Archive for October 20, 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Dropbox Discontinues HTML Rendering

Adam C. Engst:

Unfortunately, as of 3 October 2016, Dropbox says it will no longer allow HTML files loaded in a Web browser to be rendered. The files themselves remain safe in Dropbox, but Dropbox will presumably give those who click the links the options of downloading the file or adding it to their own Dropbox folder, just as happens with non-Web file types now.

[…]

You might think that you could just switch to Google Drive, which also provided this sort of service, but Google Drive also discontinued hosting of Web pages as of 31 August 2016.

Previously: 1PasswordAnywhere No Longer Works With Dropbox.

Disappointing Interaction Design

Matt Henderson:

Trying to enable “Do-not-disturb” in Notification center, I ran into to problems:

  • First, it’s not clear to me which of these tabs are active.
  • Second, it took me a while to figure out that the Do-not-disturb control is only exposed when scrolling down in the notification. There’s no UI cues at all to help with discoverability here.

No scroll bar is shown, even if you’ve set System Preferences to Always. And, to clarify, what he means by “scrolling down” is scrolling beyond the top.

Little Flocker

Jonathan Zdziarski:

Little Flocker is a utility for keeping your personal data safe from spyware, ransomware, misbehaving applications, and other common threats to your computer’s security, by preventing any application from accessing your files without explicit permission.

[…]

In short, Little Flocker is like the popular “Little Snitch” program, but for file access instead of network connections.

Sounds like a good way to keep tabs on applications that are not sandboxed.

The official site is here. I read that it was open source, although the GitHub page is not working for me.

Glenn Fleishman:

Zdziarski has been approved for a kext signing certificate from Apple, required to allow users to install kernel-level software without disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP), which was added in El Capitan. (The “flocker” part of the name is a play on “flock,” an ancient Unix characteristic used to note that a file is in use, or “locked.”)

Update (2016-10-21): Jonathan Zdziarski (via dkhamsing):

I’ve made #LittleFlocker a private repo; I’ll push Beta 7 on http://littleflocker.com soon. Sorry, but the OSS community is too disparaging.

Amazon Selling Fake Apple Chargers and Cables

Ben Lovejoy (Hacker News):

There’s no shortage of third-party chargers and cables sold for Apple equipment, some of them claiming to be the genuine article, but Apple has found that even Amazon has been selling counterfeit products labelled as the real thing. The products concerned were sold by Amazon directly, and not by a third-party Marketplace seller.

The items have now been removed from sale, and Apple is suing the company that made them …

Patently Apple reports that Apple has filed a trademark infringement case against Mobile Star LLC, which Amazon named as the primary supplier of the counterfeit products. Apple said that Mobile Star was not only illegally using its trademark, but that the fake chargers had not passed safety tests and posed a risk to consumers.

Apple:

Apple makes great efforts to combat the distribution and sale of counterfeit Apple products bearing its trademarks. Despite Apple’s efforts, fake Apple products continue to flood Amazon.com. Each month, Apple identifies and reports many thousands of listings for counterfeit and infringing Apple products to Amazon.com under its notice and takedown procedures. Over the last nine months, Apple, as part of its ongoing brand protection efforts, has purchased well over 100 iPhone devices, Apple power products, and Lightning cables sold as genuine by sellers on Amazon.com and delivered through Amazon’s “Fulfillment by Amazon” program. Apple’s internal examination and testing for these products revealed almost 90% of these products are counterfeit.

John Gruber:

I can certainly see why Apple is suing Mobile Star (hopefully right out of business), but why not sue Amazon too?

John Gordon:

This has been going on for a long time…

Previously: Amazon’s Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse.

Update (2016-11-18): Todd Bishop:

Amazon today filed two lawsuits against online sellers alleged to have illegally offered counterfeit goods through its vast e-commerce platform.

Update (2016-12-02): Ben Lovejoy:

A large-scale test of 400 fake Apple chargers bought online from eight different countries – including the USA – found that a staggering 99% failed safety tests.