Coronavirus lockdowns have pushed Zoom to its limits, exposing a series of severe security cracks that have gone overlooked for years. The video-conferencing service announced Thursday it would pulling out all the stops to patch them.
In a lengthy blog post, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan announced the company is freezing development on new user features to exclusively focus on privacy improvements over the next 90 days.
Yuan also put a number on Zoom’s surge during this time of self-isolation. He revealed that the video-conferencing software has grown nearly 1,900% and now hosts 200 million daily meeting participants (both free and paid), up from 10 million in December last year.
But that surge has come at a cost.
In the past few weeks, security researchers have discovered a range of alarming vulnerabilities inside Zoom’s infrastructure. The California-based company was also found lying about its end-to-end encryption which meant its employees, if they so chose, could access your video meetings.
On top of that, Zoom was hit by a class-action lawsuit and is under scrutiny by the office of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James over its data-collection practices.
Yuan responded to these concerns, saying: “We have strived to provide you with uninterrupted service and the same user-friendly experience that has made Zoom the video-conferencing platform of choice for enterprises around the world, while also ensuring platform safety, privacy, and security. However, we recognize that we have fallen short of the community’s — and our own — privacy and security expectations. For that, I am deeply sorry, and I want to share what we are doing about it.”
To deal with this avalanche of security issues, Zoom is enacting a feature freeze and relocating all of its “engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues.” This essentially means you likely won’t see any major user-facing updates from it at least in the next three months. It’s also promising to be more transparent and “preparing a transparency report that details information related to requests for data, records, or content.”
Over the past couple of days, Zoom has actively addressed most of its glaring security loopholes. Its iOS app no longer covertly sends data to Facebook’s servers.
It has also tightened up its previously vague language regarding user data in its privacy policy. There’s still a lot left to be done, however. Zoom’s desktop apps are riddled with security bugs, some of which can potentially allow hackers to take over your computer.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.