Apple's Arcade video game subscription service is launching on September 19 for $4.99 per month for up to six members in your family. "There will be new games released every month, and will have perks like game guides and sneak peeks," reports Gizmodo. "In addition to a new Frogger, Apple also demoed new games Sayonara Wild Hearts and Shinsekai Into the Depths." From the report: Thanks to the little Apple did share ahead of its September 10 event, we knew that Arcade would launch with more than 100 different games, including a new Sonic the Hedgehog game and the revamped Frogger. Apple also said in March that Arcade wouldn't have ads or require additional purchases and that games would be available offline and playable on an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or Mac. And rather than releasing as a dedicated app, Arcade will release within the App Store as a new tab.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Microsoft bought 6Wunderkinder, the developer of Wunderlist, in 2015, officials said they planned to shut down that task-management app at some point and replace it with its own To Do app. That move still hasn't happened. But this week, Microsoft is rolling out a redesign of To Do that attempts to make it look more like Wunderlist. On September 9, Microsoft introduced the redesigned To Do, which has smaller headers and more colors. The app is more customizable now with a variety of backgrounds, "including the beloved Berlin TV tower that was a feature in Wunderlist." The app can sync across Mac, iOS, Android, Windows and the Web. And it integrates with Microsoft work or school email accounts; hosted email accounts like Outlook, Hotmail or Live; Microsoft Planner; and Microsoft Launcher on Android. Just so it happens, last week Wunderlist founder Christian Reber said that he'd like to buy Wunderlist back from Microsoft. Today he tweeted "GREAT timing," in regards to Microsoft's To Do makeover.

dryriver writes: The Amiga was a remarkable machine at the time it was released -- 1985. It had a multitasking capable GUI-driven OS and a mouse. It had a number of cleverly designed custom chips that gave the Amiga amazing graphics and sound capabilities far beyond the typical IBM/DOS PCs of its time. The Amiga was the multimedia beast of its time -- you could create animated and still 2D or 3D graphics on it, compose sophisticated electronic music, develop 2D or 3D 16-Bit games, edit and process digital video (using Video Toaster), and of course, play some amazing games. And after the Amiga -- as well as the Atari ST, Archimedes and so on -- died, everybody pretty much had to migrate to either the PC or Mac platforms. If Commodore and the Amiga had survived and thrived, there might have been four major desktop platforms in use today: Windows, OSX, AmigaOS and Linux. And who knows what the custom chips (ASICs? FPGAs?) of an Amiga in 2019 might have been capable of -- Amiga could possibly have been the platform that makes nearly life-like games and VR/AR a reality, and given Nvidia and AMD's GPUs a run for their money.

What do you think the computing landscape in 2019 would have looked like if the Amiga and AmigaOS as a platform had survived? Would Macs be as popular with digital content creators as they are today? Would AAA games target Windows 7/8/10 by default or tilt more towards the Amiga? Could there have been an Amiga hardware-based game console? Might AmigaOS and Linux have had a symbiotic existence of sorts, with AmigOS co-existing with Linux on many enthusiast's Amigas, or even becoming compatible with each other over time?

As promised, popular RSS reader NetNewsWire, which changed ownership last year, has released v5.0. From a blog post: NetNewsWire 5.0 is shipping! In case you haven't been following along until just now: NetNewsWire is an open source RSS reader for Mac. It's free! You can just download it and use it. No strings. It's designed to be stable, fast, and free of bugs. It doesn't have a lot of features yet, and that's because we prioritized quality over features. We will be adding more features, of course, but not quickly. We're also working on an iOS app.

Qantas airlines is now restricting MacBook Pro laptops from checked-in luggage on concern that batteries could catch fire. All 15-inch versions of Apple's MacBook Pro must be carried in the cabin and switched off, Qantas said in a statement Wednesday. The rule went into effect Tuesday morning. "Rival Virgin Australia went further on Aug. 26, banning all Apple laptops from checked-in luggage," adds Bloomberg. From the report: Australia's two biggest airlines join a growing list of carriers and jurisdictions across the world cracking down on the portable computers out of concern some could self-combust. The models in question are some 15-inch MacBook Pros sold from September 2015 to February 2017. Apple issued the recall in June, saying "in a limited number of older generation 15-inch MacBook Pro units, the battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk." Singapore Airlines Ltd. and Thai Airways International PCL have already stopped passengers from taking any of the affected models on their aircraft.

An anonymous reader writes: Apple will launch three new iPhone models in an event next week. Two will be called "Pro" models and will replace the iPhone XS and XS Max. A third phone will replace the iPhone XR and will include dual cameras, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The Pro iPhones will feature triple rear cameras that will include a wide-angle lens, support for higher resolution photos, better low light performance, and better video recording capabilities. These Pro phones will also support reverse wireless charging similar to what Samsung offers with the Galaxy S10. This will allow the phones to charge the AirPods when used with their wireless charging case. Other details include a new, multi-angle, Face ID sensor which will allow the phone to sense your face while lying flat on a table, better waterproofing, and new shatter-resistance technology. Bloomberg doesn't specify which of the new models these features will come to. All the phones will reportedly include a faster A13 processor, as well as a new Matrix chip that could benefit computer vision and augmented reality performance. Outside of a new matte-colored finish, the Pro phones will look broadly similar to last year's models. 3D Touch has reportedly been dropped from all of this year's models and replaced with the Haptic Touch system that debuted with the iPhone XR last year.

Apple is also planning to release new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros this year. Bloomberg says these will feature "upgraded cameras," although it doesn't mention whether they will have more than one camera on their rear. Faster processors are also expected, but their overall appearance will apparently remain the same. Bloomberg claims that Apple will discontinue its existing entry-level 9.7-inch iPad in favor of a new 10.2-inch model. Apple's 2019 MacBook Pros Bloomberg's report also corroborates previous rumors about Apple launching a new 16-inch MacBook Pro this year. The new laptop will reportedly be similar in size overall to the existing 15-inch MacBook Pro, but will be able to include a bigger screen because of a reduction in the size of its screen bezels.

A researcher known as MG has modified Lightning cables with extra components to let him remotely connect to the computers that the cables are connected to. "It looks like a legitimate cable and works just like one. Not even your computer will notice a difference. Until I, as an attacker, wirelessly take control of the cable," MG said. Motherboard reports: One idea is to take this malicious tool, dubbed O.MG Cable, and swap it for a target's legitimate one. MG suggested you may even give the malicious version as a gift to the target -- the cables even come with some of the correct little pieces of packaging holding them together. MG typed in the IP address of the fake cable on his own phone's browser, and was presented with a list of options, such as opening a terminal on my Mac. From here, a hacker can run all sorts of tools on the victim's computer.

The cable comes with various payloads, or scripts and commands that an attacker can run on the victim's machine. A hacker can also remotely "kill" the USB implant, hopefully hiding some evidence of its use or existence. MG made the cables by hand, painstakingly modifying real Apple cables to include the implant. "In the end, I was able to create 100 percent of the implant in my kitchen and then integrate it into a cable. And these prototypes at Def con were mostly done the same way," he said. MG did point to other researchers who worked on the implant and graphical user interface. He is selling the cables for $200 each.

Just a few months ago, the editor of the recently-departed Linux Journal wrote that in many ways the golden age of Linux and FOSS was 2007. "Linux was now mainstream in corporate IT, and it was much rarer to meet much resistance when you wanted to set up Linux servers, unless your company was a 100% Windows shop... FOSS companies were making a lot of money, and developers were being paid to work on Linux and FOSS full time."

He also wrote that when Linux Journal later folded (the first time), "It became clearer than ever to me that while Linux and FOSS had won the battle over the tech giants a decade before, new ones had taken their place in the meantime, and we were letting them win."

And he offered this final assessment in April: Today, Linux has wide hardware support, and a number of vendors offer hardware with Linux pre-installed and supported. The internet itself is full of FOSS projects, and one of the first things people do when they are about to start on a software project is to look on GitHub to see if anything that meets their needs already exists. Linux absolutely dominates the cloud in terms of numbers of VMs that run it, and much cloud infrastructure also runs FOSS services. Linux also is in many people's pockets and home appliances. Linux and FOSS are more ubiquitous than ever.

Linux and FOSS also are more hidden than ever. So many of those FOSS projects on GitHub ultimately are used as building blocks for proprietary software. So many companies that seem to champion FOSS by helping upstream projects they rely on also choose to keep the projects they write themselves proprietary. Although Linux dominates the cloud, more and more developers and system administrators who use the cloud do so via proprietary APIs and proprietary services. New developers and sysadmins get less exposure to Linux servers and FOSS services if they use the cloud how the providers intended. And, while Linux runs in your pocket and in your home, it's hidden underneath a huge layer of proprietary applications.

For the most part, the FOSS philosophy that defined Linux in its early days is hidden as well. Many people in the community tout FOSS only in terms of the ability to see code or as a way to avoid writing code themselves. It has become rarer for people to tout the importance of the freedoms that come along with FOSS and the problems that come from proprietary software. Indeed, most Linux application development in the cloud these days is done on Mac or Windows machines -- something that would have been considered unthinkable in the early days of Linux... I encourage everyone from all corners of the community not to take FOSS and Linux for granted. The world of readily available code and mostly open protocols you enjoy today isn't a given. If current trends continue, we could be back to a world of proprietary software, vendor lock-in and closed protocols like the world before 1994.

This new battle we find ourselves in is much more insidious. The ways that proprietary software and protocols have spread, in particular on mobile devices, has made it much more challenging for FOSS to win compared to in the past. If we want to win this battle, we need the whole community to work together toward a common goal.

Long-time Slashdot reader Huxley_Dunsany writes: After much work rebuilding and upgrading it, my Macintosh SE/30 from 1989 is now connected via Ethernet to the Web, and is hosting a simple website and old-style "guestbook." The site has been online for a few days (other than semi-frequent reboots of the system when it gets overloaded with requests), and has served nearly 20,000 visitors. For a machine with a 16MHz CPU and 68 megabytes of ram, it's held up remarkably well!

I'm basically inviting a "Slashdotting" of my old Mac, but I thought this project might bring a few smiles here. Enjoy!
"Awesome," wrote one visitor in the guestbook, adding "You should join a webring!"

Apple says it will offer up to $1 million for hackers who can find vulnerabilities in iPhones and Macs. "That's up from $200,000, and in the fall the program will be open to all researchers," reports Forbes. "Previously only those on the company's invite-only bug bounty program were eligible to receive rewards." From the report: As Forbes reported on Monday, Apple is also launching a Mac bug bounty, which was confirmed Thursday, but it's also extending it to watchOS and its Apple TV operating system. The announcements came in Las Vegas at the Black Hat conference, where Apple's head of security engineering Ivan Krstic gave a talk on iOS and macOS security. Forbes also revealed on Monday that Apple was to give bug bounty participants "developer devices" -- iPhones that let hackers dive further into iOS. They can, for instance, pause the processor to look at what's happening with data in memory. Krstic confirmed the iOS Security Research Device program would be by application only. It will arrive next year.

The full $1 million will go to researchers who can find a hack of the kernel -- the core of iOS -- with zero clicks required by the iPhone owner. Another $500,000 will be given to those who can find a "network attack requiring no user interaction." There's also a 50% bonus for hackers who can find weaknesses in software before it's released. Apple is increasing those rewards in the face of an increasingly profitable private market where hackers sell the same information to governments for vast sums.

Earlier today at Samsung's Galaxy Note 10 launch event, Samsung announced several new features coming to DeX, an application that transforms your Samsung phone into a "desktop like" interface. The expanded version of DeX on the Note 10 now works with your computer, allowing you to transfer files (including photos), reply to messages and run mobile apps on your Mac or Windows PC. Engadget reports: The Note 10 also touts a Link to Windows option in the phone's Quick Panel that connects to a Windows 10 PC, sharing your phone's notifications on your PC screen with no specialized apps required. This concept also isn't completely new, but it's still helpful if you'd rather not check your phone for a must-see message or app alert. More Microsoft integrations are coming. You'll get to make and receive calls right from your PC (it's not clear if this is just for Samsung phones or for all Android devices). Samsung's Gallery app, meanwhile, will tie into OneDrive to upload photos to cloud storage. If the company has its way, your phone and computer will feel like extensions of each other.

Google is expanding its Advanced Protection Program to its Chrome browser. From a report: If you're an Advanced Protection Program user and you have sync turned on in Chrome, you will now automatically receive stronger protections against risky downloads. Google didn't go into much detail regarding the protections, likely not to publicly give away how they work. But the company did say that when users attempt to download "certain risky files," Chrome will now show additional warnings, or in some cases even block the downloads outright. The warnings are, however, only available in Chrome for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Google is not rolling out the Advanced Protection Program to Chrome for Android and iOS.

Canonical's Martin Wimpress addresses Snaps, Flatpak, and other competing standards, and community unease around Canonical's control of the Snap store. intensivevocoder writes: With these advances in hardware support, the last significant challenge users face when switching from Windows or Mac to a Linux distribution is app distribution and installation. While distribution-provided repositories are useful for most open source software, the release model of distributions such as Ubuntu or Fedora lock in users to a major version for programs for the duration of a particular release. Because of differences in how they interact with the underlying system, certain configuration tasks are different between Snaps or Flatpaks than for directly-installed applications. Likewise, initial commits for the Snap and Flatpak formats were days apart -- while the formats were developed essentially in parallel, the existence of two 'universal' package formats has led to disagreement about competing standards. TechRepublic interviewed Martin Wimpress, engineering manager for Snapcraft at Canonical, about Ubuntu's long term plans for Snaps, its adoption and support in other Linux distributions, Canonical's position as the operator of the Snap Store, and the benefits Snaps provide over Flatpak. An excerpt from the interview: TechRepublic: Practically speaking, there are two competing standards for cross-platform application packaging -- three, if you count AppImage. What's the practical benefit that Canonical's Snap format offers over Flatpak or AppImage?
Martin Wimpress: If you look at the initial commits of both of those projects, Snaps have a lineage back to Click packages, which were developed for [Ubuntu Phone] originally. The Snap project developed out of what had been learned from doing the phones, with a view to solving problems in IoT. So, although technically snapd and xdg-apps -- and consequently Flatpak -- look like they emerged around the same time, Snaps can trace their lineage back to the Click project from several years previous. If we're looking at Flatpak specifically, we can probably include AppImage in most of these comparisons as well. Some of the similarities are that Snaps are self-contained software packages, which is something that Flatpak and AppImage strive to be as well. I think that Flatpak achieves that better than AppImage. I think AppImage still makes some assumptions on what's installed on the host operating system. It doesn't bundle everything inside the AppImage. Similarly, Snaps, Flatpak, and AppImage work across all the major Linux distributions without modification. We haven't all arrived at this solution by accident. We've clearly, independently, all realized that this is a problem that we need to solve in order to encourage software vendors to publish their applications on Linux, because Linux is a very broad platform to target. If you can lower the hurdles... to getting your software in front of users on Linux, then that's a good thing. And we're all aiming to do the same thing there.

An anonymous reader shares a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Google has been taking baby steps to kill off Flash for years. In 2015, Chrome started automatically pausing less important Flash content. In 2016, Chrome started blocking "behind the scenes" Flash content and using HTML5 by default. In July 2017, however, Adobe said it would kill Flash by 2020. With Chrome 76, Flash is now blocked by default. Users can still turn it on in settings, but next year, Flash will be removed from Chrome entirely.

Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL), a protocol installed on over 1.2 billion Apple devices, contains vulnerabilities that enable attackers to track users, crash devices, or intercept files transferred between devices via man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. From a report: These are the findings of a research project that started last year at the Technical University of Darmstadt, in Germany, and has recently concluded, and whose findings researchers will be presenting later this month at a security conference in the US. The project sought to analyze the Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL), a protocol that Apple rolled out in 2014 and which also plays a key role in enabling device-to-device communications in the Apple ecosystem. While most Apple end users might not be aware of the protocol's existence, AWDL is at the core of Apple services like AirPlay and AirDrop, and Apple has been including AWDL by default on all devices the company has been selling, such as Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple watches, Apple TVs, and HomePods. But in the past five years, Apple has never published any in-depth technical details about how AWDL works. This, in turn, has resulted in very few security researchers looking at AWDL for bugs or implementation errors.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: In a tweet on Friday, President Trump said his administration will not grant Apple any relief on Mac Pro parts made in China. "Apple will not be given Tariff wavers (sic), or relief, for Mac Pro parts that are made in China," President Trump said. "Make them in USA, no Tariffs!" Apple asked for waivers on tariffs on the Mac Pro. Apple said it wanted to be exempt on some parts it uses for the new Mac Pro, including a power supply unit, the stainless-steel enclosure, finished mice and trackpads and circuit boards. "There are no other sources for this proprietary, Apple-designed component," Apple said in a filing. Apple shifted production of the Mac Pro to China in June, saving shipping costs for components that are supplied near Shanghai.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dropbox now opens a new file browser and an associated Dock icon every time it starts, even if you don't want it to. If you're not familiar with Macs, the Dock is the line of applications on the bottom of the screen (or the side, if you've moved it in the settings) and serves the same function as the Windows Taskbar. If my computer restarts or if Dropbox restarts, the new Dropbox window that I don't want pops up in the Dock. This isn't a huge deal, as I can quit Dropbox's new file browser and get rid of that Dock icon each time my computer starts up. I'm not going to stop using Dropbox -- I've been paying the company $138 a year for 2TB of storage and for 12 months' worth of file history, which saves all deleted files and revisions to files. (It's going up to $158 next time I get billed, in February.) It's worth it to me because Dropbox still works great, while the alternatives have always been unreliable or disappointing in other ways when I've tried them. I'll get into that more later in this article.

But the Dock icon and window is a major change in how Dropbox presents itself to users. Dropbox has always been the kind of application that is there when you need it and gets out of the way when you don't. Dropbox's syncing and file-sharing features are integrated with the Finder (the Mac file manager), and there's a little icon in the Mac's Menu Bar at the top of the screen for when you need to change a setting. But now, Dropbox wants to be front and center at all times. The company built its own file browser to replace what's already available in the Mac Finder, and it opens that new file manager every time Dropbox starts. We wrote about it last week when Dropbox started rolling it out to more users. I've had it for more than a month since I somehow ended up in Dropbox's Early Access program. Ars' Jon Brodkin, the author of the article, also discovered that "there are numerous Dropbox support employees who apparently have never used their company's Mac application and do not understand how it works." Specifically, the employees Brodkin talked to didn't know "that it's possible for Mac applications to run without a Dock icon even though that's exactly how Dropbox worked for a decade... And they've been giving bad advice to users who want to change back to the old way of doing things."

A flaw in the Bluetooth communication protocol may expose modern device users to tracking and could leak their ID, researchers claim. From a report: The vulnerability can be used to spy on users despite native OS protections that are in place and impacts Bluetooth devices on Windows 10, iOS, and macOS machines. This includes iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch models, MacBooks, and Microsoft tablets & laptops. On Wednesday, researchers from Boston University David Starobinski and Johannes Becker presented the results of their research at the 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, taking place in Stockholm, Sweden. According to the research paper, Tracking Anonymized Bluetooth Devices, many Bluetooth devices will use MAC addresses when advertising their presence to prevent long-term tracking, but the team found that it is possible to circumvent the randomization of these addresses to permanently monitor a specific device. Android is immune as the OS does not continually send out advertising messages, the researchers said.

Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom, the popular video conferencing app, which allowed websites to automatically add a user to a video call without their permission. TechCrunch reports: The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant told TechCrunch that the update -- now released -- removes the hidden web server, which Zoom quietly installed on users' Macs when they installed the app. Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically. Although Zoom released a fixed app version on Tuesday, Apple said its actions will protect users both past and present from the undocumented web server vulnerability without affecting or hindering the functionality of the Zoom app itself. The update will now prompt users if they want to open the app, whereas before it would open automatically.

Mozilla today launched Firefox 68 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Firefox 68 includes a darker reader view, recommended extensions, IT Pro customizations, and more. From a report: As part of this release, Mozilla has curated a list of recommended extensions "that have been thoroughly reviewed for security, usability, and usefulness." You can find the list on the Get Add-ons page in the Firefox Add-ons Manager (about:addons). While Firefox has had dark mode for months, the Reader View's dark contrast only covered the text area. Now, when you change the contrast to dark, all sections of the site (including sidebars and toolbars) will be immersed in dark mode.

With Firefox 60, Mozilla introduced an enterprise version of the browser that employers can customize. This let IT professionals configure Firefox for their organization, either using Group Policy on Windows or a JSON file that works across Windows, Mac, and Linux. With Firefox 68, Mozilla has added more enterprise policies -- to configure or remove the new tab page, turn off search suggestions, and so on.