Month: August 2024

A rare iOS bug that you can recreate by typing just four characters into your iPhone has been discovered.

Now that that it’s been around for over 17 years, iOS is a pretty stable operating system – but a security researcher has managed to find a rare bug that causes iPhones and iPads to crash with the typing of just four letters.

The researcher known as Konstantin on Mastodon (via TechCrunch) discovered that SpringBoard, the app that manages your iPhone home screen, will crash if you swipe right past all of your home screens to the App Library and type the following into the search bar: “”::  

We found that doing this on an iPhone (running iOS 17.5.1) indeed made our phone display a spinning wheel of doom for several seconds, before it returned to its lock screen. Typing those four letters, or the alternative “”: followed by any letter, into the Settings app’s search bar also makes that particular app crash.

There’s no evidence that this bug is a security issue or anything to worry about – we’ve contacted Apple for a statement and will update this story if we hear back. In our tests, it also doesn’t cause iOS to fully crash – only SpringBoard and the Settings app appear to be affected.

Still, it’s an intriguing glimpse into the little hidden weak spots of our otherwise polished iOS devices – and we expect Apple will fully resolve the niggle in iOS 18.

Effective power

(Image credit: Future)

iPhone bugs like this are pretty rare, but not completely unheard of. A more serious one emerged on iMessage back in 2015, when a single text message caused iPhones to crash and fully shut down.

Known as ‘effective power’ (because it was triggered by receiving the message “effective. Power لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ 冗”), the problem prompted Apple to officially respond and release a temporary fix. 

That was a more worrying issue because it potentially gave outsiders the power to fully crash your iPhone. This newer one is small fry by comparison because it’s user-generated and isn’t exactly a phrase many of us will type in by accident.

We did also recently see Apple admit that a “database corruption” in iOS 17.5 was bringing back deleted photographs for some iCloud users. That problem has now been patched, though, leaving us free to willfully prod our iPhone’s funny bone by typing in this obscure phrase.

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UN treaty falls short when protecting digital freedoms, tech firms and activists say.

The United Nations convention against cybercrime, recently passed by unanimous vote, has fielded criticism from tech companies and human rights groups alike.

Among the critics was Cisco, which claims the move does not do enough to ‘sufficiently protect basic human rights’.

The launch has also been slammed by activist group Human Rights Watch, which has warned the convention expands government surveillance in a thinly veiled attempt to control dissent.

Not far enough

Instead of focusing on crimes like ransomware or hacking which are committed against computer systems, the treaty focused on crimes which use digital communication systems (such as ‘libel’ on social media).

This would serve to facilitate national repression, said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan, who claimed it would, “fuel the rewriting of criminal laws around the world to establish new expansive police powers,” labelling it an “unprecedented multilateral tool for cross border surveillance by law enforcement without adequate safeguards for human rights.”

The current draft of the law defers to domestic law to establish human-rights safeguards, which means citizens do not benefit from international human rights standards, but instead are left at the mercy of their national government. This means that in countries where people are most at risk of human rights abuse, the potentially repressive governments set the precedents.

Both China and Russia pushed for the convention, and the broad scope of the treaty allows for the prosecution of anyone committing crime using Information and Communications Technology systems, meaning any repressive laws passed by an authoritarian government can be used to restrict speech online. This means, for example, any country which has criminalized same-sex relations can prosecute anyone who fights for same-sex rights online.

In its own complaint, Cisco also warned the convention should be amended to align more closely with the Budapest Convention, which offers better protections and reflects ‘carefully negotiated’ balances between competing interests.

Via Human Rights Watch

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FiiO’s new wired headphones promise spectacular sound for a surprisingly low price, and you can actually hear when you’re on the go!

We’re big fans of FiiO gear – we gave the FiiO FT5 over-ears the full five stars in our review, the FiiO FT3 are among our picks for the best wired headphones, and FiiO M11S tops our list of the best hi-res music players. But while the FiiO FT3 headphones are comparatively affordable for audiophile cans, they’re still quite expensive at just under $300 / £300 / AU$450. 

So we’re quite excited by the brand-new FiiO FT1 headphones, which promise headphone heaven for considerably less cash: they’re half the price of the FT3 at just $159 / £139 (roughly AU$270). They’re also closed-back, which means they’ll isolate you from sound better, and can be used in noisier environments.

The FiiO FT1 headphones don’t look budget. They have real American Black Walnut wooden ear cups, and that wood isn’t just decorative: it’s very dense, and that means it can reduce cavity resonance and minimize standing waves to deliver a more accurate sound, FiiO assures us. And the spec sheet suggests that these headphones are beautiful on the inside too.

(Image credit: Fiio)

FiiO FT1: key features and price

The FT1 headphones feature a newly developed 60mm dynamic driver, which is significantly bigger than the drivers you usually find in the best over-ear headphones (the Sony WH-1000XM5 have 30mm drivers, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones have 40mm drivers, for comparison). It’s designed to deliver much deeper bass, while the suspension gasket is made from light PU plastic for low-frequency elasticity and strength, apparently.

FiiO hasn’t neglected the top frequencies. There’s a specially imported Japanese ultra-fine CCAW (Copper Clad Aluminum Wire) voice coil made from wire cores 0.035mm thick, which is as thin as a human hair. FiiO says the voice coil delivers a “purer, more comfortable sound”.

The FT1’s diaphragm is made primarily from wood paper fibers made from 90-year-old European spruce, a wood that’s often used in musical instruments because of its tonal qualities. FiiO says that it soaks it, cooks it and beats it to create a particular kind of pulp, adding carbon fiber to deliver the acoustic toughness it wants. FiiO then cooks it again before moulding it to a thickness of just 0.1mm.

There’s more: a U-shaped acoustic damping tube to enhance passive noise attenuation and to reduce the cavity resonance frequency; conical baffle plates to minimize high-frequency attenuation; a 392-wire silver plated, oxygen free cable; breathable mesh fabric earpads; and a three-axis adaptive headband for snug fitting without excessive audio leakage.

Considering the specs you’d expect these headphones to be pricey, so they seem extremely aggressive at £139 / $159. If they sound as good as they look, the FT1 could be up there with some of the best headphones available today. They’re available to buy now.

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BioWare has revealed the PC features for Dragon Age: The Veilguard PC ahead of its October launch.

BioWare has revealed the PC features for Dragon Age: The Veilguard PC ahead of its October launch.

As promised in its official roadmap that was released last week, the studio has shared a new blog post detailing everything players need to know about the PC version of the upcoming role-playing game (RPG), along with a list of exclusive features for the platform.

BioWare explained that it created a dedicated team to focus specifically on PC because “getting the PC experience just right was crucial.” This resulted in PCs making up 40% of the studio’s platform testing effort, amounting to over 200,000 hours of performance and compatibility testing.

In addition to the testing hours, BioWare did close to 10,000 hours of user research when it came to testing controls and UI on both keyboard and mouse, and controllers. 

This means that The Veilguard on PC will feature native support for PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers with haptics support, as well as the Xbox controllers, with the option to transition between controllers or keyboard and mouse while playing or in menus.

The Veilguard will have numerous ways to play, BioWare said, so it’s implemented a way for players to choose by adding the ability to customize class-specific keybinds that you can easily switch between.

(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

In terms of graphics, the game will support 21:9 Ultrawide monitors alongside standard resolution options, as well as full HDR support. PC players will also be able to disable the option “Cinematic Aspect Ratio”, which will remove the black bars during cutscenes, adjust the field of view with the FOV slider, and experience an uncapped framerate.

Unlike previous games in the series, players will now be able to change their graphics settings without having to reboot their game after saving their preset. With The Veilguard, graphics and display settings are reflected in real-time on screen, so players can see exactly what tweaks they are making.

Although previously confirmed last month, BioWare has reiterated that the upcoming Dragon Age game will be Steam native – no EA App required – and Steam Deck verified with Cloud Save support, allowing players to switch between the handheld and PC seamlessly.

As for the advanced settings, the RPG will offer a series of ray tracing features, an Ultra RT mode for high-end builds, as well as upscaling options, such as NVIDIA DLSS 3 and FSR 2.2, which BioWare said has been “heavily modified”, and XeSS. 

The game will also support DLSS 3 with frame generation and NVIDIA Reflex, but you can take a look at the complete specifications below.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will launch on October 31 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard PC features:

Display Features

Full Support for 21:9 Ultra Wide Resolutions Ability to Uncap Frame RateVSync, including fractional rate VSyncHDR SupportOptional Upscaling (DLSS 3, FSR 2.2, XeSS)NVIDIA Reflex DLSS 3 Frame GenerationOptional Dynamic Resolution Scaling Cinematic Aspect Ratio (Disable this option for cinematic 21:9 ratio)

Graphics Settings

Presets Available (Low, Medium, High, Ultra)Texture Settings

Texture Quality
Texture Filtering
Light & Shadow Settings

Lighting Quality
Contact Shadow
Ambient Occlusion
Screen Space Reflections
Volumetric Lighting
Sky Quality
Ray Tracing Settings*

Ray-Traced Reflections
Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion
Ultra Ray Tracing
Geometry Settings

Level Of Detail
Strand Hair 
Terrain Quality
Terrain Decoration Quality
Visual Effects Quality
Camera Effects

Depth of Field
Vignette
Motion Blur 
Post Processing Quality
Field of View

Controls

Class-specific Keybinds Keyboard + Controller Bindings

Ray Tracing can be “ON” or turned to “Selective”. Selective Mode enables Ray Tracing features in specific areas that can best take advantage of the feature.

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Microsoft wants to change how it splits quarterly results in order to highlight cloud and AI’s successes.

Microsoft has announced a series of significant changes to its quarterly revenue reporting structure in a moved aimed at providing investors with a clearer understanding of its cloud computing business.

The changes are expected to better reflect the performance of Azure, Microsoft’s competitor to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Microsoft’s adjustments come as part of a broader reorganization within the company’s reporting segments, designed to align with the company’s evolving business model.

Microsoft highlighting cloud and AI successes

Among the changes was the move of the Power BI data analytics tool and the Enterprise Mobility and Security group away from the Azure growth metric in order to emphasize consumption-based revenue. However, revenue from search and news advertising, previously under the More Personal Computing segment, will now be included in the Azure metric.

The company also reorganized its Productivity and Business Processes segment to include some services that were previously categorized under the Intelligent Cloud unit, together with some Windows commercial products and cloud services from the More Personal Computing category.

Microsoft hopes that the changes will help investors to better understand revenue streams in an era of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The company reported $64.7 billion in revenue last quarter, up 15% year-on-year.

“As a platform company, we are focused on meeting the mission-critical needs of our customers across our at-scale platforms today, while also ensuring we lead the AI era,” company CEO Satya Nadella said.

However, while the changes are designed to provide greater transparency into emerging markets, some have expressed concerns that the company could also be using the shift to obscure the health of other businesses, such as the Windows operating system and Microsoft Office productivity software.

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