The week that was (TWTW) takes a look back at the week’s most prominent tech stories from around the world.
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In the week that was December 9th to December 15th, 2018:
- Facebook expose user’s private photos
- Google+ has another API issue
- Intel unveil Sunny Cove 10nm CPUs
- Google CEO’s House Judiciary Committee appearance
- Commbank will add Apple Pay in 2019
Intro
Hello everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a final look back for the year at the tech news in the week that was:
December 9th to December 15th, 2018.
Stories
Facebook have royally fucked up once again exposing the private photos of 6.8 million users via their application APIs.
Apps requesting access to users photos were able to view not only private photos but also photos users uploaded to Facebook but never posted (either private or publicly) as Facebook keeps a copy of everything ever sent to it.
The bug was discovered back in September but has only now become public ironically one day after Facebook setup a pop-up shop in American cities to help users become better aware of their privacy settings.
And keeping that bad API train rolling. Google+ whom has already suffered a large leak leading to the service’s scheduled closure had another one. This time 52.5 million users had the finer details of their profile exposed including names, emails, age and more.
Google believe they discovered the bug prior to anyone else and have now decided to shutdown the Google+ API in 90 days and collapse the entire service in April instead of August.
Intel appears to have finally made some inroads on the CPU front revealing a new 10nm process named “Sunny Cove”. The new chips will incorporate a stacked architecture designed to execute more instructions in parallel with lower latency.
Naturally the chips will include fixes for the Spectre and Meltdown issues that plagued the prior Skylake line and will also be significantly faster for encryption.
No pricing or final specs are available as yet with more information to come in the new year.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai had his turn in front of the US’s House Judiciary Committee to explain try and explain why when someone searches the word “idiot” a photo of Trump appears and if Google has any political bias.
Like trying to explain rocket science to a dog Pichai does an admirable job and came out looking well in comparison to recent committee appearances by Zuckerberg or their newly appointed, beer loving Justice of the Supreme Court, Brett kavanaugh.
And finally on the local front, The Commonwealth bank has succumb to customer pressure and is finally introducing Apple Pay in 2019. A recent customer survey revealed it to be the major common thread in responses and now leaves just Westpac and NAB as the two remaining hold-outs after trying to sue Apple into opening access to NFC on the iPhone.
Outro
And that’s it for another week and the year!
Heading into a scheduled hiatus over the Christmas break we shall return in the new year.
Of course, if you enjoy if you enjoy listening or watching the show then please leave a review on iTunes, give it a thumbs up on Facebook or hit subscriber on Youtube, whatever’s close to how you watch.
On the website this week, a new video review comparing the 2018 models of the MacBook Air and iPad Pro will be appearing as well as a review of the now video-game version of the Australian classic novel Storm Boy.
Have a great week and bye for now.
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