Proprietary Software's Malice and Failures

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 29, 2022

• Adobe steals your color

  Pantone wants to license this system out, so it needs some kind of copyrightable element. There aren't many of these in the Pantone system! There's the trademark, but that's a very thin barrier. Trademark has a broad "nominative use" exception: it's not a trademark violation to say, "Pantone 448C corresponds to the hex color #4a412a."

  Perhaps there's a copyright? Well yes, there's a "thin" database copyright on the Pantone values and their ink equivalents. Anyone selling a RIP or printer that translates Pantone numbers to inks almost certainly has to license Pantone's copyright there. And if you wanted to make an image-editing program that conveyed the ink data to a printer, you'd best take a license.

  All of this is suddenly relevant because it appears that things have broken down between Adobe and Pantone. Rather than getting Pantone support bundled in with your Adobe apps, you must now pay $21/month for a Pantone plugin.

• Passkeys as a tool for user retention

  With the release of iOS 16 and MacOS Ventura, we are now in the age of passkeys. This is happening through WebAuthn, a specification written by the W3C and FIDO with the involvement of all of the major vendors such as Google, Mozilla, etc. The basic premise is familiar to anyone who has used SSH in their career: you login through the distribution of public keys, keeping the private key on the device.

• Google goes all in vs. Microsoft over lucrative federal contracts

  Details: A key part of Google's strategy leading up to the creation of the new public sector subsidiary has been aggressively drawing attention to Microsoft's cybersecurity flaws to sway more government customers.

• [Old] Tear in Microsoft Azure Service Fabric can give attackers full admin privileges

  Orca Security researcher Lidor Ben Shitrit found the bug and reported it to Microsoft, which released a partial fix for CVE-2022-35829 in its October Patch Tuesday. The vulnerability received a 6.4 CVSS score.

  There are two versions of Service Fabric Explorer. All new development focuses on version 2 (SFXv2), so Microsoft doesn't fix any holes in the older version, SFXv1, unless it's a critical bug. That means releases 8.1.316 and below remain vulnerable to exploitation.

• LinkedIn experiment changed job prospects for millions — and it raises red flags: privacy experts

  A five-year study by LinkedIn on nearly 20 million of its users raises ethical red flags since some unknowing participants in the social experiment likely had job opportunities curtailed, experts in data privacy and human resources suggest.

  The online networking and social media platform randomly varied the number of strong and weak acquaintances present in users "People You May Know" suggestions to test a long-held theory: that people are more likely to get a new job through distant acquaintances than they are close contacts.

• The iPhone Will Switch To USB-C

  I wonder if the EU law works somewhat in Apple’s favour here. Apple were clearly already on a journey to USB-C with the rest of their products. Although some would argue, the iPhone was destined to be port-less. However, this allows Apple to redirect any possible negativity towards the switch to USB-C to the EU.

• Apple's Ad Positioning

  Apple continues to squeeze its largest apps — advertisers on Facebook or Twitter that purchase “boosts” for posts will be taxed at the 30% rate. There’s probably a line where enough small businesses (the majority of whom buy through mobile) and consumers lash back. Already there’s been a sort of consortium of disgruntled companies between Meta, Shopify, Spotify, and other mobile-first apps that are affected.

• Why the iPad still can’t replace my laptop

  With the new 10th-generation iPad and its Surface-like Magic Keyboard Folio, Apple continues to push the laptop replacement concept. At some point, I’ll almost certainly be tempted to give the idea yet another chance.

  But as it stands, there are several reasons why I can only use my iPad as a temporary laptop stand-in.