Apple will make it harder for hackers (and law enforcement) to get access to your phone, Snapchat launches its developer platform and Netflix is kinda, sorta adding games to its library. Here's your Daily Crunch for June 14, 2018. 1. Apple confirms that it will seal up law enforcement's favorite iPhone cracking method With the new (default) USB Restricted Mode, an iPhone's Lightning Port will lock one hour after the phone is locked. That should stop iPhone-cracking devices like GrayShift and CelleBrite, which have been used by federal agencies. In a statement, Apple said this is designed to help customers protect their phones from "hackers, identity thieves and intrusions into their personal data" and added, "We have the greatest respect for law enforcement, and we don't design our security improvements to frustrate their efforts to do their jobs." 2. Snapchat launches privacy-safe Snap Kit, the un-Facebook platform This set of APIs lets other apps piggyback on Snap's login for sign up, build Bitmoji avatars into their keyboards, display public Our Stories and Snap Map content, and generate branded stickers with referral links that users can share inside Snapchat. 3. Netflix is adding an interactive 'Minecraft' story to its lineup, denies entry into gaming While Telltale and others consider Minecraft: Story Mode to be a type of game, Netflix does not. It may simply be a matter of semantics: We say game, Netflix says "interactive story." 4. Luminar rolls out its development platform and scores Volvo partnership and investment Part of the long game of building autonomous vehicles is picking the industry's likely winners. Volvo seems to be confident that Luminar, whose lidar tech is in many ways leaps and bounds beyond the competition, will be among them. 5. Microsoft is developing its own cashierless store technology, says report Reuters says Microsoft is in the process of developing its own systems for tracking what people place in their shopping carts. It's not clear, however, how Microsoft's technology operates, or how it may differ from others on the market. 6. Amazon starts shipping its $249 DeepLens AI camera for developers Back at its re:Invent conference in November, Amazon announced its $249 DeepLens, a camera specifically geared toward developers who want to build and prototype vision-centric machine learning models. Now it's actually shipping the camera to those developers. 7. Sphero raises $12M as it focuses on education Some good news in what seems like a rough year for the robotic toymaker. |