If you’re a T-Mobile customer, you have yet another reason to love your “Uncarrier” today, as YouTube and Google Play are now part of the Binge On program. If you aren’t familiar, Binge On allows T-Mobile wireless customers to watch all the online video they want from sites like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, without data plans being affected.
When binge On was announced last November, there was a conspicuous lack of YouTube participation, and considering YouTube is like kind of a popular online video site, that seemed like a big omission. Turns out part of Google’s objection was that T-Mobile serves up Binge-on video at a relatively low resolution to reduce the flow of traffic over its network. Google also didn’t like that it wasn’t all that easy to turn Binge-on off.
So, T-Mobile agreed to Google’s requests for a more transparent Binge-on interface, and now YouTube and Google Play are on board. That’s especially great news for parents of kids who spend the lion’s share of their screen time on their phone or tablet, and often not near a Wi-Fi network.
Next, in a rather big development, we’re now learning that all cars will have automatic emergency braking systems by the year 2022. Yesterday, U.S. Transportation Secretary, Anthony Foxx announced that 20 automakers are on board with the plan, saying the systems that detect an imminent crash and slam on the car’s brakes will help prevent thousands of crashes and save lives.
There are several car models on the road today that already have these systems, but now that auto emergency braking will be standard like seat belts and air bags, we’re sure to see an improvement in safety, especially since we live in an age of distracted driving where texting and other smartphone usage by drivers is held responsible for an increasing number of traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths.
It is estimated by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that this new standard will help prevent 28,000 crashes and 12,000 injuries. But what about all the cars left on the road that don’t have these systems and rely on human reflexes to match those of a car armed with a much faster computer? Is it possible the plan could backfire?
Finally, it’s safe to say that Apple’s days of being known as a company whose products are immune to Malware attacks are officially over. Just a few days after Malware successfully infected Mac computers for the first time comes news from Palo Alto Networksthat a new piece of Malware is infiltrating non-jailbroken iPhones.
The exploit is called AceDeceiver – he he he – who NAMES these things – anyway, it works its way in through some sort of flaw in Apple’s Digital Rights Management mechanism and blah blah certificate, blah blah man-in-the-middle … the point is: three apps posing as wallpaper apps managed to sneak past Apple.
And even though Apple removed the nasty software from the app store, it’s still a problem, thanks to something called a novel attack vector, which sounds like code for “we outsmarted apple.” At any rate, the takeaway here is that not even the great and almighty powerful Apple is immune to attack by malicious people. So, it’s probably a good idea to be extra sure that App you’re about to download is legit and safe. That’s it for DT Daily today. Thanks for watching!
