Sam Roberts:
David Lerner, a high school dropout and self-taught computer geek whose funky foothold in New York’s Flatiron district, Tekserve, was for decades a beloved discount mecca for Apple customers desperate to retrieve lost data and repair frozen hard drives, died on Nov. 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 72.
[…]
He and Mr. Demenus transformed a two-man operation in Mr. Demenus’s loft apartment into a business whose customers were as eclectic as the 200 or so employees who served them at makeshift help desks well before Apple formally established and branded “genius bars” in their stores.
[…]
During the nearly three decades before Tekserve shuttered its retail operations in 2016 — because of rising rents and competition from Apple’s stores — the sales and service outlet was where Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker on HBO’s “Sex and the City,” raced when her PowerBook crashed. It was also the setting of Tamara Shopsin’s 2021 novel “LaserWriter II,” narrated by a 19-year-old newbie techie named Claire who works there.
Via Jason Snell:
Back in the day, when there were no Apple Stores, shops like Tekserve saved the bacon of Mac users on a regular basis. I never visited Tekserve, but it was legendary.
Previously:
History Mac Rest in Peace Unauthorized Repair
Jim O’Leary:
Secure backups let you save an archive of your Signal conversations in a privacy-preserving form, refreshed every day; giving you the ability to restore your chats even if you lose access to your phone. Signal’s secure backups are opt-in and, of course, end-to-end encrypted. So if you don’t want to create a secure backup archive of your Signal messages and media, you never have to use the feature.
If you do decide to opt in to secure backups, you’ll be able to securely back up all of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free.
If you want to back up your media history beyond 45 days, as well as your message history, we also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month.
[…]
At the core of secure backups is a 64-character recovery key that is generated on your device. This key is yours and yours alone; it is never shared with Signal’s servers.
Tim Hardwick:
Secure backups first came to Android in September. Signal says it plans to bring secure backups to its desktop app, and its longer term goal is to allow users to transfer message history between Android, iPhone, and desktop apps.
Dan Goodin (Signal, Hacker News):
One exception to the industry-wide lethargy is the engineering team that designs the Signal Protocol, the open source engine that powers the world’s most robust and resilient form of end-to-end encryption for multiple private chat apps, most notably the Signal Messenger. Eleven days ago, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Signal Messenger LLC, published a 5,900-word write-up describing its latest updates that bring Signal a significant step toward being fully quantum-resistant.
John Gruber:
It is impressive that Signal is ahead of the curve on post-quantum computing. But speaking as someone who is currently switching between multiple phones regularly, they need to get their shit together on basic stuff like using more than one phone with the same Signal account, and making it take just a minute or less to switch your primary Signal phone from one device to another. Right now it takes me over 30 minutes to switch Signal from one phone to another, and I’m not a particularly heavy user of the app.
Previously:
Backup iOS iOS 26 iOS App Privacy Signal
Ken Macon (Hacker News):
European governments have taken another step toward reviving the EU’s controversial Chat Control agenda, approving a new negotiating mandate for the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation in a closed session of the Council of the European Union on November 26.
The measure, presented as a tool for child protection, is once again drawing heavy criticism for its surveillance implications and the way it reshapes private digital communication in Europe.
Unlike earlier drafts, this version drops the explicit obligation for companies to scan all private messages but quietly introduces what opponents describe as an indirect system of pressure.
It rewards or penalizes online services depending on whether they agree to carry out “voluntary” scanning, effectively making intrusive monitoring a business expectation rather than a legal requirement.
[…]
He warned that the framework also brings “anonymity-breaking age checks” that will turn ordinary online use into an exercise in identity verification.
It’s unclear to me whether iMessage’s existing Communication Safety features are compliant or whether Apple would have to add more aggressive scanning.
Previously:
Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) European Union iMessage iOS iOS 26 Legal Privacy Signal
Richard Speed:
French cloud outfit OVHcloud took another hit this week after GrapheneOS, a mobile operating system, said it was ditching the company’s servers over concerns about France’s approach to digital privacy.
The project posted on X (formerly Twitter): “We no longer have any active servers in France and are continuing the process of leaving OVH.”
“France isn’t a safe country for open source privacy projects,” the group explained. “They expect backdoors in encryption and for device access too. Secure devices and services are not going to be allowed.
“We don’t feel safe using OVH for even a static website with servers in Canada/US via their Canada/US subsidiaries.”
GrapheneOS (Hacker News):
France is taking state actions against GrapheneOS. They’re conflating us with companies which they’ve previously gone after and taken over their servers. We aren’t vulnerable to being attacked in the same way but we still don’t want accesses to our website/network services being logged or our website being hijacked.
Kevin Pham (Hacker News):
While the operating system will still be available to French users, all website and discussion servers are being relocated abroad.
Until now, the project relied on OVH Bearharnois, a French hosting provider, for its core website and social media services. The migration plan moves the Mastodon, Discourse, and Matrix instances to a combination of local and shared servers in Toronto. Critical website infrastructure will be hosted by Netcup, a German‑based company.
[…]
Citing the government’s support of the European Union Chat Control proposal, GrapheneOS developers are also refusing travel to France. Developers are no longer allowed to work inside the country due to safety concerns.
La Quadrature du Net (Apple translation, Hacker News):
Two articles in Le Parisien yesterday, followed today by an article in Le Figaro, launched a shameful offensive against GrapheneOS, an open-source operating system for phones, free and accessible to all. At La Quadrature, it is one of the tools that we favor and regularly recommend to protect ourselves from advertising tracking or spyware.
GrapheneOS:
Absolutely no further details were provided about what was being claimed, who was making it or the basis for those being made about it. We could only provide a very generic response to this.
Our response was heavily cut down and the references to human rights organizations, large tech companies and others using GrapheneOS weren’t included.
[…]
GrapheneOS is a freely available open source privacy project. It’s obtained from our website, not shady dealers in dark alleys and the “dark web”. It doesn’t have a marketing budget and we certainly aren’t promoting it through unlisted YouTube channels and the other nonsense that’s being claimed.
GrapheneOS has no such thing as the fake Snapchat feature that’s described. What they’re describing appears to be forks of GrapheneOS by shady companies infringing on our trademark. Those products may not even be truly based on GrapheneOS, similar to how ANOM used parts of it to pass it off as such.
Previously:
Android France GrapheneOS Legal Open-source Software Privacy
