Sudden drops? The Kraken II rugged case comes to the rescue. Trident Case recently sent along their Kraken II case for review and I’ve been carrying my iPhone 4 in it for several weeks – and not just around office, mind you. I took it for a spin through a variety of environments, from public transport in an ugly, big city to cafes and restaurants, some countryside and finally to the beaches of Rovinj, a city on the North Adriatic sea where I’ve been blogging and soaking up sun rays since June....

The Rise of Skywalker has finally hit theatres and, despite the controversial last outing that was The Last Jedi, is currently excelling at the box office. While Disney’s foray into the sci-fi franchise has been mixed, fans have been flocking to see the final instalment of the Skywalker saga, which brings a story that has spanned over 40 years to an action-packed conclusion. Inevitably for a blockbuster of this size and magnitude, there were plenty of rumors about what would unfold in the weeks and months before it’s release....

In Chapter 1, we explored risk at a high-level. As security practitioners, however, we need a working definition supported by the tools necessary to measure, report, and mitigate unwanted risks to physical and electronic information assets. In this chapter, we step through a risk assessment of a medium-sized business’ customer invoicing database. Our goal is to determine the risk of a threat agent gaining direct access to sensitive customer data....

Robert Downey Jr.’s latest starring vehicle, Dolittle, is projected to bomb terribly during its opening weekend at the box office. For more than a decade, Downey has enjoyed plenty of commercial success thanks to his career-changing role as Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not to mention, also headlining two Sherlock Holmes films). But, with Avengers: Endgame marking the end of Tony Stark’s journey, Downey is about to start a new era....

I love to read, and these days, I primarily read just eBooks. It took me a little time to get comfortable with reading from a tablet vs. paper. However, the convenience just can’t be beaten not to mention the decade of improvements to reading apps for tablets and phones. I can carry thousands of eBooks around with me on my iPhone and iPad and never need to worry about losing a book a new and expensive book in a hotel room while traveling (can you tell I’m still upset about that…)....

Sean Penn has written a love letter to Bradley Cooper and A Star Is Born. The two-time Oscar-winning actor and director has somewhat kept his distance from the limelight over recent years. His last role in a live action film was back in 2015’s The Sniper, while his last directorial effort was way back in 2007, with the acclaimed Into The Wild. New work is certainly on the way from Penn, but for the time being, he appears to have busied himself praising Cooper’s work....

Reality TV’s first transgender star, Miriam Rivera, has died. She rose to fame during the early 2000s, starring in two reality shows. Rivera was best known for her role on a British reality television show, There’s Something About Miriam, which aired back in 2004 on Sky 1, as well as her guest appearance on Big Brother Australia’s fourth season. There’s Something About Miriam’s production company, Endemol, was sued by contestants for conspiracy to commit sexual assault, defamation, and for having suffered from psychological injury....

Take the sarcastic, whiskey drinking female hero of Jessica Jones, the demon hunting siblings from Supernatural, add in the old west feeling of Westworld, stir - and you’ve got Wynonna Earp. Sounds pretty great, right? The show’s first season premiered on Syfy last April and quickly earned praise from both critics and fans alike for its strong characters and sharp scripts. From showrunner Emily Andras (Killjoys and Lost Girl), Wynonna Earp is an action-packed fantasy drama about a woman, named Wynonna (Melanie Scrofano) who just happens to be the great-granddaughter of Wyatt Earp....

After the launch of OnePlus 7, Redmi congratulated OnePlus in a rather sarcastic way. Manu Jain, Global VP of Xiaomi and MD of Xiaomi India tweeted: “Congratulations OnePlus team! There’s a new flagship in the town. Flagship Killer 2.0: coming soon.. Hold my dragon!” Later, official social handles of Xiaomi and Redmi posted this too. And now, you can see this ad all over the internet. Congratulations @OnePlus team! 👏 There’s a new flagship in town....

Screen Time was one of the headline features of iOS 12, intended to help us monitor the amount of time we spend using our iPhones, and to set limits for ourselves. The latest 12.2 beta allows even greater control. But reducing screen time, and other approaches to so-called digital detoxing, don’t seem to be very effective … A survey of more than a thousand people reveals that cutting back on screen time doesn’t last, reports CNET....

Bloomberg reports this evening that Apple is getting an extension on its Tuesday deadline to make a decision and respond to the court order asking them to aid the government in retrieving data off of an iPhone 5c used by one of the gunmen involved in the fatal San Bernardino shootings last December. Apple now has until February 26th to respond to the request in court. Following the order from the court, Apple CEO Tim Cook replied with an open-letter saying that the request is an “unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers....

Facebook is reportedly planning to take its long-running battle with Apple to the courts. The Information reports that Facebook has been working with outside legal counsel to prepare an antitrust lawsuit against Apple alleging that the company “abused its power in the smartphone market by forcing app developers to abide by App Store rules that Apple’s own apps don’t have to follow.” Citing people familiar with the matter, the report explains that Facebook’s lawsuit is likely to focus in part on the changes Apple introduced in iOS 14....

Today, The Information disputes these claims. It says that Apple spent about $370 million across 2018 (roughly $30m per month) but that is actually down compared to the year previously. In fact, Apple reportedly paid $775 million for AWS in 2017, which means 2018’s numbers represent a 50% drop … The Information article indicates that Apple is aggressively transitioning its iCloud services to running on its own in-house servers. The report says this dates back to a data loss incident that Apple experienced a few years ago with customer information stored on Google servers....

You know how it goes: you copy a link, or a piece of text, intending to paste it – then you get distracted and copy something else before you get the chance. You then have to find and copy the first item again. A clipboard manager solves this problem by saving a history of the items you copy, letting you paste in any one of them later. There are plenty of clipboard managers around (a quick search of the Mac App Store found 34 of them), and you might think that when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all....

A new trailer for Riverdale season 4 has been released, teasing further madness for the characters in their senior year. Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Riverdale is loosely based on the world and characters of Archie Comics. Offering an angsty, Twin Peaks-lite take on the source material, the first season proved to be a surprising smash hit - garnering positive reviews and a hugely passionate fanbase. The show’s reception has lessened somewhat in its proceeding three seasons but was confidently renewed for a fourth season....

While the Android market is filled with great power monitors such as Battery Status Plus and there are a couple of good practices that can also help, from the plains of the XDA forum comes Quad Core Manager, a rather simple software which allows users to disable processing cores, one by one. Aimed solely at rooted phones with quad-core processors, this application can spare some vital battery juice in case you desperately need it....

As we approach Christmas and the end of the year, we thought we would throw together some of the more interesting review items we received over the past months. 27-inch AOC LED IPS super slim monitor First up is the $299 27-inch AOC LED IPS super slim monitor (I2757FH) that has a vague Mac aesthetic with a silver stand and ultra-thin bezel around the edges. This one comes with two HDMI ports, a VGA port, AUX audio ports, and some small speakers....

After first showing off the latest Mac Pro at WWDC 2013 and launching the professional-class desktop computer last December, Apple’s certified refurbished online store is now carrying discounted models for the first time. The 2013 Mac Pro, which is the only Mac computer manufactured in the United States, ordinarily starts at $2,999 for the base model configuration, but customers looking to save on that cost can now get the same configuration for $450 less at $2,549....

A standalone iOS app for Apple’s HomeKit platform could finally arrive in iOS 10 as a new report claims an Apple employee on the company’s marketing team revealed plans for the launch in an online review. MacRumors found the mention (pasted below) within a product review related to HomeKit and says it confirmed the person that left the comment was indeed an Apple employee. Apple has had plans for a HomeKit app on your iPhone’s home screen for quite a while as it’s developed the platform that currently only allows control of supported home automation accessories through Siri or third-party apps....

Intel reportedly did not disclose Meltdown or Spectre security flaws to U.S. cyber security officials after being notified of the flaws because hackers had not exploited the vulnerabilities yet, Reuters reports. The company did not disclose the information to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, better known as US-CERT, until January 3. This was after the details of the vulnerabilities had leaked online. Letters from the big tech giants such as Apple, Alphabet, and Intel indicate when these vulnerabilities were found....