdfunding to gather feedback and assess customer interest — and early reviews have been positive.

They work on Android and iOS and include support for Alex and Google Assistant. They also include gesture-based controls beyond the Apple-style taps for skipping music, etc. Battery life without the case, which doubles as a charger, is estimated at 18 hours, or four hours of listening time.

The TicPods are available to buy online now. The TicWatch C2 is up for pre-sale ahead of a “wide” launch that’s planned for December 6.

Mobvoi specializes in AI and it includes Google among its investors. It also has a joint venture with VW that is focused on bringing Ai into the automotive industry. In China it is best known for AI services but globally, in the consumer space, it also offers a Google Assistant speaker called TicHome Mini.

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