Writings by Kirk McElhearn
Mac malware is again found in pirated applications, LastPass was hacked via an employee’s home computer running Plex, and hackers may be able to get into a bank account with an AI-generated voice. Microsoft makes a step toward supporting iMessage on Windows, and we look at a new Nokia phone that is easily repairable.
Follow the The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
On speaker placement and triangles.
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Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.
To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.
With SMS-based two-factor authentication no longer free on Twitter, we discuss the more secure and free way of protecting your account using an authenticator app. We also look at new details about Apple’s latest security updates, Windows on M-series Macs, and a WhatsApp warning about reused phone numbers.
Follow the The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.
Data is encrypted on your iPhone or iPad, and on your Mac, assuming you’ve enabled File Vault. iCloud data is encrypted when it is sent to and from Apple’s servers, and at rest on Apple’s servers, but the company still has encryption keys, and can access some of your data when requested by law enforcement.
End-to-end encryption, however, removes any possibility of a third party accessing your data: you have the only keys to the data on your devices. Apple’s Advanced Data Protection enables this level of security, but there are some limitations to the way it works.
In this article, I’ll explain what Advanced Data Protection is, how to enable it, and whether you should turn this feature on.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
The first draft of any piece of writing is just that: a draft. It takes revision and editing to shape it into a final work. For some authors, the revision process might not be too extensive, but for others, who rework their draft over and over, the process can be quite complex. While you may simply want to make changes to your project without leaving traces, some authors like to make edits in a way that they can see their changes, and perhaps revert to previous versions.
Scrivener’s Revision Mode is designed for these writers. You can have Scrivener automatically change the color of new and deleted texts in your project, and you can use five revision levels to record multiple edit passes. And snapshots, which allow you to keep previous versions of the files in your Binder, let you go back to older versions of your texts if you want to revert your edits.
In this article, I’m going to tell you about these tools that help you get from the first draft to final manuscript.
Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.
To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.
Twitter recently announced that they will stop allowing the use of SMS-based two-factor authentication for their service, except for Twitter Blue subscribers. This $8 a month service offers a blue checkmark (though not actual verification), the ability to edit tweets, and more. This change will take place on March 30, 2023, and, if you are using SMS-based two-factor authentication (2FA) at that time, Twitter will turn it off, rendering your account less secure.
SMS-based 2FA is not very secure – SMSes can be intercepted, and SIM cloning can allow people to pretend they have your phone – and the other methods available are much more robust. But Twitter’s decision to turn off SMS-based 2FA is dangerous, and their choice to allow it to be used for a price is misguided.
If you have SMS-based 2FA on Twitter, you should change this to use an authenticator app, and there’s one built into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. Here’s how to do this on Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.
“I never metadata I didn’t like.” Do we need to spend hours entering metadata for our images? Or do we even care about metadata? Jeff and Kirk look at why metadata is important, and at some automated solutions like AI-assisted object recognition in the Photos app, Lightroom, and other tools.
Find out more, and subscribe to the podcast, at the PhotoActive website. You can follow The PhotoActive on Twitter at @PhotoActiveCast to keep up to date with new episodes, and join our Facebook group to chat with other listeners and participate in photo challenges and more.
The Zen arts have very strict rules, which you can break when you’ve mastered them.
Find out more, including show notes for each episode, at the Zen of Everything website and at Treeleaf Zendo.
Apple has issued an update for a zero-day, in the wild, WebKit vulnerability. The Kia Challenge has shown that you can start some cars with a USB cable. And sometimes you need to factory reset Apple devices; we explain how.
Follow the The Intego Mac Podcast, which I co-host with Josh Long. We talk about Macs and iOS devices, and how to keep them secure.