Someone successfully submitted fake versions of Commonwealth and ANZ's online banking apps to the Google Play store. It was literally a clone of the legit versions, that "requested credit card details or log-in credentials once launched. If users fill out the form, the submitted data was sent to the attacker's service. The apps then presented victims with a "congratulations" or "thank you" message, which is where the app functionality ends". Presumably the data was then kept in some hacker's database then used to steal money. According to ANZ, a customer told them about it in June and the fake app was taken down a few hours after they were alerted. Banks in the UK, Switzerland and Poland also had imposter apps on the Google Play store. If you like seeing stupid boomer takes, check out the comments on this story - hilarious.
Reviews and benchmarks of Nvidia's new generation GPUs, the RTX 2080 and RTX2080 Ti are now available - Anandtech & Tom's Hardware are the ones I read. Going by the benchmarks, the RTX cards are pretty damn good, but there's an early adopter price tag attached. Sure, the RTX 2080 Ti gets over 60fps average at 4K in Far Cary 5, GTA5 and many other games, making it an excellent choice for the 4K gamer. But an RTX 2080 Ti costs almost 50% more than the 1080Ti ($1499 vs $899), but only gives 25% extra performance. Heaps of games are still yet to take advantage of the real-time ray capabilities that this card was designed around, so unless you're a hypebeast who just loves the new shiny, prob best to wait until the edge comes off launch day pricing and more games can leverage its capabilities.
Normally a toothless tiger (have you seen the shit ASIC let the banks get away with in the banking royal commission?!), ASIC has intervened in several Australian cryptocurrency ICOs aimed at "retail" (i.e: normal people) investors and issued a general reminder that ICOs are pretty dodgy. "According to ASIC, consistent problems in the area of ICOs it has identified include the use of misleading or deceptive statements in sales and marketing materials; operating an illegal unregistered managed investment scheme; and not holding an Australian financial services licence". ASIC ends the statement with this useful piece of advice: "ICOs are highly speculative investments that are mostly unregulated, and while there are genuine businesses using this structure many have turned out to be scams". ASIC has a useful ICO information sheet, if for some bizarre reason, you are considering pissing your money away on one.
Sony's cashing in on Nintendo's rich vein of nostalgia, announcing a mini PlayStation that's pretty much identical to the original unit, but 45% smaller. The Sony PlayStation Classic (SCPH-1000R) will come with 20 games pre-installed, "including fan-favourites such as Final Fantasy VII, Jumping Flash, R4 Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3 and Wild Arms". The full list of games will come out closer to the release date - 3rd December 2018. I'm sure a smart person will figure out how to put ISOs of PS1 games on this thing pretty quickly. The PlayStation Classic is already available to pre-order for $149.99 at JB Hi-Fi and EB Games. It's amazing how well the design of the PlayStation has held up. It still looks cool to this day. I loved my mod-chipped unit so much and made some mad coin selling copied games at school with my l33t 4x CD burner.
Things are getting worse over at Evernote, with 15% of its workforce (54 people) getting get arse just a few weeks after a bunch of execs were sacked/left. Evernote's CEO, Chris O'Neill, said at an all-hands meeting that the sackings were necessary for Evernote "to focus its efforts instead around specific functions, including product development and engineering". According to this blog post by the CEO, Evernote will be "doubling down on product development, both quality and velocity" - so maybe don't delete Evernote yet, but certainly make sure all your notes are backed up. You never know what sort of dumb shit they'll pull in a desperate attempt to maintain that hockey stick growth.
Apple Watch Series 4 (which is the 5th Apple Watch - Series 0 is a thing) reviews are out a day after the iPhone Xs reviews. Consensus seems to be that the Series 4 is an awesome upgrade for those using anything but the Series 3 Apple Watch. The hardware is so fast now, that the UI lag that was common in the older Watches is a thing of the past. Being able to see more info on the screen with a glance is handy, the re-designed digital crown is more precise, the built-in speaker is louder (handy for those who use the Watch without a phone on them) and the Series 4 exclusive Infographic watch faces that look like an information overload at first, but are incredibly useful. Shame the ECG feature isn't available outside the US though.
Over in The Sizzle's slack channel (yes I know the signup page is busted, I'll fix it soon), Proton showed me this very nifty QR code generator. You select the kind of QR code you want, like a URL, a contact, a location, phone number, etc, enter the details in and boom, a big QR code for you to slap on whatever, wherever you want. There's even an option to create a QR code with wi-fi credentials, which on iOS at least (maybe Android too, I dunno), will automatically add you to the network once scanned. I'm the kind of person that scans every QR code he sees, so I think this is very cool.
That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony
The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon. Join us on Slack and chat with other Sizzle subscribers.
The Sizzle acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures, and to elders both past and present.
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